London, 24 April 1891 

Dear Frankel, 

I owe you a reply to your letters of 27 December and the 16th of 
this month. As regards the first I am well aware of the disagreeable 
feeling that comes over one on returning to a country after many 
years of absence to find what was formerly a group of good friends 
locked together in violent fratricidal strife. Still— a la guerre comme a 
la guerre.* That is a necessary condition of progress and there’s noth- 
ing one can do about it.” The moment will come when you will be 
able to intervene in the interests of them all, but I don’t believe that 
that time has yet come. Brussels will throw light on many matters, if 
indeed Brussels ever takes place,!3° since it is threatened by the Bel- 
gians’ ill-considered general strike.??° 

What has recently been happening among the various factions in 
connection with the lst of May has, in my view, demonstrated once 
and for all that, so far as we are concerned, the first commandment 
must be self-restraint. Self-restraint is what J too must impose upon 
myself in regard to your request concerning the May Day number of 
the Bataille,??? even if there were no other reasons for my doing so. 
In the first place I have not seen a single copy of the Bataille since 
June 1889 and all I know about it, and this purely from hearsay, is 
that it sided with the Rue Cadet 2? in the anti-Boulangist struggle; 
secondly, I have for the past two months been so snowed under with 
requests of a similar nature that I have had to make up my mind once 
and for all to turn these down — one such letter is going off to Vienna 
today. 

It’s high time Volume II] of Capital came out. Before I set to work 
on it I have got to get some new editions * ready and this I cannot possi- 
bly refuse to do. But so long as Volume IIT remains unfinished [ shall 

* war is war-” See this volume, pp. 96-97.-° Ibid., pp. 148-49. 

take nothing on and, what’s more, shall actually have to cut down on 
much of my correspondence. 
With best wishes from myself and also from Louise Kautsky. 

Your 

F. Engels