ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE?” 

AT LE PERREUX 

London, 1 April (St. Bismarck’s Day)? 1889 

My dear Lafargue, 

If this business of the congress has done nothing else, it has at least 
taught me a capital lesson in patience, a virtue in which I can hardly be 
said to excel. Barely do we succeed in eliminating one difficulty than you 
conjure up another, and wax wroth about nothing at all. I have again 
questioned Bernstein, in whose word I have complete faith, and he has 
again assured me that no resolution of any kind was taken clandestinely 
in your absence. It is ridiculous to suppose that they were trying to hide 
something from you. If you did happen to be absent, Bonnier was there 
and could, besides, understand everything that was said in German. And 
unless I hear anything to the contrary, I must suppose he was sufficiently 
in the know to pass the information on to you; if not, what the devil was 
he doing there? Especially since I have drawn your attention on more 
than one occasion to the fact that Bonnier was, or ought to have been, 
exceptionally well-posted, and you have never replied to, let alone 
contradicted, this. 

And what will be the result of this squabbling with the Germans, 
unless to preclude any sort of congress and to enable Messrs Brousse & 
Co. to flaunt their victory before the eyes of all the world and his wife. 

That the Germans should have no desire to expose themselves to a 
bout of fistcuffs with Possibilists, aided and abetted as these would be by 
the police, nor to have their heads broken, as Prussians and 
Bismarckians, by the Paris riff-raff—valiant as in all big cities when the 
odds are ten to one—I can readily understand. We know from our expe- 
rience in Lassallean days how unprofitable hand-to-hand fighting with a 
rival party can be when that party is in alliance with government and 
police?*°—and that was on our home ground. You certainly cannot hold 
it against them if they hesitate to engage in a similar struggle on ground 
where the mere cry of Prussian, of Bismarck’s agent, would be enough 
to rouse against them an ignorant mob, eager to prove its patriotism at 
small cost to itself. And although it is my personal belief that the impact 
of the congress would be far greater in July than at any other time, I have 

no right to tell Liebknecht or Bebel that they would not be exposed to 
such risks, were they to fall in with your plan. 

So you can see that in no circumstances is your July congress feasible. 
The more you insist, the less you will get. You have the majority against 
you and, if you wish to co-operate with it, you will have to submit. 
Demand everything and you get nothing, grasp all, lose all. You should 
remember that, though the Germans, the Dutch and the Danes can get 
along very well without a congress, you cannot. For you, the congress is 
essential if you are not to disappear for years from the international 
scene. 

If only you had a tiny little paper, as a token of your existence! The 
most puny party in other countries has its weekly, and you have nothing 
with which to make your presence felt or to keep you in regular touch 
with the rest. For you, it was either a daily or nothing at all. Are you 
going to make the same mistake over the congress?—Either all or noth- 
ing? All right, then, it’ll be nothing, and no one will ever allude to you 
again and, six months from now, Boulanger will do the rest and snuff 
you out, you and the Possibilists as well. 

To the best of my knowledge, Antoine* never did anything in the 
Reichstag other than protest. From his own point of view he could do 
nothing else. 

The Radicals are mad. It is the height of stupidity to try and destroy 
Boulanger by means of a lawsuit*?! and to suppose that the tide of 
universal suffrage (foolish as this is) will be turned by a political verdict. 
You will get him all the same, the good Boulanger whom you crave, and 
the Socialists will be his first victims. For a First Consul has got to be 
impartial and, for every time he lets the blood of the Stock Exchange, he 
will place another curb on the proletariat, if only to even things out. If it 
weren't for war, this new development would be a prize joke, it would 
soon be over, and then there really would be something to laugh about. 

Yours ever, 
EE.