[Draft] 
[London, beginning of July 1892] 
Dear Citizen, 

I have received the Almanach de la Question Sociale for 1891 and 
*92, for which I send you my thanks. 

You hope to be able to number me amongst your contributors 
for 1893. However I see that, without my knowledge, you have 
already named me as a contributor for 1892.°?* If there is to be a 
contribution from me to the 1893 Almanach, it will, I fear, be an 
involuntary contribution as before. A month ago, when our friends 
in Austria asked me for an article for their yearbook,’ I had 
to tell them 

1. that I was unable to undertake any further work, whether large 
or small, until I had seen to the publication of Vol. III of Marx’s Ca- 
pital, which is now ten years overdue; 

2. that a contribution to this or that Socialist yearbook would, in 
the interests of impartiality, necessitate my contributing to most of 
the remainder and that accordingly my time would no longer be my 
own. 

True, I made an exception last year in the case of the French Al- 
manach du Parti Ouvrier.5?° But on that occasion it would have been 
dangerous to hold back. That was the time when at Kronstadt ?°° the 
official French republic kow-towed to the Tsar,” the hereditary lead- 
er of European reaction. War was imminent and in my view was 
prevented only by the famine in Russia. At that critical juncture it 
was up to me to do all in my power to remove any possibility of a mis- 

4 Osterreichischer Arbeiter-Kalender-” Alexander ITI 

understanding between French and German working men.* I took 
advantage of the occasion and spoke up; that is all.