London, 10 August 1878 
122 Regent’s Park Road, N. W. 

My dear Mr Lavrov, 

I hope you have received the copy of my anti-Dühring*”’ which 
I sent off to you yesterday. 1 should have sent it earlier had I 
known your present address. I wrote to Smirnov,” 4 Lower Charles 
St., and then to Lopatin,” 6 rue Linné, to ask for it, but neither 
has replied. Could you let me know where I should send Lopatin’s 
copy? We find his silence somewhat disturbing, for an earlier 
letter,° sent to him at the same address, was forwarded to him to 
Switzerland where, or so he wrote and told me, he intended to 
stay only until the month of June; and since then Hauaao reports 
his having been arrested in Russia*’? Although the news is not 
without chronological snags, his silence makes us anxious. 

As you will have seen, the German Darwinians have, in response 
to Virchow’s appeal,*” come out unequivocally against socialism. 

4 Ida Pauli - > See this volume, pp. 312-13. -¢ Ibid., p. 307.-4 Nachalo (The 
Beginning) 

Haeckel, whose pamphlet I have just received, limits himself to 
speaking in general terms about the ‘crazy doctrines of socialism’,* 
but Mr Oscar Schmidt of Strasbourg is going to flatten us con 
amore” at the natural scientists’ conference’ in Kassel.*” It’s a 
waste of effort. If reaction in Germany gets the bit between its 
teeth, its first victims, after the socialists, will be the Darwinians. 
Anyway, whatever happens to them, I shall take it upon myself to 
reply to these gentlemen.*™ And in any case, we have every reason 
to be satisfied with that event as, indeed, with events in general. 
Mr Bismarck who, for 7 years, has been working for us as if he 
was in our pay, now appears incapable of moderating his offers to 
speed up the advent of socialism. Aprés moi le déluge*’* does not 
suffice him; he insists upon having that deluge in his own 
lifetime—let his will be done. I am only afraid that he will do his 
work too well and that the deluge will arrive before its appointed 
time. 

Yours sincerely, 

F. Engels