London, 5 February 1884 

Dear Bernstein, 

You can set your mind at rest about one thing: I could wish for no 
better translator than you yourself.! In attempting, in the first 
sheet, to give an accurate and precise rendering of the sense, you have 
paid rather too little attention to the syntax, voila tout. Moreover 
I wanted to incorporate Marx’s idiosyncratic syntax which is unfami- 
liar to you; hence the many emendations. 

If, having once put the sense into German, you go through the ms. 
again with an eye to readable syntax, at the same time bearing in 
mind that you should wherever possible avoid the wearisome syntax 
of the schoolroom which always puts the verb of the subordinate 
clause right at the end— and which was drummed into all of us—, 
you will have little difficulty and be perfectly capable of putting 
everything right yourself. 

* that’s all 

You would do best to send me the ms. by sections, each of them + 
a whole, 1, 1'/, or 2 printed sheets at a time. In which 
case I shall also supply the notes for it straight away. I should 
also like to see the proofs; many things look quite different 
in print. 

Please send me the article on Proudhon in the old Social- 
Demokrat.'°' I had overlooked it; the whole thing might have to go 
into the preface. You will get it back, of course. 

As regards von der Mark and the Volkszeitung, | am entirely of 
your opinion.!?° When Marx died, Schewitsch falsified my telegram 
to Sorge and printed it as though it had been sent to the Volkszeitung. 
I protested.” He glossed over the falsification with the lie that the first 
word had been illegible— though he copied it correctly! while the 
other he had ‘considered necessary in the interests of the paper’! More- 
over he thought it ‘petty’ of me to have drawn his attention to it. 
Petty it certainly was not, magnanimous rather, considering the way 
those gentlemen took advantage of Marx’s death to draw attention to 
themselves and proclaim their semi-alliance with Most. However, 
Schewitsch is the last Russian socialist aristocrat; such men must al- 
ways ‘go further than anyone else’ and are accustomed to use the 
world at large as a means to serve their own ends. The article on to- 
lerance was downright silly.'°? Russians have set about one another 
con amore,° as have the Irish. 

I don’t know whether you get the Travailleur, etc.; I receive a few 
copies from time to time and shall send them to you. Also two Sozial- 
demokrats with scorings by Marx which might interest you. 

I shall keep Schorlemmer’s pound here then; will you debit me 
with this, in return credit Schorlemmer with his annual subscription, 
and pay the balance (inserting an announcement to this effect in the 
Sozialdemokrat) into the election fund.* Similarly, will you debit me 
with Tussy’s and my subscriptions, supposing that she doesn’t decide 
to send you To-Day in exchange. Finally, will you alter Tussy’s ad- 
dress and send items to 

Miss Marx, 
32 Great Coram St., London, W.C. 

As to what is to be done with the money for Marx’s memorial, I have 
absolutely no idea.© How much is there altogether? If you wish, 
2 more or less-° F. Engels, “To the Editors of the New Yorker Volkszeitung’ (18 April 

1883); see also this volume, pp. 13-14.-° Here: with a will.-* ‘Allgemeiner Wahl- 
fonds’, Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 9, 28 February 1884.-° See this volume, p. 17. 

I shall write an article for your issue of 14 March. Let me know 
roughly what it should be about so that it fits into your scheme.'!*? 

Meissner, then, will doubtless still have copies of the /8th Brumazre’*; 
his failure to push it is doubtless attributable to timidity. Marx sold 
him the entire edition, so there is nothing we can do.? 

Tussy has taken the best of the dictionaries—- French and Ita- 
lian — but there are still plenty left and I have made certain that you 
get one particularly nice item — the editorial copy of the Neue Rheini- 
sche Keitung. The parcel will go off in the course of this month. 

I don’t know of any poems — Kénig Dampf, perhaps, from my Con- 
dition of the Working-Class? A search is being made here for the En- 
glish original, but it seems to have fallen into oblivion, like the 
Serbian of Goethe’s lament of Hassan Aga’s noble wife, only still 
more so, since the latter does after all still exist in black and white. 

What wouldn’t Bismarck give to have the ‘Viennese in Berlin’, 
namely the anarchists! A perfect caricature of the Russians — 
though obviously bred by the police! 15+ 

Yours, 
F.E.