London, 3 December 1890 

Dear Comrade, 

My warmest thanks for the good wishes you sent me on my seven- 
tieth birthday, now happily surmounted. I welcome these as tendered 
both in your own name and in that of the Dutch Labour Party °? 
and wish the latter the best possible progress and you yourself the 
health and strength that will enable you to fulfil the important role 
that has fallen to you. And I would request you to act as interpreter 

* pleased with himself - > Berliner Volksblatt - © therefore - ¢ Tell Mémé that out- 
wardly my nose looks perfect, but there’s a cold inside. 

in conveying these my thanks and good wishes to the comrades over 
there.* 

As regards your query about buying your son out of military ser- 
vice there would, I think, be nothing improper about this in princi- 
ple. It is— generally speaking —just as permissible for us to make use 
of the advantages conceded by the present-day state to the privileged 
members of society, as it is for us to make use of the products? of oth- 
ers, to live indirectly on the exploitation of others, as indeed we must 
in so far as we are not ourselves economically productive. If the la- 
bour party benefits as a result, I would even regard it as a duty. 
Moreover, the class from which remplagants‘ are recruited is not, as 
a rule, the working class proper, but that stratum which already over- 
laps to a large extent with the lumpenproletariat. And if one of the 
latter sells himself into the army for a few years, it does at least mean 
that an unemployed man has found himself a berth. 

What calls for particular consideration, however, is the impression 
such a course of action on your part might make on your party com- 
rades and, further, on the vast mass of workers who still remain out- 
side the party——whether the matter would be one of indifference to 
working-class opinion or whether it would stir it up against Social- 
Democracy. That is a point that can only be determined on the spot 
by someone with a thorough knowledge of the circumstances, and 
I shall therefore refrain from voicing an opinion on it. 

I am equally unfamiliar with the situation of the common soldier in 
the Dutch army, and upon that a great deal depends. In Germany it 
is our chaps who go to make the best soldiers. 

Cordial regards from 

Yours, 
_F. Engels 
After your Bielefeld experience, you will not, I suppose, be in any 
particular hurry to return to the Holy German Empire of the Prus- 
sian Nation!“