[Ventnor,] 15 January 1882 

Dear Frep, 

Best THANKS FOR THE £ 20. 

I have resolved to leave tomorrow as the weather is getting pro- 
gressively ‘colder’, which does my swollen cheek no good. So I shall 
lose only 2 days, and this will also save Tussy the double journey. 

Though repeatedly warned, our people in Paris have got them- 
selves into a nice mess* (serves Lafargue and Guesde right); however, 
since they possess two papers,’ they may, with a little ingenuity, 
nevertheless gain command of the field. 

I regard it as a major victory, not only in Germany itself but vis- 
a-vis the outside world Generally, that Bismarck should admit in the 
Reichstag that the German workers have to some extent ‘given the 
thumbs down’ to his state socialism.?°’ London’s rascally bourgeois 
press always sought to disseminate the opposite. 

I have received an extraordinarily kind letter from old Frankel 
from the ‘state prison’, ditto a letter from Wréblewski who was évidem- 
ment‘ writing on behalf of his Polish party in Geneva ?°°; but in his 
haste he forgot to append not only the party’s name but also his own. 

If, as Joffrin relates in his factum in the Prolétaire,* he once staged a 
pro-Guesde demonstration in London against the ‘International’ there, it 
was at all events such a platonic demonstration that no one knew 
anything about it apart from Joffrin himself and perhaps a few of his 
closest accomplices, i.e. it was carried out entirely in ‘private’. 

Salut. 

Your 
Moor