London, 30 April 1891 

Dear Baron, 

I have before me your letters of the 5th and 25th. Ad vocem* Brenta- 
no’ °° Herkner, to whom I sent a copy, has replied to the ef- 
fect that, while the allegation of deliberate falsification could not be 
substantiated, Marx had nevertheless, if no doubt unintentionally, 
used quotations in Capital of such a kind that no clear idea could be 
obtained of Gladstone’s real views, etc.—on the whole, everything 
you'd expect of so ‘ardent’ a disciple of Brentano’s. 

You will have got my postcard about Ravé.° Laura Lafargue is go- 
ing to read over and correct his translation of the Origin,’ otherwise 
I could hardly have entrusted him with the thing. He will probably 
take some time over your Morus‘ which he wishes to translate; he 
spoke of having to do ‘more rewarding, i.e. better paid’ work. 

I cannot begrudge Schmidt the lectureship — something he and his 
parents have dreamed of for years. And in present-day Switzerland 

* As regards-» F. Engels, In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx.-° See this volume, 
pp. 163-64.-¢ F. Engels, L’Origine de la famille, de la propriété privée et de l'état. Tra- 
duction francaise par Henri Ravé.-* K. Kautsky, Thomas More und seine Utopie. 

even a Marxian stands some chance. True, you have thereby lost 
a most reliable—if not most tractable—fellow editor; however, 
someone will doubtless turn up to whom you can entrust much of the 
mechanical stuff, at any rate. 

If Liebknecht were to leave Berlin for Leipzig many people besides 
yourself would be instantly overjoyed. But I don’t believe it will hap- 
pen. It would mean his abdicating. In Leipzig — what historical iro- 
ny! — he would be the Social-Democratic Bismarck of Friedrichsruh* 
which would eventually lead to a rumpus. Whether things will go on 
much longer without there being one is in any case questionable. 

The Peruvian affair interests me very much; I should be glad if you 
could send me the Ausland articles.*?* But tell me when you have got 
to have them back, and I can regulate my reading accordingly. 

I wrote to Ravé about your Morus as follows ??°: 

‘Le “Thomas Morus” de Kautsky contient un apergu généralement juste, et 
sous beaucoup d’aspects original, de la période de la renaissance dans les 
pays de réforme protestante, et surtout Angleterre. C’est de cet apergu géné- 
ral des conditions historiques de la période que se dégage la personnalité de 
T. More, comme enfant de son temps. La renaissance italienne et frangaise, 
par conséquent, ne figurent dans le livre qu’a Varriére-plan. J'écrirai a 
Kautsky un de ces jours, et je le prierai de vous envoyer son livre, je crois que 
vous trouverez, quil vaut bien la peine d’étre traduit.’” 

I have no recollection whatever of Marx’s Geneva memoran- 
dum.??° We are now engaged in sorting out the old letters and news- 
papers and I shall see if I can find it. But just now I haven’t got much 
time to look, let alone do notes, etc., on it. I have got to make sure of 
getting back to Volume III° and have firmly resolved to be ruthless 
about refusing any more work — were it only 3 lines— unless of the ut- 
most urgency, and likewise to restrict my correspondence to bare essen- 
tials, until I have done with Volume III. First, of course, there’s the 
Origin’ which I shall, I think, get round to next week. Meanwhile 
Louise will search for the Geneva document. However, it may take 

* Bismarck’s estate where he lived after his resignation.- ‘Kautsky’s Thomas Morus 
contains a survey, by and large correct and in many respects original, of the Renais- 
sance period in the countries of the Protestant Reformation, notably England. It is 
from that genera] survey of the historical conditions of the period that T. More’s perso- 
nality emerges as the child of his times. In this book, therefore, the Italian and French 
Renaissance figures only in the background. One of these days I shall write to Kautsky 
and ask him to send you his book. I believe you will find it well worth translating.’ -° of 
Capital -“ the fourth German edition of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the 
State 

some time; the quantity of stuff is tremendous and the disorder even 
more so. 

As you will have seen, the Vorwdarts has altered course somewhat ??7 
in regard to the miners’ strike.?? Liebknecht is hopeless in such mat- 
ters. The man has only two colours on his palette, black and white, 
with no nuances in between, so what can one do? Our chaps in Berlin 
see everything solely from their own standpoint. Thus they sometimes 
forget that, unlike the party veterans, the miners cannot be expected to 
have the kind of discipline that would have been drilled into them by 
the Anti-Socialist Law''!; they also forget that every new group of 
workers accrues to us as the result of injudicious and necessarily unsuc- 
cessful wild-cat strikes which, however, are inevitable in the circum- 
stances. I shall write to Bebel about this. * You can’t just enjoy what is 
pleasing in a movement; you also have to put up with its momentary 
unpleasantnesses. Come to that, the strict discipline of a sect cannot be 
maintained in the case of a big party, nor is this altogether a bad thing. 

As for Lafargue, don’t let yourself be confused. Lafargue is a bit of 
an enfant gate” and is enamoured of his prehistoric theories which do 
not by any means always hold water. Hence his Adam and Eve“ are 
dear to his heart and seem to him far more important than Zola, for 
whom he’s just the right sort of chap.??° And the delay over the 
paradisal Platonists-—who only learnt what’s what when chucked 
out by old Jahweh — coming as it does so hard on the heels of the af- 
fair of his other, economic, article, is to him a personal affront. 
Now, all of a sudden, he expects the Neue Zeit to carry nothing but 
Adam and Eve articles, as though it had been in the habit of doing so 
before. Now he looks for a contrast, which is non-existent, between 
the old and the new Neue Zeit, and behaves as though the paper had 
never before contained any articles d’actualité.’ 1 find the Neue Zeit 
far better than it used to be——no one, surely, can expect me to read 
the serials; it has at last succeeded in getting Schippel to write really 
good articles that are a pleasure to read. That a weekly must give more 
space than a monthly to actualités goes without saying. If you could 
find a niche for Adam and Eve before too long, then all would be 
well. 

The American militia system is in practice nothing but a kind of na- 

* See this volume, pp. 182-83.-” spoilt child-* P. Lafargue, ‘Der Mythus von Adam 
und Eva. Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Mythologie’, Die Neue Zeit, 9. Jg. 1890/91, 2. 
Bd., Nr. 34, 35.-¢ topical articles 

tional guard of middle-class volunteers, and as much as 10 years ago 
Hyndman wrote to Marx from America saying that the middle 
classes there did a vast amount of drill so as to protect themselves 
against the workers. Proof of how utterly useless this is against an ex- 
ternal enemy may be found in all the wars the United States has ever 
fought using newly formed regiments of volunteers (enlisted men) — 
on the largest scale of all in the Civil War when the militia melted 
away completely. Even when I was in America I heard of the militia 
regiments’ armories which were said to be veritable fortresses in the 
heart of New York. Until such time as every working man has a rifle 
and a hundred live rounds at home, the whole thing will remain 
an absurdity.?%° 

Your old friend 
F. E. 

As you know, Mother Besant has now joined Grandmother Blovat- 
sky’s (Blamatsky’s?) * Theosophists. Now, writ large in gold on her 
garden gate at 19 Avenue Road, is the legend: THeosopuicat Headquarters- 
vers. Such is the result of Herbert Burrows’ love.