in Engelskirchen

London, 9 Jan. 77

Dear Hermann,

Your letter with draft £300 duly arrived, which after dispatch I credit to your account. Best thanks for it, as also for the current account, which I shall look over. That you slightly increased the sum in your draft makes no matter. I received it Saturday evening when I had visitors here, and on account of the many visits and parties rampant at this season I only get today to acknowledging receipt, which I hope you will excuse.

That Hermann and Moritz¹ are at university, I did not know at all. It will do them no harm at all to study a few years, and if they then want to go into business, their knowledge will be all the more useful to them; the last twenty years have made a thorough end of the old commercial superstition that what belongs to trade above all is three years copying-book, a good handwriting, the worst possible German, and a striking lack of knowledge. And if they want to begin something else, the world also stands open to them.

The Russians can be in a dreadfully bad way. It was always my view that the introduction of universal military service would do for the Russian army. But that it went so quickly and so brilliantly, I had not expected. Everything is collapsing, discipline and administration, officers and soldiers, there is a lack of everything, far more even than in your famous mobilisation of 1852, for theft in Russia is quite grandiose. The more magazines and supplies for the mobilisation, the less there is in them, since all that is mere pretexts for stealing. At the same time, the Turks have never been in such good condition as now and already have more troops in Bulgaria than the Russians, with their four army corps (144,000 men on paper), have been able to throw in. And among these four army corps are ranked all the reserves raised in Poland, who will cross over at the first opportunity. The Romanian army is only there to be taken prisoner, and the Serbian peasant militias can no longer be got together by anyone so easily, and whatever can be got together has also had enough of it already.

I am being called to eat, and it is half-past five – post time. Hearty greetings to all from
Your

Friedrich

¹ Hermann Friedrich and Rudolf Moritz Engels