ENGELS TO MARX?” 

Manchester, 23 May 1851 

Dear Marx, 

I saw with pleasure in the papers that the Neue Rhetnische 
Zeitung was represented by you in person also at Soyer’s universal 
press symposium. I hope you enjoyed the homards’ a la 
Washington and the champagne frappé But I am stil] in the dark 
about how M. Soyer found your address. 

4G, Mazzini, ‘Au Rédacteur’, Journal des Débats politiques et littéraires, 18 May 
1851. - > Edgar Marx - © Jobster - 4 iced champagne 

Do you know what has become of that drunkard Laroche of 
Great Windmill Street**'? He has, according to German news- 
paper reports, been caught and sentenced in Berlin to death by 
hanging. It transpires that this self-styled former Prussian 
lieutenant of hussars is none other than the shoemaker August 
Friedrich Gottlieb Lehmann of Triebel near Sorau* in Upper 
Silesian Wasserpolackei,*** militiaman of the Ist levy, who, on 23 
March 1842, had been sentenced to be stripped of military 
honours and to 16 months’ service in a penal detachment for 
desertion in peacetime, forgery and unauthorised contraction of 
debts. Yet another ray of light shed on our German revolutionary 
heroes. 

That those great warriors, Willich, Schimmelpfennig and Sigel, 
should be increasingly consorting with each other is all to the 
good. This pack of soldiery has an unbelievably sordid esprit de 
corps. They hate each other 4@ mort” and, like schoolboys, begrudge 
each other the most paltry marks of distinction, but they are all 
united against the ‘civilians’. Punctilious, as in the first French 
armies of 1792/93, but scaled down to a dwarfish caricature. They 
all regard the Windmill Street Society as a battalion, ready, willing 
and eager to march over here; it’s the only one left, since the ones 
in Switzerland were broken up and deported. Small wonder that 
they all cleave to this noble corps. It’s a very good thing that word 
of this officers’ corps spirit should already have reached us from 
the old barracks and the officers’ mess and that we should already 
see how this cliquishness prevails as much among the émigré 
officer material as in the ‘glorious army’.*”> In due course we shall 
show these gentry what ‘civilian’ really signifies. All of this goes to 
show that the very best thing for me to do is to go on 
with my military studies so that at least one of the ‘civilians’ is a 
match for them in theoretical matters. At any rate I want to reach 
a point where jackasses such as these can’t talk me down. I’m 
delighted, by the way, to hear that they were cheated of 2,000 
talers. The news from Cologne is very pleasing, but the people 
there should be on their guard. 

Where begging is concerned that précious Johanna‘ really 
surpasses anything that has ever been known before. Heinzen is 
quite eclipsed; he has never attained to the same degree of 
effrontery as this woman who, moreover, is said to be as ugly as 
sin. 

a4 Polish name: Zary - > like death - ¢ Johanna Kinkel (Gottfried Kinkel’s wife) 

It is clear even from the English press that Girardin doesn’t 
support Cavaignac. But the very fact that he remarked on the 
brightness of Cavaignac’s prospects is enough to characterise the 
situation. You mentioned the possibility that the majority* might 
conclude an agreement with Bonaparte and endeavour to carry 
out an illegal revision; if they do so, I think it will go awry. 
They'll never succeed so long as it’s opposed by Thiers, 
Changarnier and the Débats and their respective adherents. It 
would be too fine an opportunity for Cavaignac; and in that case 
he could, I believe, count on the army. 

If there’s a fracas next year, Germany will be in the devil of a 
position.”° France, Italy and Poland all have an interest in her 
dismemberment. As you'll have seen, Mazzini has even promised 
the Czechs rehabilitation. Apart from Hungary, Germany would 
have only one possible ally, Russia—provided that a peasants’ 
revolution had taken place there. Otherwise we shall have a guerre 
&@ mort with our noble friends from all points of the compass, and 
it’s very questionable how the business wil] end. 

The more I think about it, the more obvious it becomes to me 
that the Poles are une nation foutue’ who can only continue to serve 
a purpose until such time as Russia herself becomes caught up 
into the agrarian revolution. From that moment Poland will have 
absolutely no raison détre any more. The Poles’ sole contribution 
to history has been to indulge in foolish pranks at once valiant and 
provocative. Nor can a single moment be cited when Poland, even 
if only by comparison with Russia, has successfully represented 
progress or done anything of historical significance. Russia, on the 
other hand, is truly progressive by comparison with the East. 
Russian rule, for all its infamy, all its Slavic dirtiness, is civilising 
for the Black and Caspian Seas and Central Asia, for the Bashkirs 
and Tatars; and Russia has absorbed far more cultural elements, 
and especially industrial elements than Poland, which by nature is 
chivalrously indolent. The very fact that the Russian aristocracy, 
from the Tsar and Prince Demidov down to the most louse- 
ridden Boyar, 14th class, who’s merely blagorodno, well-born, 
manufactures, haggles, cheats, lays itself open to corruption, 
engages in all manner of business, Christian and Jewish,—that is 
in itself an advantage. Poland has never been able to naturalise 
foreign elements—the Germans in the cities are and will remain 
Germans. In Russia, every second-generation Russo-German is a 

athe majority in the Legislative Assembly - > Journal des Débats politique et 
littéraires - © war to the death - 4 a finished nation - ¢ Nicholas I 

living example of that country’s ability to Russify Germans and 
Jews. There, even the Jews acquire Slav cheekbones. 

Napoleon’s wars of 1807 and 1812 provide striking examples of 
Poland’s ‘immortality’. The only immortal thing about the Poles 
was their aimless quarrelling. Moreover, the greater part of 
Poland, what is known as West Russia, i.e. Byelostok, Grodno, 
Vilna, Smolensk, Minsk, Mogilev, Volhynia and Podolia, has, with 
minor exceptions, quietly allowed itself to be ruled by Russia since 
1772*’; save for a few scattered members of the bourgeoisie and 
the nobility, ils «ont pas bougé.* A quarter of all Poles speak 
Lithuanian, one quarter Ruthenian, a small portion semi-Rus- 
sian, while a good third of the Polish element proper is Ger- 
manised. 

Fortunately, in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, we assumed no 
positive obligations towards the Poles, save the unavoidable one of 
restoration combined with a surrasie frontier—and even that only 
on the condition of there being an agrarian revolution. ’m 
convinced that such a revolution will sooner be fully effected 
in Russia than in Poland, because of the national character and 
because of Russia’s more developed bourgeois elements. What are 
Warsaw and Cracow as compared with Petersburg, Moscow, 
Odessa, etc., etc.! 

Conclusion: To take as much as possible away from the Poles in 
the West, to man their fortresses, especially Posen, with Germans 
on the pretext of defence, to Jet them stew in their own juice, send 
them into battle, gobble bare their land, fob them off with 
promises of Riga and Odessa and, should it be possible to get the 
Russians moving, to ally oneself with the latter and compel the 
Poles to give way. Every inch of the frontier between Memel” 
and Cracow we cede to the Poles will, militarily speaking, be 
utterly ruinous to this already wretchedly weak frontier, and 
will leave exposed the whole of the Baltic coast as far as 
Stettin.© 

Besides, I am convinced that, come the next fracas, the entire 
Polish insurrection will be confined to Poseners and Galician 
nobility together with a few who have come over from the 
Kingdom, this having been bled so white that it’s capable of 
nothing more, and that the pretensions of these knights, unless 
supported by French, Italians and Scandinavians, etc., and 
bolstered up by rumpuses on the part of the Czechs, will founder 
on the wretchedness of their performance. A nation which can 

a they didn’t stir - > Lithuanian name: Klaipeda - ¢ Polish name: Szczecin 

muster 20,000 to 30,000 men at most, is not entitled to a voice. 
And Poland certainly could not muster very much more. 

Give my regards to Freiligrath when you see him, and also to 
your family, not forgetting Citizen Musch.* I shall be coming to 
London about a week later than I thought, the thing being 
dependent on a host of trifling matters.*”* 

Apropos, not a word yet from Cologne. Have you written? 
Unless I get the letter soon, it will be no good to me.” I don’t know 
why Daniels shouldn’t oblige me. Couldn’t you write again? 
Daniels could dash off a line or two and let me have it by return. 
Otherwise I might find myself in the deuce of a predicament. 

Your 
F. E.