London, 30 July 1878 

Dear Pauli, 

Let us hope our people will today do their duty, as we are 
entitled to expect after all that has happened.*” Since Bismarck 
has perpetrated the colossal bloomer of trying to exploit all that 
shooting business to topple the liberals, and is now using the 
socialists simply as a pretext,*” it is with even greater pleasure that 
we can observe the champions of law and order squabbling 
amongst themselves. I cannot comprehend Bismarck; his ‘nerves’ 
must have gone completely to pieces, together with what little 
intelligence he still had. Passe encore* that he should fail to see that 
what his Bonapartist game effectually boils down to is the alternate 
playing off of the workers against the bourgeois and of the 
bourgeois against the workers, thus doing both in the eye. But it’s 
plain madness for him to want to overthrow the liberals, those ‘we 
are but dogs’ *”” yes-men who will go on licking the boot that kicks 
them up the backside in return for a bare minimum of 
cajolery—those liberals who are his only protection against the 
out-and-out feudal-orthodox-reactionary court—and thus to de- 
liver himself up irrevocably to the reactionaries, the very people 
he has betrayed and persecuted and by whom he is mortally 
detested. And he calls himself a ‘statesman’! And proposes to 
bring about the downfall of the socialists by means of a policy that 

4 It’s not so bad 

can benefit no one save the socialists! Were the worthy fellow in 
our pay, he could not work better on our behalf. What is more, he 
actually postpones the sitting of the Reichstag until the last 
moment, simply in order that the anti-socialist battue may have 
time to peter out, the bourgeois to, become ashamed of his abject 
role of denouncer, and the parties of law and order to fall so 
thoroughly foul of each other as to lose all hope of sorting 
themselves out again. And while socialism is having its roots so 
lavishly manured at the base, it is supposedly being killed off by the 
pruning of a few of its topmost shoots in September! No, dear 
Bismarck, cacatum non est pictum.* 

Thanks for the newspaper. Three-quarters of all the hullaballoo 
is sheer fabrication on the part of the Londoner Journal (Dr Juch, 
an old good-for-nothing wastrel of the most disreputable kind, 
and Schweitzer, book-printer, who received a drubbing during the 
Crown Prince? demonstration but was too much of a coward to 
complain!); what is more, this paper is intent on being purchased 
by the reptile fund ** which, however, already possesses a paper 
here in the shape of the Hermann and takes the view non bis in 
idem“ The truth of the matter is that, in two associations over 
here, a few louts of German origin, likewise most disreputable, are 
kicking up a great row so that they may, apropos the business of 
the shootings in Berlin, cut a dash as representatives here of the 
workers of all countries. The seductive prospect of having a role 
to play has misled little Ehrhart of Mannheim into consorting with 
this gang. For the third time now in approximately four years they 
have proclaimed themselves the international central council of the 
proletariat... Should this shouting and scribbling go beyond a 
certain point, we shall be obliged to unmask these gentry in public 
so that people shan’t think we are at the back of this balderdash— 
something it is wholly in the interests of reaction to disseminate. 

The prospect of a trip to Germany this year would seem to be 
poor, even if politics were not becoming ever more obstructive. I 
shall be glad if I can get my wife to the nearest seaside town for a 
couple of weeks; hitherto it wasn’t even to be thought of. Last 
week she scarcely ever left her bed. The thing is exceedingly grave 
and might turn out very badly. Mrs Marx, too, is unwell with liver 
and stomach trouble, and has been told by the leading specialist 
here that, while there’s no getting rid of it altogether, it might be 
made bearable. We don’t yet know what spa he will prescribe. 

« Cacking isn’t painting. - Frederick IfI - © not to pay twice for the same thing - 
¢ See this volume, pp. 364-65. 

Marx is comparatively well for this time of year. His eldest 
daughter has had another baby, a boy.*” Congratulations from us 
all on your ‘No. 8’.*'° So if Mrs Marx isn’t sent to the Continent, 
you are unlikely to have any visitors from over here this year. 

Pumps is as lazy about writing as ever, if not more so. But in 
other respects the school in Manchester has done her a lot of 
good.*"! 

Kindest regards from us all to you, your wife* and the children. 

Your 
F. Engels