London, 9 October 1886 

Dear Ede, 

Having perused with some perplexity your 3 pages of painstaking 
argument °*3 — perplexity as to what you could actually be driving 

at-—I couldn’t help laughing out loud when I finally got to the nub 
of the matter and realised that all this was intended to explain your 
marriage which, after all, calls for no explanation whatsoever. If all 
proletarians were to be so hesitant, either the proletariat would be- 
come extinct or it would reproduce itself only through illegitimate 
children, a method we are unlikely to resort to en masse until the prole- 
tariat has ceased to be. So please accept my heartiest congratulations 
on having at last overcome your grave hesitations and given free rein 
to the promptings of your heart. You will find that living as a couple, 
even when times are bad, is better than living alone; I myself put 
it to the test long enough, sometimes under the most wretched condi- 
tions, and never had cause to rue it. So give your fiancée * my kindest 
regards and jump into thalamus” with a will. 

But it is already four o’clock and my letter must go off before 5.30, 
so now to business. 

Old Becker has been here §?° and there was much talk about the 
necessity of his recording his reminiscences and experiences. It is 
something I and, he says, others as well, had often proposed to him, 
but how is he to do it? In order to live, he contributes to Schneeber- 
ger’s Korrespondenz in Vienna °3' in return for 25 frs a week, and for 
this he must laboriously collect material. The toll on his strength and 
eyesight is such that he is able to do nothing else. °°? It is therefore es- 
sential that he be put in a position which will enable him to live while 
devoting all his time to the thing. Now van Kol, if I remember aright, 
gives him 25 frs a month and another friend the same amount. That 
makes 600 frs a year. I have undertaken to send him £5 = 125 frs 
a quarter. Total 1,100 frs. In my view, it is up to the party to supply 
the remainder, provided it has the means which, according to what 
Liebknecht told me, it does have. In fact, it ought really to provide 
wholly for the old veteran out of its pension fund. But I don’t suppose 
there would be much difficulty about raising from well-to-do party 
comrades the few hundred francs still required, and this would mean 
that the party would merely act as intermediary for the regular pay- 
ments. 

The memoirs as such would be a highly valuable addition to the 
Volksbuchhandlung’s* list, a new source on our party’s antecedents 
(the revolutionary movement from 1827 to 1860) and its history 

* Regina Schattner - ° nuptial bed-* a Social Democratic bookshop in Zurich 

(from the ’50s up till the present), a document that no real historiog- 
rapher could afford to overlook. And, what’s more, a magnificently 
vivid account — genuine popular literature, if the samples published 
years ago in the Neue Welt are anything to go by.* And the sooner 
he gets down to it the better, for when a chap has already totted 
up a total of 77 years, his verbosity tends to outstrip his ability to 
assess what is important and what is not—such is the course of 
nature. 

I wrote to August about this yesterday; I had meant to write to you 
first and find out what you people at the publishing end thought 
about it, but since he is shortly due to go into jug, °°? there was no 
time to waste. I myself consider the thing to be of the utmost impor- 
tance. An account of what happened by an active participant,— 
indeed the only survivor from the thirties whose standpoint is the same as 
our own — is an absolute necessity; it will cast a new light on the whole 
of the period between 1827 and 1840 and, unless done by Becker, will 
be lost forever. Or else it will be undertaken by people who are hostile to 
us — members of the People’s Party ?°° and other vulgar democrats, 
and that would serve no good purpose. It is an opportunity such as 
will never again present itself and to miss it would, I believe, be 
a crime. 

I told August it would be best——once matters have got to that 
stage —if the details regarding the balance to be paid and the 
mode of publication were to be arranged personally between yourself 
and Becker. And in this connection there’s another point which I 
thought it unnecessary to raise with August at this juncture, namely 
that the balance should be regarded simply as a pension and not as 
an advance on the fee. This last might be suggested by some of the 
‘leaders’ but would be an exceedingly shabby way to treat the old 
warrior. Hence my proposal that as much of the balance as possible 
be raised by private subscription, when any such suggestion would be 
automatically precluded. 

If all this should be settled and you enter into negotiations with 
Becker re publication, you should take no notice of his ideas about 
sales, etc., prospectus, and so forth. So far as his ideas about the sale 
of banned books are concerned, he might still be living in the *40s, 

* J. Ph. Becker, ‘Abgerissene Bilder aus meinem Leben’, Die Neue Welt, 
Nos. 17-20, 23, 24, 26, 28 and 29; 22 and 29 April, 6 and 13 May, 3, 10 and 24 June, 
8 and 15 July 1876.-" August Bebel; see previous letter. 

and he has no inkling of the way this has now changed into a big in- 
dustry. 

So consider the matter and let me know what you think. 

So far the Bulgarians have indeed done unexpectedly well and, if 
they hold out another 8 or 10 days, either they will win through or, 
should the Russians march against them, it will be only at the risk of 
a European war. °** This they owe to the circumstances of having 
been so long subject to the Turks, who were content to preserve what 
remained of their gentile institutions, while only preventing— 
through the depredations of the pashas—the rise of the middle 
classes. The Serbs, on the other hand, who had been free of the Turks 
for 80 years, wrecked their old gentile institutions by introducing 
Austrian legislation and an Austrian-trained bureaucracy, hence 
their inevitable drubbing at the hands of the Bulgarians. Give the 
Bulgarians 60 years of bourgeois evolution—when they would 
certainly accomplish nothing —and of bureaucratic rule, and they 
would go to wrack and ruin just as the Serbs have done. It would have 
been infinitely better for the Bulgarians as for us had they remained 
Turkish until the European revolution; their gentile institutions 
would have provided a first-rate point of departure for their further 
evolution along communist lines, just as would the Russian mur,* 
which is now likewise being destroyed under our very noses. 

As things are now I take the view that: 

1) The southern Slavs should be supported if, and for as long as, 
they oppose Russia, for then they will go along with the European re- 
volutionary movement. 

2) If, however, they oppose the Turks, i.e. demand the annexation 
a tout prix” of the few Turkish Serbs and Bulgarians that still remain, 
then they will, consciously or unconsciously, be doing Russia’s work 
for it, and we cannot go along with them. This could only be achieved 
at the risk of a European war, and isn’t worth the candle. The 
chaps will have to wait, just like the Alsatians and the Lorrainers, the 
Trentini, etc. Moreover, the result of any renewed attack on the 
Turks could —in present circumstances — only be that the victorious 
small nationalities —— victorious solely thanks to Russia— would 
come directly under the Russian yoke, or—cf. the linguistic map of 
the peninsula — become hopelessly embroiled with one another. 

3) As soon as revolution breaks out in Russia, however, the chaps 

* village commune -" whatever the cost 

504 293, Engels to Bernstein. 22 October 1886 

can do as they like. But then, too, they will realise that they are no 
match for the Turks. 
Time for the post. 

Your 
FLE.