Manchester, 17 February 1863 

Dear Moor, 

You must excuse my long silence. I was in a very forlorn state, 
and it was high time I extricated myself from it. I tried Slavonic 
languages but the loneliness was unbearable. I had to force myself 
to seek distraction. That helped, and I am now my old self again. 

The Poles are really splendid fellows. If they manage to hold 
out until 15 March, there’ll be a general conflagration in Russia. 
At first, I was devilish afraid the business might go wrong. But 
now there would seem to be almost more chance of victory than of 
defeat. Nor should it be forgotten that the younger members of the 
Polish emigration have a military literature of their own in which 
ail matters are discussed with special reference to Polisi: condi- 

An allusion to K. Blind’s article ‘Deutschland und Polen’. 

tions, or that, in that literature, the idea of guerrilla warfare in 
Poland plays a leading role and is discussed in great detail.* 
Oddly enough, the only two leaders to have been named so far are 
Frankowski, a Warsaw Jew, and Langiewicz, a Prussian lieutenant. 
The Russian messieurs, in view of their ineptitude, are bound to 
suffer appallingly as a result of guerrilla warfare. 

Have you seen that Bakunin and Mierostawski are dubbing one 
another liars, and are at loggerheads over the Russo-Polish 
frontiers? I have ordered* the Kolokol, from which I shall 
presumably find out more about it.*' Incidentally, I shall have to 
do some hard swotting before I can work my way through it 
again. 

The Prussians are behaving infamously as always.” Monsieur 
Bismarck knows that it will be a matter of life and death for him if 
there’s revolution in Poland and Russia. Not that there’s any hurry 
over Prussian intervention. So long as it’s not necessary, the 
Russians won’t permit it, and when it does become necessary, the 
Prussians will take care not to go. 

If things go wrong in Poland, then we shall probably face a year 
or two of acute reaction, for in that case the [IpaBocaaBuuiii 
IJapp” would again become head of a Holy Alliance,*"’ which last 
would again cause Monsieur Bonaparte to be looked on as a great 
liberal and champion of nations by the stupid crapauds. Apropos, 
how funny it is to see the entire English bourgeoisie pitching into 
Boustrapa,'”’ now that Kinglake has made public a small, 
improperly digested and improperly heard fragment of the same 
tittle-tattle about him and his tot’ as we’ve been telling them for 
ten years without their believing us. Revelations about the court in 
Paris are again becoming quite the rage and, in the Guardian, 
Mr Tom Taylor * is portentously dishing up all that stuff re la Solms, 
Bonaparte, Wyse, the Jecker affair, etc., that we’ve long known far 
more about. There’s only one thing of interest, namely that Jecker 
had already supplied money for the Strasbourg or the Boulogne 
conspiracy—which, Taylor doesn’t know. This, then, accounts for 
the connection. 

Things don’t look too good in Yankeeland. Indeed, by a stroke of 
irony not uncommon in world history, the Democrats have, in the 
eyes of the philistines, now become the warparty while the 

a See this volume, p. 454.-5 Orthodox ‘Tsar - © French _ philistines - 
4 A. W. Kinglake’s speech in the House of Commons on 12 July 1860, The Times, 
No. 23671, 13 July 1860 (see this volume, pp. 173-74). - © John Eduard Taylor 

bankrupt poetaster Ch. Mackay is once more thoroughly discred- 
ited. I also hear from private sources in New York that the 
North is continuing to arm at a quite unprecedented rate. But, on 
the other hand, signs of: moral prostration are daily more in 
evidence and the inability to win grows daily greater. Where is the 
party whose victory and avénement* would be synonymous with 
prosecuting the war 4 outrance? and with every available means? 
The people have been cheated, more’s the pity, and it’s lucky that 
peace is a physical impossibility or they’d have concluded it long 
since, if only so that they could again devote themselves to the 
ALMIGHTY DOLLAR. 

A Confederate major who took part in the fighting at 
Richmond** as a member of Lee’s staff, recently told me that, 
according to documents which Lee himself showed him, the reseis 
had no fewer than 40,000 stragglers at the end of this battle! In 
particular, he spoke with great respect of the Français western 
regiments, but is in other ways a jackass.