MARX TO PAUL AND LAURA LAFARGUE” 

{London,] 28 July 1870 
My dear children, 

You must excuse the long delay of my answer. You know I 
cannot stand heat. It weighs down my energies. On the other 
hand, I was overwhelmed with business, the German ‘friends’ 
firing at me a mitrailleuse of letters which, under present 
circumstances, I could not decline answering at once. 

You want of course to hear something of the war. So much is 
sure that L. Bonaparte has already missed his first opportunity. 
You understand that his first plan was to take the Prussians 
unawares and get the better of them by surprise. It is, in point of 
fact, much easier to get the French army—a mere soldiers’ army 
till now—ready than the Prussian one which consists largely of the 
civilian element forming the Landwehr.’ Hence, if Bonaparte, as 
he at first intended, had made a dash even with half-collected 
forces, he might have succeeded to surprise the fortress of 
Mayence, to push simultaneously forward in the direction of 
Würzburg, thus to separate Northern from Southern Germany, 
and so throw consternation amidst the camp of his adversaries. 
However, he has allowed this opportunity to slip. He saw 
unmistakable signs of the national character of the war in 
Germany and was stunned by the unanimous, quick, immediate 
adhesion of Southern Germany to Prussia. His habitude of 
hesitation, so much adapted to his old trade of conspirator 

planning coup d’état and plebiscites, got the upper hand, but this 
method will not do for war, which demands quick and unwavering 
resolution. He let his first plan slip and resolved to collect his full 
forces. Thus he lost his advantage of a first start, of surprise, while 
the Prussians have gained all the time necessary for mobilising 
their forces. Hence you may say that Bonaparte has already lost 
his first campaign.?’ 

Whatever may now be the first incidents of the war, it will 
become extremely serious. Even a first great French victory would 
decide nothing, because the French army will now find on its way 
three great fortresses, Mayence, Coblenz, and Cologne, ready for a 
protracted defence. In the long run, Prussia has greater military 
forces to her disposal than Bonaparte. It may even be that on one 
side or the other she will be able to cross the French frontier and 
make ‘le sol sacré de la patrie*—according to the chauvinists of the 
Corps Législatif this sol sacré is situated only on the French side of 
the Rhine—the theatre of war! 

Both nations remind me of the anecdote of the two Russian 
noblemen accompanied by two Jews, their serfs. Nobleman A 
strikes the Jew of Nobleman B, and B answers: ‘Schlagst Du 
meinen Jud, schlag ich deinen Jud.’> So both nations seem 
reconciled to their despots by being allowed, each of them, to strike 
at the despot of the other nation. 

In Germany the war is considered as a national war, because it is a 
war of defence. The middle class (not to speak of the Krautjunker- 
tum‘) overdoes itself in manifestations of loyalty. One believes 
himself taken back to the times of 1812 sqq ‘für Gott, Kénig und 
Vaterland’* with the old donkey Arndt’s: ‘Was ist des Teutschen 
Vaterland’ ‘! 

The singing of the Marseillaise at the bidding of the man of 
December’ is of course a parody, like the whole history of the 
Second Empire. Still it shows that he feels that ‘Partant pour la 
Syrie’ would not do for the occasion. On the other hand, that old 
damned ass, Wilhelm ‘Annexander’, sings ‘Jesus meine Zuver- 
sicht’'*; flanked on the one side by ‘larron’ Bismarck and on the 
other, by the ‘policier’ Stieber! 

On both sides it is a disgusting exhibition. 

athe sacred soil of the mother country - > ‘If you strike my Jew, I'll strike 
yours.” - © the rural squires - 4 ‘for God, King and Fatherland’ - ¢ ‘The German’s 
Fatherland, What Is It?’, a line from E. M. Arndt’s poem ‘Des Teutschen Vaterland’, 
published in Lieder für Teutsche. - £ Napoleon III - 8 i.e. William I. A coinage of two 
words ‘annexation’ and ‘Alexander’ is an allusion to Alexander of Macedon. - 
h scoundrel 

Still there is this consolation, that the workmen protest in 
Germany as in France. In point of fact the war of classes in both 
countries is too far developed to allow any political war whatever 
to roll back for long time the wheel of history. I believe, on the 
contrary, that the present war will produce results not at all 
expected by the ‘officials’ on both sides. 

I enclose two cuts from Liebknecht’s Volksstaat. You will see that 
he and Bebel behaved exceedingly well in the Reichstag.” 

For my own part, I should like that both, Prussians and French, 
thrashed each other alternately, and that—-as I believe will be the 
case—the Germans got ultimately the better of it. I wish this, 
because the definite defeat of Bonaparte is likely to provoke 
Revolution in France, while the definite defeat of the Germans 
would only protract the present state of things for 20 years. 

The English upper classes are full of moral indignation against 
Bonaparte at whose feet they have fawned for 18 years. Then they 
wanted him as the saviour of their privileges, of rents and profits. 
At the same time, they know the man to be seated on a volcano 
the which unpleasant position forces him to trouble peace 
periodically, and makes him—beside his parvenuship—an un- 
pleasant bedfellow. Now they hope that to solid Prussia, protestant 
Prussia, Prussia backed by Russia, will fall the part of keeping 
down revolution in Europe. It would for them be a safer and 
more respectable policeman. 

As to the English workmen, they hate Bonaparte more than 
Bismarck, principally because he is the aggressor. At the same 
time they say: “The plague on both your houses’,* and if the 
English oligarchy, as it seems very inclined, should take part in the 
war against France, there will be a ‘tuck’ at London. For my own 
part, I do everything in my power, through the means of the 
International, to stimulate this ‘neutrality’ spirit and to baffle the 
‘paid’ (paid by the ‘respectables’) leaders of the English working 
class who strain every nerve to mislead them. 

I hope the measures as to the houses within the fortification 
rayon will not hurt you.” 

Thousand kisses to my sweet little Schnaps.° 

Yours devotedly, 
Old Nick‘