Dear August,

With your usual perspicacity you rightly guessed that I am sending you my reply through the witch[01]. So first my thanks for the k.k. Reichskursbuch and my assurance that I will endeavour to arrange my “new course” in accordance with that same all-highest one. Some of the mysterious signs and wonders that appear in it I have already fathomed and hope in the next fortnight to get to the bottom of it completely and consequently not to get stuck anywhere.

So my plans are as follows. Next Wednesday[02] I go to Pumps[03] at Ryde[04] where all letters will be forwarded to me. I shall stay there until about 10–15 August, depending on circumstances. I am expecting a letter from Barmen[05] on which the day of my departure will depend. I am not going to Barmen, I have so many nephews and nieces there that I would not get through the formal calls alone in a fortnight. But I shall go to Engelskirchen for a few days, where my brothers take it in turns to summer. From there about the 18th or 19th to Zurich, where I must pay my cousin, Frau Beust and family, a visit that was promised years ago. I will let you know my arrival at once and then come to St Gall on the 24th or 25th; if you come to fetch me, so much the better. Then we pack off to Stuckert on the Neckar strand, pick up Uncle Georg, and on to Munich and — if possible through the Alps — to Vienna, etc. She can tell you the rest orally (that is, not Frau Beust, who is the grammatical subject, but the witch, who is in any case a very ungrammatical subject).

As Tussy says, the elections[06] here in the East End have provoked a wild

enthusiasm. The workers have at last seen that they can do something as soon as they will it. The liberal magic is broken, and even in the Workman’s Times the Independent Labour Party[07] is being proclaimed from all sides as the one thing needful. Nothing impresses the stubborn John Bull but facts, but these do the job for certain.

The Vollmariade proves once again that the man has lost all touch with the party.[08] This or next year will probably have to see a break with him; he seems to want to force the party’s state-socialist twaddle on it by violence. But since he is an arch-intriguer, and I have all manner of experience in struggles with people of this sort — M[arx] and I often made tactical blunders in dealing with this species and had to pay the appropriate school fees — I take the liberty of submitting a few hints to you here.

Above all, these people aim at formally putting us in the wrong, and this must be avoided. Otherwise they go on riding this side issue in order to obscure the main point, the weakness of which they feel. So caution in expressions, public and private. You see how skilfully the fellow uses your remark about L[iebknecht] to stir up a row between him, L[iebknecht], and you — and he knows perfectly well your mutual position! — and so to set you between two stools.[09]

Secondly, since for them the crucial point is to obscure the main question, one must avoid any occasion for this; all side issues they bring up must be dealt with as briefly and as strikingly as possible so that they are disposed of once and for all; but you yourself must avoid, as far as possible, any side track or side point that may present itself, despite all temptation. Otherwise the field of debate grows ever wider, and the original point at issue more and more disappears from view. And then a decisive victory is no longer possible, and that is for the cliquist already a sufficient success and for us at least a moral defeat.

Thirdly, it follows from 1. and 2. that with such people the pure defensive is the best tactic until they have properly ridden themselves into a fix — then a short crushing artillery fire and a decisive bayonet charge. Here as nowhere else one must save one’s ammunition and one’s reserves right up to the last moment.

Every time we have departed from these rules in the struggle with the Bakuninists, Proudhonists, German professors and other such riff-raff

we have had to pay for it, and therefore I hereby place them at your disposal once again.

So hearty greetings to Frau Julie too, from your

General

At Siegel’s request, I enclose his last letter.