AT LE PERREUX 
London, 19 May 1891. 

My dear Lafargue, 

First of all I did not suggest what tactics you should adopt; I 
merely said the following: if} at your congresses, you, the Workers’ Party, 
decide in advance how you intend to celebrate 1 May zn Paris without 
regard for the convenience or the wishes of your allies the Blanquists, 
you must not be surprised if you find them deserting you.° If your 
hand was forced by the provincial gentry, the blame is theirs. In ei- 
ther case you have miscalculated the respective forces at work in Paris 
and you have been forced out of the committee created by yourselves. 
That’s not what you would call a victory and neither would I. 

It remains to be seen what becomes of-the Blanquists and, in par- 
ticular, the Allemanists,°? to whom you have given the opportunity of 
once again setting themselves up as the true representatives of the 
Paris proletariat and at the same time of acquiring 4 vEW LEASE OF LIFE. 
And you complain that the English are too slow for you, although 
they have forced our own Possibilists,? the Socrat Democra. 
tic Frperation 2° to exclude themselves from the great demonstra- 
tion, and you also say that over there it spread like wildfire. 

* John Burns-" Best regards from Louise. Your old friend -° See this volume, p. 189. 

Maybe, but it is Possibilist fire and will eventually flare up in your 
faces. 

There have been demonstrations in the provinces over here, but as 
I haven’t kept the newspapers, I haven’t got a list of them. 

If you seriously believe Reuters’ reports with their estimate of 
60,000 people in the Park, do you want us to do likewise with regard 
to the Havas reports in which your demonstration hardly figures at 
all? What would you say to that? There were at least 500,000 in Hyde 
Park. 

I see in the German papers that at Fourmies, when the command 
was given to open fire,?** the only soldiers to do so were those of the 
145th, whereas the detachment of the 84th remained with their arms 
at the order. And that is why neither the Government nor the Cham- 
ber will consent to an inquiry that would establish the fact officzally. 
If this is true, it is a good sign. The Prussian system requires that sol- 
diers be allotted to regiments garrisoned in the region from which the 
whole of the army corps draws its recruits. Accordingly in the event of 
mobilisation it is no longer possible, without creating enormous diffi- 
culties, to despatch Gascons to the north and Flemings, Walloons and 
natives of Picardy to the south. This is yet another danger of the sys- 
tem and one that will make itself felt earlier in France than in Ger- 
many. 

You are right to protest against the ultra-foolish follies attributed 
to you.?** That is the danger with countries possessing a revolution- 
ary past, inasmuch as any new region invaded by socialism is tempted 
to have its revolution within 24 hours. There is no need whatsoever to 
urge them on; on the contrary they should be reined back. All that 
the Walloons, in particular, comprehend is rioting and in this they 
are nearly always the losers. Consider the struggles of the Belgian 
miners ?#5; organisation nil or virtually nil, irrepressibly impatient, 
hence doomed to defeat. 

Clemenceau has had what he wanted: his day of brilliant opposi- 
tion,? a reminder of the good old times when he made and unmade 
ministries. On the morrow he remembered that he was now a nobody 
and that it was Constans who, after all, was the paragon in the eyes of 
the bourgeoisie. He ovr-rerrizs Ferry. 

Tussy and Aveling are in Dublin for a congress of the Gasworkers 
anp Generat Laspourers.”*’ Bernstein’s entire family is ill with influenza, 
Percy and Pumps are disporting themselves in the Isle of Wight, see- 
ing that Percy hasn’t yet very much to do because the price list he will 

192 Engels to Lafargue. 19 May 189] 

have to use is still at the printers. It is snowing here and when it isn’t 
snowing it’s raining and feels as chilly as November and we have had 
fires. For the past week our sasevexr has been in utter disorder as a re- 
sult of repairs to the praivs, which stink horribly; we shall have at least 
another week of it. Old Harney is in Richmond and very ill; he suffers 
from chronic bronchitis and is afraid, or so he tells me in his letter to- 
day, that he will get pleurisy on top of it. Weak as he is, that could be 
very serious at 75. 

Tomorrow [ shall at last be able to turn my attention to my Origin 
of the Family“ —if nothing crops up! 

After Cunninghame-Graham’s expulsion and with your Constans 
in a temper ugly enough to match that of any Pére Duchesne, what 
foreign socialist could feel safe in France ?? And supposing that, in 
retaliation against the Japanese attempt on the life of the Tsare- 
vitch 24° (who had committed improprieties and caused scuffles in 
a TEA-GARDEN, to wit a brothel, whereupon the police arrived) a num- 
ber of minor outrages or coups d’état were to be inflicted upon the 
Russians in France? 

Here comes another squall and it’s raining cats and dogs. Dinner in 
ten minutes. So I shall close this olla podrida” of an epistle or, as the 
Milanese have it, arlecchino. 

I believe you get the Vienna Arbeiter-Zeitung. This week it has a let- 
ter from Louise on the mreerinc in Hyde Park.‘ 

I spend my evenings studying Louise’s books on the physiology of 
birth and related matters. It’s really wonderful — since the process is 
such an excessively ugly one. I am discovering things of the utmost 
importance from the philosophical viewpoint. 

Give Laura a kiss from me. Regards from Louise. 

Yours ever, 

[QA: garble stripped 2026-06-23]
Herewith Ravé* and cheque for £20.