Manchester, 7 August 1851 

Dear Weydemeyer, 

Many thanks for your information. If you can get anything 
further out of Hoffstetter, I would be much obliged to you. I 
should, by the way, have thought that you might still remember 
from earlier days the titles of a few manuals and other military 
text-books; what I need particularly is precisely the utterly 
commonplace and ordinary stuff required for the ensign’s and 
lieutenant’s examination, and which for that reason is generally 
assumed to be common knowledge. I had already acquired a 
Decker in Switzerland, in a bad French translation and without 
plans? but Marx has mislaid it, and will hardly be able to find it 
again. I will get hold of the atlas myself, but must also have a map 
of Hungary. I see that the Austrian General Staff has published 
several works on the subject; tell me whether your map is of this 
kind and how much it costs; at the very worst, it’s bound to be 
more serviceable than the large Stieler. As regards Baden and the 
Rhine frontier between Baden and Switzerland, I salvaged 
sufficient maps from the campaign. I shall now find out about 
prices, etc., from Weerth, who is back in Hamburg, and then see 
what to buy. But as I said, any further information you can obtain 
for me will be most welcome. 

It is bad that you should be going to America, and yet I 
honestly don’t know what other advice I should give you if you 
can’t find anything in Switzerland. There’s nothing much doing in 
London, and Lupus still hasn’t found anything here. He’s looking 
round for a position, and I am trying to obtain one for him here, 
but so far without success. As regards music, the competition here 
is enormous. Aprés tout, looked at from England and particularly 
from here, New York does not seem so very far away, when you 
see steamers regularly making the passage, which begins on a 
Wednesday and ends on the Saturday of the following week, and 
seldom taking the full 10 days. In New York you will also find 
little red Becker; he was recently in the dispatch department of 
the Arbeiterzettung, but whether he is still there I don’t know, since 
I have not heard from him for a long time. His last address was 
24 North William Street, upstairs, but should you not be able to 
discover his present one, you can certainly find out where he is 
from Liévre, Shakespeare Hotel, or at the Staatszeitung. In New 
York, by the way, there’s a great deal to be done, and a proper 
representative of our party, who has also had a_ theoretical 
training, is badly needed there. You'll find enough material there, 
your greatest obstacle, however, being the fact that reliable 
Germans, those who are worth anything, readily become 
Americanised and give up all idea of returning; and then there 
are the special American circumstances to be considered—the ease 
with which the surplus population can drain off into the country, 
the necessarily rapid, indeed ever more rapid, increase in the 
country’s prosperity—which cause them to regard bourgeois 
conditions as the beau idéal, etc. Such of the Germans there as are 

minded to return are mostly good-for-nothing individuals, exploi- 
ters of revolution—da la Metternich or Heinzen—, who are the 
more pitiful the more subordinate they are. You will, incidentally, 
find the fatherland’s imperial rabble in New York. That you'll 
be able to support yourself there, I have no doubt—besides New 
York, the only place that is at all tolerable is St Louis; Philadelphia 
and Boston are ghastly holes. 

If you could win the paper over, that would be splendid. 
Otherwise, make sure that you approach the New-Yorker Staats- 
zeitung, which is very favourable to us and whose European 
reports were constantly under our supervision. 

The best thing would be for correspondence from there to go 
through me, I can then get the postage paid by the firm. 

I hear very little about the barracks now, save that Willich has 
quarrelled with that crew and no longer lives in barracks. The 
nucleus of the army of the future has been disbanded, so Marx 
informs me, and Willich is without a Besangon. Quelle horreur! 
This Willich, by the way, is not merely a fool but an infinitely 
perfidious, malicious fellow, whose wickedness—serving as tool for 
the most colossally and unimaginably puffed-up vanity and 
self-adulation—knows absolutely no bounds. Never have I seen a 
creature who is so consummate a liar. I can assure you that I have 
literally never heard a true word fall from his lips. You can hardly 
conceive the figure cut by this fellow as a result of the idée fixe 
that, thanks to his genius as soldier, politician and organiser of 
societies, he is destined to lead the revolution to victory and 
completion. This folly has, of course, come upon him only by 
degrees. While considering him capable of any dirty trick, no 
matter how base, I do not, by the way, believe him guilty of actual 
betrayal on this occasion. The Hamburg affair has resolved itself 
in a different fashion; Bruhn, the only agent Willich and Schapper 
have there, is not the traitor. Haupt is said to have blabbed, but 
this I cannot believe. 

We, naturally, leave the whole crew to their own devices—their 
activity being, of course, confined to rodomontade, the forging of 
crazy schemes, and abuse of ourselves—and leaves us indifferent. 
We have no need to keep them under observation, this being done 
for us by the Prussian police. Not a word is spoken in Scharttner’s 
pub, where they meet, that isn’t reported. 

Anyhow, write to me again before you leave and give me the 
name of the vessel on which you are sailing—I can see from the 
papers here when it is due in New York. Once in New York, let us 
have your address straight away.— Marx’s is 28 Dean Street, Soho 
Square, London. 

All my regards, 

Your 
F. Engels 

Have you heard anything of Dronke? He’s stuck in Geneva; 
Schuster will have given you his address.