AT LE PERREUX 

London, 15 June 1889 

My dear Lafargue, 

I have written and told Bebel that your contributions are coming in 
rather slowly, and that you are hard put to it to obtain adequate funds 
for the congress, etc. I explained to him the reasons (your numerical 
weakness in Paris, the necessity for the provincials to scrape up their 
funds for their delegations, the habitual sluggishness of the French in 
paying contributions, etc.) and I suggested that here was an opportunity 
for the German Party to make a grant as a good international invest- 
ment. You would be well-advised to ginger up Liebknecht with a view 
to obtaining the said grant since you would be better able than I to put 
your case to him, at the same time mentioning that you have written to 
him on the subject at my instance. 

I am sending you Justice, containing Hyndman’s reply.**? It is an 
outburst of impotent rage from a man aware that he has been well and 
truly trounced. What he says about Parnell and Stepniak is an out-and- 
out lie. I have before me a letter from Stepniak, sent to Tussy yesterday 
just after he had seen Justice, in which he says it is false and that he will 
be writing to Justice without delay.**° As for Parnell, his name was given 

459 

to us officially by the LABOUR ELECTORAL ASSOCIATION*8 
and, so long as he has not divested himself of his functions as secretary 
to that Association, he cannot contest the validity of his signature.* He 
had refused to sign as a private person and we had respected his scruples 
on that score. 

No one knows who this Field is—the chap who has evinced such 
ardour in defending our congress.*¢! 

The Danish paper run by Trier and Petersen’ has come out publicly 
in our favour, but they are right not to have gone further than this. 
Should they propose sending a delegation to our congress, they would 
impel the official Danish Party into the arms of the Possibilists. We have 
the satisfaction of knowing that these cryptic-Possibilists will not dare 
go to the other congress. 

Since the nature of the two congresses is now quite distinct—ours 
consisting of all the Socialists combined, the other of men who stop 
short at Trades Unionism (it’ll get nothing more, except for the 
Possibilists and the Social Democratic Federation), it is beginning to 
seem unlikely that there will be a merger, and if there is none there will 
be no disgrace. For it is a matter of common knowledge that Socialism 
has, as yet, failed to unite under its banner the whole of Europe’s work- 
ing class—knowledge which the existence of two parallel congresses 
would merely go to confirm. 

On the other hand, our congress being now more progressive than 
the other, we now have different responsibilities. If the two congresses 
were both avowedly Socialist, we could avoid a rumpus by making 
sundry concessions of a formal nature. But now that the forces have 
been mustered, without intervention by us, in two different camps and 
under two different banners, it behoves us to safeguard the honour of 
the Socialist banner, while the merger—if it happens—will be not so 
much a merger as an alliance. Hence it is a matter of thoroughly thrash- 
ing out the terms of that alliance. 

Whatever the case, we must wait and see how things go, and not tie 
ourselves down beforehand by making irrevocable decisions. The real 
aim must always be to put one’s adversary in the wrong and so to 
arrange things that, in the event of a breach, it is he who will take the 
blame. 

You may be sure that, after what has happened, neither the Possibilists 

* See this volume, p.331 —> Arbeideren 

nor the Social Democrat Federation will be animated by a desperate urge 
to effect a merger, but rather by an ardent desire to saddle us with the 
blame for the breach they secretly desire and which alone could give 
them some semblance of continued existence. To do them the kindness 
of provoking a breach would mean giving them a new lease of life. Only 
mistakes on our part would enable them to recover from their defeat, 
and those mistakes are going to be made by us if we let ourselves be 
swayed by passion or any kind of sentiment. It is a matter of pure calcu- 
lation, nothing else. 

Give Laura a kiss from me and from Nim. This morning Sam Moore 
left Liverpool for your African homeland. 

Yours ever, 

FE.