I return Cluss’ letter herewith. In this connection it has occurred 
to me that now that Mr Dana is in touch with B. Bauer and Simon 
of Trier and is, at the same time, restricting your space on account 
of the presidential election, it would certainly not be out of place 
to give Mr Dana a taste of Yankee medicine. Cluss and a number 
of others should write to Mr Dana from various quarters inquiring 
why it is that these incomparasre articles should appear so rarely 
and irregularly and expressing the hope that the fault does not lie 
with the editorial board which, rather, might be expected to 
correct this situation and find it possible to publish articles by 
K. M. more frequently, etc., etc. Weydemeyer could very easily 
organise this; the only reason we need to give him is that Dana 
wants to restrict your snace and hence a demonstration of this 

4 Willich’s service in the Baden-Palatinate insurgent army in the spring of 
1849. - > The issue of Die Revolution, in which Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis 
Bonaparte appeared. 

kind is called for if we are to continue to have access to this organ. 
A Barnum, Barnum et demi.* If you agree, I can put this to 
Weydemeyer per the next steamer. 

The circular sent out by the convention to the sections is 
exquisite. I'll be hanged if the St Petersburg, Warsaw, Berlin, 
Rome, etc., sections are situated more than 4 miles from Charing 
Cross. This carbonari-like, self-important, bustling, order-of-the- 
dayish attitude again betrays how mistaken these gentlemen are as 
to their ostensibly organised forces. To propose a coup just now is 
a bétise and a dirty trick. But truly, ‘something has got to happen, 
something has got to be done’. It would be desirable for the 
supposed leaders of the thing to be all of them captured and shot; 
but needless to say the great men will make sure this doesn’t 
happen and the heroic Willich will stay quietly in London so Jong 
as there is still money in the cashbox, credit at Scharttner’s and 
free coats and boots ad libitum at the ‘tailor’s and shoemaker’s’. 
That is what Mr Willich means by supplies for the army! 

As for the matter of the character-sketches,° so far so good. The 
thing can be ready in a month’s time. But mind you find someone 
reliable to make a fair copy, so that it goes out in a completely 
unknown hand. When you come up, bring the Americana, the 
complete run of the N. Rh. Z. and the necessary manuscript 
documents. My old man arrives tomorrow and is unlikely to be 
able to stay here for longer than 8-10 days. 

I've at last received my stuff on military science from Germany. 
So far I have been able to read only little of it. At this stage, I 
should say that Mr Gustav von Hoffstetter, of wide renown, is not 
exactly a Napoleon but rather a thoroughly reliable commander of 
a battalion or so in a minor engagement. But J haven’t yet finished 
reading his thing.“ Not unpleasing, on the other hand, is a booklet 
on new fortifications in general by Kintzel, a Prussian captain of 
engineers*°—both better history and more materialist than any- 
thing I have so far read in militaribus.' 

Now as for Mr Willisen, be it said here that the victory at 
Idstedt °° was won, not by the Danes over the Schleswig- 
Holsteiners, but rather by the usual tactics of common sense over 

a A Barnum, Barnum et demi (Against one Barnum one and a half) is modelled on 
such an expression as ‘a Corsaire Corsaire et demi’, the idea of which is roughly ‘to 
beat someone at his own game’. - > piece of stupidity - © K. Marx and F. Engels, 
The Great Men of the Exile. - 4 Gustav von Hoffstetter, Tagebuch aus Italien, 
1849. - © H. Kintzel, Die taktischen Elemente der neuen Fortificationen. - f in the 
military sphere 

Hegelian speculation. Willisen’s book* should really be called the 
philosophy of great wars. This in itself would indicate that it 
contains more philosophising than military science, that the most 
self-evident things are construed a priori with the most profound 
and exhaustive thoroughness and that, sandwiched between these, 
are the most methodical discourses on simplicity and multiplicity 
and such-like opposites. What can one say about military science 
which begins with the concept of art en général, then goes on to 
demonstrate that the art of cookery is also an art, expatiates on 
the relationship of art to science and finally subsumes all the rules, 
relationships, potentialities, etc., etc., of the art of war under the 
one, absolute axiom: the stronger always overcomes the weaker. 
Every now and again there are some nice apergus” and some useful 
reductions to basic principles; it would indeed be bad if there were 
not. As to its practical application, I haven’t yet got to that, but it 
doesn’t say much for Willisen that every one of Napoleon’s 
greatest victories was achieved in defiance of Willisen’s elementary 
rules, a result that your orthodox Hegelian can, of course, readily 
explain away without the least violence being done to those rules. 

I see that Gorgey’s memoirs have just come out‘—but since they 
cost 6 talers, I doubt that I can buy them just now. With these, the 
material on the military aspect of the Hungarian war may be 
regarded as complete for the time being. At any rate, I shall do 
something on the Hungarian war, and possibly on all the wars of 
1848/49."° As soon as I am clear in my mind about earlier military 
history, I shall look round for a publisher onto whom I can then 
shift most of the expenditure on sources. 

You will have received the 30/- sent you last Saturday. 

Your 
F. E.