MARX TO AUGUSTE VERMOREL” 

London, 27 August 1867 
1 Modena Villas, Maitland Park, 
Haverstock Hill 
Citizen, 
Two things astonish me in your newspaper,’ for whose 
character, courage, good will and talent I have respect. 

* Le Courrier francais 

1. You are turning your paper into an echo for Russian lies 
(and Greek, the Greeks having been taken in by the Russians) 
about the so-called revolution in Crete.*” May I be permitted to 
send you an English extract on the true state of affairs in Candia.* 

2. You reproduced the canards (of Russian origin) concerning 
the initiative North America is to take against the Turks. You 
ought to know that the President of the United States does not 
have the power to declare war. The Senate alone can decide. If 
President Johnson, who is a dirty tool of the slaveholders, although you 
are so naive as to make him out to be a second Washington,” seeks to 
win a little popularity by entangling foreign-policy affairs and sy 
SWAGGERING ABROAD, the Yankees are neither children nor French. The 
mere fact that he has taken the initiative amid all this tentative 
exploration suffices to nullify any serious effect it may have. 

You must excuse my taking the liberty of writing to you thus. 
We are both pursuing the same aim, the emancipation of the 
proletariat. This entitles us to be frank with one another. 

I would ask you not to publish these lines. I am addressing them 
to you privately and as a friend. 

Greetings and fraternity, 

Karl Marx 

Member of the General Council 
of the International Working 
Men’s Association 

I am most astonished at your plaudits for the Peace League.*”! It 
is no less (I refer to the Peace Congress) than cowardice in action. 
One must either protest in Berlin and Paris, or else—if one is too 
cowardly to do that—at least not deceive the public with 
ambiguous, ineffectual and declamatory pronouncements.“