[Draft] 

Cologne, 3 March [1849] 

To Colonel Engels, Deputy Commandant 
Sir, 
The day before yesterday two non-commissioned officers‘ of the 

8th Company, 16th Infantry Regiment, came to my rooms to 
speak to me privately. I had left for Dusseldorf. They were 

a W. A. Geiger - > capable of anything - © Dust and Hover 

therefore turned away. Yesterday afternoon two of these gentle- 
men again presented themselves and demanded a private inter- 
view. 

I had them shown into a room where I joined them almost 
immediately. I invited the gentlemen to sit down and asked them 
what they wanted. They told me they wanted to know the name of 
the writer of the article (No. 233 of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung of 
28 February) against Captain von Uttenhoven.”” IJ replied to these 
gentlemen, 1) that the article in question had nothing to do with 
me since it had appeared below the line and was therefore an 
advertisement; 2) that they were at liberty to insert a refutation 
gratis; 3) that they were at liberty to sue the paper. Upon the 
gentlemen’s remarking that the whole of the 8th Company felt 
themselves to be insulted by the advertisement, I returned that 
nothing but the signatures of all the members of the 8th Company 
would convince me of the accuracy of that statement, which in any 
case was irrelevant. 

The non-commissioned officers thereupon declared that if I 
failed to name, to ‘deliver up’ the ‘man’, they would ‘no longer be 
able to restrain their men’, and ‘evil would result’. 

I told the gentlemen that little or nothing was to be achieved by 
trying to threaten or intimidate me. They then withdrew 
muttering under their breath. 

Relaxation of discipline must have gone very far and all sense of 
law and order must have ceased if, like a robber band, a Company 
can send delegates to an individual citizen and attempt with 
threats to extort this or that confession from him. In particular, I 
fail to understand the meaning of the sentence: ‘We can no longer 
restrain our men’. 

Are these ‘men’, perhaps, to exercise jurisdiction on their own 
initiative, do these ‘men’ have other than legal resources at their 
command? 

I must beg you, Sir, to institute an inquiry into this incident and 
to give me an explanation for this singular presumption. I would 
be sorry to be obliged to have recourse to publicity.