Dear Mohr

I hope you received the £10 I sent you to Margate.

I was in Wales over the holidays and only get round to writing to you today.

Orsini came to see me; unfortunately I could do nothing for him. I no longer have any connections of any kind in New York, and finding someone here who will do the guano dodge with him and advance the funds for it is out of the question. He is a very decent fellow.

Polish Article No. 3 will be done tomorrow evening if nothing intervenes. I shall send it directly to Eccarius, care of the Editor of the Commonwealth. Unfortunately the proof-reading is atrocious, and it is also high time that the weekly reprinting of a leader from the Nonconformist were put a stop to. It is really too impudent of Miall to present the thing so openly as a mere appendix to the Nonconformist.

What do you say to Bismarck? It now very much looks as though he is driving matters to war and thereby offering Louis Bonaparte the finest, the finest opportunity to acquire, without any trouble, a piece of the left bank of the Rhine and with that to establish himself for life. Now, even if everyone who is // party to this war – if it comes to that – deserves to be hanged, and I wish with equal impartiality that this extended to the Austrians as well, my chief wish nevertheless is that the Prussians get a thorough thrashing. There would then be two chances: 1) the Austrians dictate peace in Berlin in a fortnight, thereby avoiding direct foreign intervention, while at the same time rendering the present regime in Berlin impossible, and a different movement arises which from the outset repudiates specific Prussianism; or 2) there is an upheaval in Berlin before the Austrians get there, and then the movement gets under way as well.

Militarily, my view is that the two armies are roughly evenly matched, and the battles will be very bloody. Benedek, however, is in any case a better general than Prince Frederick Charles, and if Franz Joseph does not help B. or // Fr. Charles does not have very good and influential staff officers, then I believe the Prussians will get a licking. The very braggadocio since Düppel points to a Jena. If the first battle goes decisively against the Prussians, nothing stands in the way of the Austrians marching on Berlin. Should Prussia win, then it does not possess the staying power to undertake an offensive beyond the Danube towards Vienna, let alone beyond Pest. Austria can perhaps compel Prussia to make peace, but Prussia cannot compel Austria, single-handed. Every Prussian success would therefore be an encouragement to Bonaparte to intervene.

Incidentally, both German swine will even now be trying to outbid one another in offering pieces of German territory to the third French swine.

Your
F. E.