Karl Marx to Adolf Cluss
in Washington
London, 30 August 1852
(Excerpts)

The gentlemen have manoeuvred thus. They ignore their removal by the guarantors in their immediate surroundings, who see through them, and seek to wheedle the votes one by one, for which reason Schurz has also travelled to America. (He has the further purpose of setting up kindergartens there in the spirit of the Friends of Light.) They, who up to now have fished in vain for the unrestricted control of the funds that Reichenbach withholds from them, pretend that they are now willing to step down if their wishes are not granted. The point for them is, rather, to lay hands on it.

The point d’argent is this. The people have spent £200, which would hardly be ratified for them here. By this coup, by special authorisations from other guarantors, they think to wrest the money from Reichenbach and, above all, to cover the £200. Their trick went as follows. First, the documents of 11 and 12 August were sent to America and Switzerland behind the backs of the London guarantors. Then the papers were delivered to the latter, on the 26th, with the instruction that, if they do not reply by 1 September, their silence will be considered as consent. – What does Weitling say to the fact that the money is now to flow by roundabout means to the worthy Heinzen? The gentlemen have also taken care not to mention that the Revolutionary League here has failed miserably to establish itself, despite Kinkel’s foreword and Gögg’s pleading. Not a single man let himself be stirred. What they now call the Revolutionary League in London is the clearly circumscribed tail of 7 men behind Ruge, which formerly existed under the name of the Agitation Association. This League comprises the following gentlemen: Ruge, Gögg, Frank (Vienna), Ronge, Tausenau, Sigel (the other one); the tobacco-dealer Oswald and the domineering Dralle have joined in place of General Sigel and Fickler. – Dralle was denounced by Dulon himself, because he ran out on his little Bremen paper at the moment of danger.

Willich is going to the dogs completely. Schärtner has stopped his free board and shown him the door publicly. He now wants to go to America and hopes to be received in a friendly way by the Revolutionary League, to which he had indeed intended the £1,000 as a dowry. Schärtner had been carefully taken into Willich’s League Central Authority. Willich’s position in London has become utterly untenable; his sponging life is quite at an end. It does no harm if these plans and grand motives of the patriots become public. – In the Kinkel-Willich document you will find the fine phrase: the time for the pen is past, the time of the sword has come; this means, in plain German and in the higher sense: The time for ‘Fechten’ has come.

The revolutionary general Techow is leaving in a few days for Australia with Madame Schmidt (the wife of Stirner). He has been cohabiting with her here for some time. But now his fiancée is arriving here. Mrs Schmidt declares, when she learns of it, that she will stand back. But then another ‘bridegroom’ of his fiancée turns up, and the latter says she no longer wants Techow, because he lived with Mrs Schmidt, and will marry the other one. Nevertheless, he is staying in her house, and the bridegroom (the other one) a few miles from London. Poor Buridan Techow!

Madame Pulzky was frightfully bored. One of the American papers in which you mentioned her came across.

By the way. Szemere has sent his manuscript to Webb; but beforehand it was settled in writing that he must print it unchanged. I will solve the mystery of Szemere for you. The man is very miserly and therefore prefers to have his stuff printed by Webb rather than do it himself, which he could very well do.

[...] A few days ago Felix Pyat called together the Frenchmen who stick together with him for a réunion and presented them with a programme which is now to be printed. ‘God’ figures in it. One of those present protested against harbouring God in a revolutionary programme. Pyat, true to the principle of direct government, puts it to the vote. ‘God’ passes with a majority of 7 votes. L’être suprême est sauvé encore une fois. Formerly it was said, God forsakes not His own. Now it says, His own do not forsake God. One hand washes the other!