The enclosed you can send to Auer if you like, I have arranged it accordingly.

As regards the distribution of electoral districts, I too have often been annoyed about it, but that comes of wanting to proceed according to general principles in purely tactical questions, and that is what always happens at congresses: then the matter is so nicely cleared up. Dual candidatures are as a rule no good; but if one counts on the best people getting through more easily than others in unsafe electoral districts, and therefore puts them there, one must either allow them dual candidatures or risk their not being elected at all. If, therefore, one absolutely does not want any dual candidatures, one must also put the best people in the safest electoral districts. Now it is strange that this assignment to unsafe electoral districts never happens to Liebknecht, but only to Bebel, and that, e.g., at the last election, if I am not mistaken, Liebknecht had two quite good electoral districts. Enfin!, these are the inevitabilities. One must also not forget that struggle always has its ups and downs, and therefore not make too much of it when things go a bit downhill for a while.

At any rate this much is certain, as long as we have the *Sozialdemokrat*, the gentlemen opportunists may do as they please; and even if they gained control of the parliamentary group (which is only possible if Bebel is not re-elected), they would not by a long chalk have won the game. What can they do against the masses? The masses themselves always push them further, whether they like it or not. And if the Wise Men succeeded in gaining control of the *Sozialdemokrat* too, that would not last as long as the first wishy-washy period of the *Sozialdemokrat*, which after all initially found support even among the better sort of the “leaders”, but was thrown overboard by the masses.

As regards the Great Science of the famous non-atheist, it will be most gratifying if it finds every opportunity to spread itself at large. In Paul de Kock’s *Amant de la Lune* there also appears a mysterious scholar of that sort; when after the greatest labour and effort one finally got to the bottom of his science, one found that it consisted of a few conjuring tricks with bottle corks. What trouble it has already cost up to now, until the famous man condescended to give us but a few samples of his science! And so beautiful! And has already arrived at clairvoyance. What more could we want – cela marche!

Greetings to K. Kautsky, also from Schorlemmer.

F. Yours,
F.E.

Tell Manz, who wrote to me, that a portrait exactly like mine is being prepared for him, he shall have it as soon as it is ready; but I cannot personally chase after things in sprawling London and accordingly depend on other people.