London, 17 April 1889 

Dear Liebknecht, 

I never doubted for one moment that you aborigines of Borsdorf 
were the better men—better, I might almost say, to the point of incorri- 
gibility. 

Your conference at The Hague gets funnier and funnier. Lafargue 
and Bonnier (who is over here) know nothing about one resolution— 
what was to happen after the Possibilists’ refusal—and neither Lafargue, 
nor Bonnier, nor Ede know anything about the other, the maintenance 
of secrecy. It must have been a curious sort of presidency and an odd sort 
of secretariat for something like that to have happened. So what we 
didn’t know about we couldn’t have abided by. 

That silence should have been observed until the Possibilists had 
refused goes without saying and this is what in fact happened. But after- 
wards it was essential to let fly at once. And if, as usual, you yourself 
were unlucky enough to be prevented by unforeseen circumstances from 
doing so and if none of the rest of you stepped into the breach and 
Lafargue sent me the resolution precisely for the purpose of getting it 
published, it was damned well up to us—especially so, considering the 
circumstances over here—to take this responsibility upon ourselves and 
commit this horrendous breach of etiquette. 

Your joint protest,* you say, would certainly have had an effect alto- 
gether different from that of our pamphlet*8*—indeed it would, if it had 
ever appeared in the first place. Why then hasn’t it yet done so? What the 
devil is stopping you? You know as well as I do that it will never mate- 
rialise or not at any rate until six months post festum.> 

Your little scheme for busting up the Possibilists by means of moral 
exhortations from Borsdorf and coming to an understanding with them 
over Brousse’s head is a childish chimera from the execution of which, 
come to that, our ‘railing’ at the Possibilists will not be able to deter you. 

385 

4 See this volume, pp.292-3 — » after the event 

After all, you can protest your innocence to the gentlemen for all you are 
worth. So long as the gentlemen you correspond with sail under 
Brousse’s flag, they too are responsible for his intrigues, and to present 
these in the right light could not, one might have thought, be other than 
helpful to you. If everything that Brousse gets them to do is good and 
apparently they have, after all, absolutely no cause to oppose him. 

If Ede, who throughout the pamphlet speaks on his own behalf and 
adopts a line no different from the one he adopts in the paper itself, has 
provided the public prosecutors with grist for their mill, the paper itself 
constitutes a far greater danger to you people than the pamphlet. In 
which case for heaven’s sake write to the chaps over here, telling them to 
attack rather than defend you, or better still to shut up shop. And if 
you’re on such uncertain ground, you ought above all to avoid meddling 
in such things as international congresses, etc. 

As to the Schlesinger business,° we should like to discuss this 
further by word of mouth. I haven’t seen the piece yet, but this really 
cannot go on, a situation in which something of the kind—if only the 
advertisement—is able to appear under your own aegis and without you 
yourself protesting. What I myself shall feel it necessary to do about the 
matter will of course depend on the concoction’s contents. 

Schorlemmer has been here since Saturday. He and Lenchen send you 
their regards. 

Your 
FE. 

Your letter to Ede> will not be used. It would be far better if you 
wrote to Lee‘ along the same lines. 

In lighter vein: Last Friday Ede was at a socialist soirée for the eddi- 
cated socialists here*! and was told by Mr Sidney Webb, who is professor 
of political economy at the Working Men’s College and has actually 
refuted Marx’s theory of value, that ‘we are only 2000 socialists in England 
but we are doing more than all the 700,000 Socialists in Germany.’