London, 2 February 1892 

Dear August, 

Am glad you liked the article.‘ I fully approve of the omission of 
the two names on the second occasion. So far as France was con- 
cerned the repetition was necessary; in Germany it might do some 
harm and is in any case wholly. superfluous. 

Why, you ask, are the Russians still acting in a warlike manner and 
concentrating troops in the West? Nothing could be simpler. In my 
very first letter,’ in which I maintained that the famine would put 
paid to Russia’s desire for war, I told you that their sabre-rattling, far 
from ceasing, would tend to grow louder. It’s what they always do. 
But only for the benefit of the public at home and abroad; foreign 
diplomats are not expected to believe but merely to acquiesce in it. The 
public is intended to see Russia’s retreat as the retreat of the others be- 
fore Russia.— But this time another factor is involved. The south-east 

* K. Kautsky, Thomas More und seine Utopie.-' Stuttgart-° F. Engels, ‘Der Sozialis- 
mus in Deutschland’.-* See this volume, pp. 242-46. 

and the east are in a state of famine and cannot provision an army. 
The area where the harvest has failed is roughly bounded by the line 
which runs through Odessa, Moscow, Vyatka and Perm up to the 
Urals, then along this range to the northern extremity of the Caspian, 
from there to the eastern extremity of the Sea of Azov and back again 
to Odessa. Proof that only east * of the Odessa-Moscow line can large 
numbers of troops be provisioned; anywhere further north will itself 
need to be constantly supplied with corn. Besides, the Russians are 
now disseminating information about the movements of troops to the 
west that is downright false. 

A comment in Sunday’s> Vorwdarts in no way tallies with what you 
say about your correspondence with Frenchmen regarding Alsace- 
Lorraine *°! and would seem to have been made without reference to 
you. However you would do well to keep a weather eye on Figaro 
which is a thoroughly blackguardly paper. 

Your conversation with Koller *°? tickled us greatly. That’s a typi- 
cal Prussian for you. Herkner had already dinned into the chaps 
how short-sighted it was to suck up to the Frenchified and rabidly 
French notables while antagonising the workers who don’t even 
understand French and who by nature and language are still con- 
summate Germans, thereby driving them into the arms of the Fran- 
cophils. It would have been a splendid opportunity to practise dema- 
gogy from above and with enormous success. The mere imposition of 
German factory legislation and laws on association, etc., and a toler- 
ant attitude towards the workers would have won them over within 
10 years when, along with the Protestants and the wine and tobacco 
growers, they would have more than counterbalanced the Frenchi- 
fied middle and lower middle classes and aristocracy. But how could 
that have been countenanced by the self-same people who were re- 
sponsible for the Anti-Socialist Law'! in Germany and who fought 
the workers at every turn? The German middle classes, you see, al- 
ways arrive too late, and not even the Prussian government, which 
enjoys so much more elbow-room than they, would dare hazard that 
sort of Bonapartist policy. And as you say, your Prussian bureaucrat, 
soldier or Junker cannot, by his very nature, voluntarily surrender 
any position of power, however useless or, indeed, damaging to him- 
self it may be—for would not the policy of petty oppression which is 
his be-all and end-all suffer in consequence? 

* Should be: west.-° Should be: Saturday’s.-° H. Herkner, Die oberelsdssische Baum- 
wollindustrie und ihre Arbeiter... 

As you know, Gilles has at last been well and truly kicked out. But 
it was silly of the Vorwdarts to have suppressed the name in ¢his of all 
cases.4°? One ought not, after all, to take the shine off one’s own 
achievements by playing them down in a report. And after all the 
Society and those who induced it to act did at least deserve that 
an accurate account of what they had done for the party should ap- 
pear in the official party organ. However, I realise that you can’t 
do anything for the present, but it almost seems to me as though 
someone was intent on stirring up trouble. 

My advising Julius* to be less verbose would be about as effective 
as your advising Liebknecht not to write indiscreet letters. I shall cer- 
tainly not meddle in Julius’ affairs unless absolutely forced to do so. 
Nor have { any alternative, considering the way the couple has delib- 
erately cut itself off from us. His aunt” demands that visit be returned 
for visit, formal philistine etiquette, but among us communist bo- 
hemians that sort of thing is, first, simply not done and, second, sim- 
ply impossible. Such philistine intercourse — known here as the sociar 
TREADMILL — is admissible only for people with too much time on their 
hands; no one who wishes to work either can or does indulge in that 
sort of thing. I never conformed, even amongst the bourgeois in Man- 
chester, and it is more than ever out of the question for me to do so 
now. Anyone wanting something of someone else goes and sees him, 
and that’s that. But the fact that such is the case is what lies at the 
bottom of all the trouble in Hugo Road.‘ 

I had suspected that Geiser was back at the Vorwérts from the unsur- 
passed dreariness, tedium and vacuity, for which he alone can be re- 
sponsible, of certain articles. In other respects the Vorwdrts has on oc- 
casion been noticeably better during the session of the Dresden Land- 
tag. 

Ah yes— the Condition of the Working-Class“! This is the umpteenth 
time the worthy Dietz has got someone to dun me, only to receive the 
same answer he has already had from me in writing, namely, that I'll 
be glad to oblige the moment Volume III of Capital is finished, but 
can take on absolutely nothing else before then. There are a lot of 
snags to your proposal that I should authorise him to negotiate with 
Wigand; hitherto I have always found that in such cases unnecessary 
and often irreparable mistakes tend to be made. Above all, I have got 

* Julius Motteler-” Emilie Motteler-° Street in London where the Mottelers lived. - 
“ F, Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England. 

to know what my legal position is vis-a-vis Wigand. I enclose a ré- 
sumé of the facts; if, as once before, you could obtain some legal ad- 
vice as to this, we might resume negotiations. Your previous advice 
made it perfectly clear to me that, thanks to the lousy Saxon legisla- 
tion whereby the publisher is protected at the author’s expense, I was 
still very much in Wigand’s hands; but what it failed to make clear, 
since the case did not then arise as now it might, was what my posi- 
tion would be, should Wigand refuse to bring out a new edition on 
the old terms. If it transpires that I should be as much in his clutches 
as ever, we shall then certainly‘ have to see’'what can be done.*°* 

The printers are reaping what they themselves have sown.? If it 
means they are driven to join the party, so much the better. 

Yesterday, when I read Prince George of Saxony’s Order of the 
Day,*°> I almost jumped onto the table for joy. How it will enrage 
the high and mighty! A thing like that, getting into the impious So- 
cial-Democratic press! Can it really be that those fellows are already 
in such close touch with ‘my glorious army’? A telegram a column 
long has already appeared in today’s Daily News about it—it will 
cause the dickens of a sensation all over the world. And they imagine 
that that kind of treatment will induce the troops to ‘shoot down 
everything in sight’, above all their own parents, brothers, etc.! Sont- 
ils bétes, ces Prussiens!* ; 

I am prepared to maintain, envers et contre tous” and despite any- 
thing that may be said to the contrary, that Louise is a very good house- 
wife and, moreover, an excellent cook. I’m not quite sure that this 
housewifeliness isn’t due in part to the fact of our not being married 
and, should this prove to be the case, it would be lucky for me be- 
cause of the circumstance that the difference in our ages precludes 
marital no less than extra-marital relations, so that nothing remains 
but that self-same housewifeliness. 

Warm regards to your wife and yourself from Louise and 

Your 
F. E. 

Postscript. Louise is indignant because you reply to the letters she 
writes with six-page letters to me. I told her to write and tell you so 
herself, to which she replied that she was far too indignant to do any 
such thing. 

* How stupid these Prussians are!-° against all comers 

Herewith Gilles’ latest masterpiece. The Society over here is dis- 
tributing it by the hundred in the hope that it will prove his own 
undoing.