London, 25 February 1886 

Dear Liebknecht, 

It’s really quite impossible to do anything about getting your Rus- 
sian speech* °°! published in this country for, as you know, the big 
newspapers are barred to us and the monthly Commonweal is too 
small to take on that sort of thing. You will have to see to the matter 
yourselves, e.g. by getting in touch with the Standard correspondent 
as Longuet, for instance, did in Paris with Mother Crawford, the 
Daily News correspondent. Knowing that the Reichstag has no real 
say in anything, the British press very rarely mentions it, save for 
quite short telegrams. If you had not virtually confined yourself to 
Faerber’s view of the harm suffered by German capitalists,” but had 
introduced the present eastern imbroglio **> and blamed it on Bis- 
marck as the man who, because of the loan, has the Russians eating 
out of his hand, your speech could not have been passed over in 
complete silence. But what you say about the worthlessness of Russian 
paper is common knowledge even in this country. 

Now as regards those charming German literati who infest the 
neutral border zone between ourselves and the armchair °* and state 
socialists, and want to pocket all the advantages to be derived from 
our party while carefully shielding themselves against any disadvan- 
tage arising out of intercourse with us— I’ve just had another demon- 
stration of what shits the said literati are. An importunate fellow by 
the name of Max Quarck — nomen est omen‘— wrote to me saying that 
Deville in Paris had given him exclusive rights to translate his abridg- 
ment of Capital, and asking me to recommend him to Meissner and 
write a preface for him.’ It was all a lie, a fact of which I have received 
confirmation from Paris and as he himself informed Kautsky in a let- 
ter the selfsame day. And now the wretch has the effrontery to suggest 

@ Liebknecht’s speech in the Reichstag on 8 February 1886 (Stenographische Berichte über 
die Verhandlungen des Reichstags. VI. Legislaturperiode. HI. Session 1885/86, Vol. II).- 
» See this volume, p. 338.-° the name tells all (Quark=curd or cottage 
cheese in German; fig. rubbish) -¢ See this volume, pp. 384-85 and 405. 

that J should beg his pardon for his having lied to me! Just let him try 
that again, the scoundrel.5?° 

You people will find you have competitors in France. The three 
working men, Basly, Boyer and Camélinat, since joined by Clovis 
Hugues, have set themselves up in the Chamber as a socialist labour 
group“ in opposition to the Radicals,4?° and when, at a meeting last 
Sunday, the Radicals tried to inveigle the constituents into passing 
a vote of no confidence, they met with a resounding defeat — so much 
so that at the meeting they themselves had convened, the Radicals 
did not dare to open their mouths.” These three French working men 
will make more of an impact in Europe than your 25 because they sit 
in a Chamber which, unlike the Reichstag, is not a debating society, 
and because they have shaken themselves free of the milk-and-water 
petty-bourgeois following which hangs like a millstone round your 
necks. Clemenceau is now faced with a last crucial decision, but we 
can be almost sure that he will not hesitate to join the bourgeois 
camp, in which case, though he will indeed become a minister, he will 
be done for. 

Your 
F.E.