[London, not earlier than 25 July 1884] 

Dear Ede, 

You may send the enclosed to Auer if you wish; I have contrived it 
with that in view. 

As regards the apportionment of constituencies,?7! I assure you 
that I, too, have often been annoyed about it, but it is due to the de- 
sire to proceed, in purely tactical matters, in accordance with general 
principles and this always happens at congresses where everything is 
made to look so nice and simple. Dual candidatures are, of course, 
useless as a rule; but if you reckon that in the doubtful constituencies 
the best people are more likely to get in than the others and you 
therefore put them up there, you must either tolerate dual candida- 
tures in their case or run the risk of their not being elected at all. So if 
you’re totally opposed to dual candidatures, you must put up the best 
people in the safest constituencies. But then it is odd that this relega- 
tion to doubtful constituencies never happens to Liebknecht but only 
to Bebel, and that e. g. at the last election Liebknecht had, if I am not 
mistaken, two quite good constituencies.* Enfin” such things cannot be 
avoided. Nor must one forget that a battle always has its ups and 
downs and hence not be put out if the downs sometimes tend to pre- 
dominate. 

At all events, this much is certain: so long as we have the Sozialde- 
mokrat, their worships the opportunists may do as they wish; and even 
if they gained control of the parliamentary group (which is after all 
only possible if Bebel is not re-elected), they wouldn’t have won, not 
by a long chalk. What are their intentions towards the masses? The 
latter keep pressing these same people onwards whether they like it or 
not. And if the Wise Men ?!° also succeeded in gaining command of 
the Sozialdemokrat, this would be of shorter duration than the Sozzal- 
demokrat’s first weak-kneed period which at the outset also met with 

* See Engels’ letter to Bernstein of 30 November 1881 (present edition, Vol. 46). - 
> Well 

170 98, Engels to Laura Lafargue. 26 July 1884 

support, even among the better of the ‘leaders’, but was utterly re- 
jected by the masses. 

As to the Vast Erudition of the celebrated non-atheist,*’? I shall be 
highly delighted if it takes every possible.opportunity to parade itself. 
An equally mysterious savant* crops up in Paul de Kock’s Amant de 
la lune; when, having gone to the utmost trouble, people finally get 
the measure of his erudition, they discover that it consists in a couple 
of conjuring tricks with corks. Think of all the trouble we went to be- 
fore this celebrated man finally consented to provide us with just 
a few samples of his erudition! And how pretty they are! And he has 
actually got as far as clairvoyance.? What more could we want? — 
cela marche!” 

Regards to Karl Kautsky, also from Schorlemmer. 

Your 

F.E. 

Tell Manz, who has written to me, that a portrait just like mine is 
now being done for him and that he shall have it as soon as it is 
ready’; in a sprawling city like London, however, I can’t chase 
after things personally and must therefore depend on other people.