[Draft] 
[London,] 11 March 1881 

122 Regent’s Park Road, N. W. 

Dear Mr Kaufmann, 

In reply to your esteemed note of the 9th inst. I regret that I am 
unable to fall in with your wishes regarding the guarantee. My expe- 
riences with guarantees have been such that I have resolved once and 
for all to advance the money straight away myself, if I can, rather 
than give a guarantee. However the money is not available; if I had it 
and could do without it, I should regard it as my prime duty to hand 
it over to the party in Germany to whom we now owe every penny we 
can spare. ?* 

* Here Engels deleted the following passage: “There is, however, another reason. Over 
the past 10 years I have seen all too often how rapid is the turnover here of the people 
who go to make up the local German working men’s associations and, such being the 
case, it might well come about that the Society adopted a line quite different from its 
present one before my guarantee expired and that in the last resort I was standing gua- 
rantee for Mr Most, which surely cannot be asked of me.’ 

Trusting that you will find elsewhere the means of obtaining the 
funds you need, 

I remain, 
Yours very truly