London, 7 October 1876 
41 Maitland Park Road, N. W. 

Dear Lisrary,? 

According to a letter you wrote to Engels, you told the Congress 
that Engels was going to deal with Dühring. Instead, much to his 
displeasure, he found—and showed me immediately on my arrival 
from Karlsbad ‘’’—a report in the Volksstaat according to which 
you had said that I (something I would never dream of doing) was 
going to take issue with Mr Dühring.™! 

Resolve for me, O Oerindur, this dichotomy of nature! 

Engels is busy with his work on Dihring.“ It entails a 
considerable sacrifice on his part, as he had to break off an 
incomparably more important piece of work* to that end. 

The fact that your Congress proffered a fraternal hand to 
Guillaume and Co., is, given the form it took, relatively 
innocuous.'”? However, any real co-operation with these people, who 

a (P. L. Lavrov,] ‘Pycckie nepes» 104KHO-CAaBAHCKHM Boripocomy’, Bnepeds!, No. 42, 
1 October 1876. - > jocular name for Wilhelm Liebknecht - ¢ from Adolf Miiliner’s 
drama Die Schuld, Act II, Scene 5-4 Anti-Dühring- ¢ Dialectics of Nature 

have systematically worked to bring about the dissolution of the 
International, is to be avoided under all circumstances. The very few 
working men in the Jura, Italy and Spain whom they are still 
leading by the nose, may for aught I know be upright men. They 
themselves are incorrigible intriguers who, now that they have 
discovered their nullity outside the International, would like to 
worm their way in again through the back door so that they may 
resume their previous role.'™ 

I had already been in communication with Bracke about the 
translation into German of Lissagaray’s book betore your propo- 
sal* reached me; I have concluded an agreement with Bracke. '** 

It is about time the Volksstaat, or rather, I should now say, the 
Vorwarts,'°° put a finger at last on the real source of the rot in dealing 
with the oriental question." In one of its most recent 
numbers the Kélnische Zeitung says that one might echo the words 
of a famous diplomat: ‘Il n’y a plus d’Europe!’”; once upon a time it 
was possible to speak of other powers, now the stage is held by 
only one power—Russia! 

But why is this? The German papers, in so far as they aren’t 
dancing to Russia’s tune, now heap reproaches on Disraeli, now 
accuse Andrassy of weak-minded vacillation. 

Yet the nub of the matter is— Bismarck’s policy. He embarked on 
it after Sedan!’ during the Franco-Prussian War. At this moment 
he is hamstringing Austria (and even England, relatively speaking) 
by his official flirtation with Russia; indeed, he is hamstringing the 
entire Continent. The passage (according to the latest advices) of 
armed Russian troops through the Romanian provinces (under the 
auspices of a Hohenzollern‘) has Jed everyone in Paris and 
London to believe in the existence of an offensive and defensive 
alliance between Russia and Prussia. In fact, by his policy of 
conquest in France, Bismarck has disarmed Germany vis-a-vis 
Russia and condemned her to the shameful role she is playing at 
this moment, et qui est véritablement ‘la honte de l’Europe’s 

Here in England a turning-point has been reached; the curtain 
is about to fall on the sentimental farce staged by the Whigs in 
their haste to reconquer the LoAvEs AND FISHES OF office and for which 
an appropriate chorus has been provided from among the 
workers—such canaille as Mottershead, Hales et tutti quanti‘— 
under the influence of bourgeois Five pounp notes; Gladstone has 

4 See this volume, pp. 149-52. - > There is no longer a Europe! - © Carol I - 4 and 
which is truly ‘the shame of Europe’ (an allusion to E. de Girardin’s pamphlet La Honte 
de l'Europe) - © and whoever else there may be 

sounded the retreat, ditto Lord Russell, and now only the brazen 
Bob Lowe (the Australian ex-demagogue, the creature who, 
during the recent reform movement,’”’ followed the example of 
Edmund Burke and branded the working class a swinisH MULTITUDE) 
is making a fool of himself with his talk of the autocrat oF ALL THE 
Russias aS ‘THE ONLY FATHER OF THE OPPRESSED’. Amongst the London 
workers, it is precisely the most progressive and resolute who have 
staged a PROTEST MEETING against the Pan-Slavophiles. They realise 
that, each time the working class acts as chorus to the governing 
classes (to a Bright, Gladstone, etc.), it is perpetrating an infamy. 
Caeterum censeo* that it behoves you to write a LEADING ARTICLE 
revealing how sorry a figure is cut by the German-Prussian, 
ostensibly anti-Russian, bourgeois press which, while at most 
presuming to criticise the ministers of other countries, maintains a 
most devout silence in regard to its own Bismarck. 
With warmest regards to your family. 

Your 
Moor 

Apropos. The rascal from Antwerp, whom Guillaume and Co., by 
their intrigues among the unwitting Dutch workers, foisted upon 
the Hague Congress*° as its provisional president, one van den 
Abeele, has now himself been unmasked by his own people as an 
agent of the French government and has accordingly been thrown 
out of those sections of the International still eking out an 
existence in Belgium. This, after another of the same clique, Mr 
Bastelica, had publicly disclosed in Strasbourg that he was a 
Bonapartist agent!° 

(Note at the beginning of the letter] 

The Frankfurter Zeitung’s ‘unbaptized crusader’ is playing a 
thoroughly grotesque role in the oriental imbroglio.