5 March, 1870. Dear Fred, During the past week we received the news that the Lafargues’ youngest child has died. The extraordinary cold in Paris contributed to this. The child was stinted from the beginning. In the Fenian affairs all sorts of things have happened in the meantime. A letter I wrote to the Internationale in Brussels, in which I also attacked the French Republicans for their narrow-minded national direction, has been printed, and the editors announce that they will print their reflections this week. You must know that in the Central Council’s communication to the Genevese – which was also communicated to the Brussels people and the international headquarters in Fkch – I elaborated on the significance of the Irish question for the movement of the working class in general (through the recoil on England). Soon afterwards Jennychen got into a passion over the swinish article in the Daily News, the private monitor of the Gladstone ministry, in which this cur of a paper turns to the “liberal” brothers in Fkch and warns them not to lump together the cases of Rochefort and O’Donovan Rossa. The Marseillaise actually fell into the trap, agreed with the Daily News and also published a wretched article by the chatterer Talandier, in which this ex-procureur de la République, now teacher of French at the military school at Woolwich (ditto ex private tutor to Herzen, for whom he wrote a flaming obituary) attacks the Irish for their Catholicism and accuses them of having caused Odger’s defeat – on account of his participation in the Garibaldi Committee. In addition he added that they stick to Mitchell despite his partisanship for the slaveholders, as if Odger were not sticking to Gladstone, despite his much more important siding with the slaveholders! Jennychen – ira facit poetam – therefore wrote, besides a private letter, an article for the “Marseillaise”, which was printed. In addition she received a copy of the enclosed letter from the rédacteur de la rédaction. Today another letter from her to the Marseillaise goes off, in which, linking up with Gladstone’s answer (the latest this week) to the interpolation on the treatment of the prisoners, extracts from a letter of O’Donovan Rossa’s (see Irishman 5 Feb. 70) are given. Here Gladstone is presented to the French not only as a monster through Rossa’s letter (insofar as Gl. is in fact responsible for the whole treatment of the prisoners, even under the Tories), but at the same time he is made to look a ridiculous hypocrite as the author of “Prayers”, “The Propagation of the Gospel”, “The Functions of Laymen in the Church” and “Ecce Homo”. With these 2 papers – the “Internationale” and the “Marseillaise” – we shall now pull off the masks of the English before the continent. If you happen to find something, one day or the other, that suits one of these papers, you must take part in our good work. The state of my health has so far not allowed me to attend the sittings of the Central Council. But next Tuesday, if it doesn’t rain. The proceedings in the American House of Representatives concerning the Fenian prisoners have been, as far as I have seen, most carefully suppressed by the English press. Herr W. Liebknecht this time shows himself in full glory. First in a great hurry to have your Peasant War. Now procrastination, instead he prints, in No. 17 of the “Volksstaat” d.d. Hamburg, an article emanating from Heinzen’s propaganda clique against the “class”-distinction conception. Quant à Meissner and “18. Brumaire”, il observe un silence significatif. Salut D KM.