[Draft} 
London, 14 June 1872 

No newspapers received from him since 16 May, although The 
Eastern Post, etc., sent regularly. How come?* Might it be too much 
of a coincidence that at the same time (10 May) the Bulletin 
jurassien boasts of having in its possession private letters from me 
to friends in Italy ‘full of odious slanders’,”” etc., etc.? In any case, 
I have not written to anyone in Italy other than you, and it must 
be these letters of mine to you that Schwitzguébel’s paper is 
referring to. You owe me an explanation of that matter and I 
expect you to give it to me. I am amazed that you did not supply 
it as soon as this was published. 

My letters have nothing to fear from publication, but it is a 
question of honour for you to inform me whether they were sent 
to my enemies with your consent or not. If it was done with your 
consent, I can only come to one conclusion: that you have allowed 
yourself to be persuaded to join the Bakuninist secret society, the 
Alliance’? which, preaching to the profane—behind the mask of 
autonomy, anarchy and anti-authoritarianism—the breaking up of 
the International’s organisation, practises towards its initiates an 
absolute authoritarianism, with the aim of taking over the 
leadership of the Association. It is a society which treats the 
working masses as a flock of sheep, led by a few initiates whom 
they follow blindly, and which imitates, within the International, 
the role of the Jesuits in the Catholic Church. 

If my conjecture is correct, I must congratulate you on having 
permanently safeguarded your precious ‘autonomy’ by delivering 
it entirely into the hands of Pope Bakunin. But I cannot believe 
that you, an anarchist and anti-authoritarian of the first water, 
should have so far forsworn your dearest principles, still less that 
you could stoop to such depths towards myself, when I have 

a Thus far in German in the original, the rest is in Italian.