London, 25 November 1891 

Dear Bebel, 

I had been trying to find time, in the intervals of work on Volume 
III* now proceeding at a good, brisk pace, to answer your letter of 
the 15th, when some news arrived which compels me to write forth- 
with. At a meeting at Bordeaux on the 22nd 3° Lafargue is alleged to 
have said that in 1870 he had servi le pays & sa maniére en communiquant 
a M. Rance des plans qui, st Pon en avait tenu compte, pouvaient compléte- 
ment changer la face des choses. Ces plans luc étaient communiqués par 
des fréres de UInternationale en Allemagne, parmi 
lesquels se trouvaient plusieurs officters de Varmée 
allemande.” Now Lafargue cannot have said this, but I can’t for 
the life of me think what he did say. However, the thing is so patently 
silly and the accusation so monstrous that you people probably ought 
to reply to it before you hear what Lafargue actually said. In order to 
ascertain the facts, I at once wrote yesterday, and again today, to 
Laura and to Lafargue himself,!>* to whom I also said that you 
would probably have to take immediate countermeasures and that if 
you showed a total lack of consideration for him, he would have to 
lump it. Not that he really deserves any; but all the same I would beg 
you not to act in anger which, as so often in my own case, always 
leads one to do something stupid; rather you should do all you can to 
ensure the continuance of concerted, or at any rate parallel, action 
with the French workers. Yu will, of course, repudiate any sugges- 
tion that the above preposterous assertion could apply to yourselves 
—that goes without saying. You did not yourselves, directly or in- 

" of Capital- served his country in his own fashion by communicating to M. Ranc 
plans which, had they been taken into account, might have completely changed the 
face of things. These plans had been passed on to him by his brothers of the International 
in Germany, amongst whom were several German army officers. 

directly, send the French government in Bordeaux either military in- 
formation or plans from German officers, having, so far as 1 know, 
had no connections of any kind with officers at that time. So the more 
vigorously you repudiate this truly insane accusation the better, 
though I would suggest that it would nevertheless be advisable, and 
also less conducive to eventual complications, for you to repudiate 
only the report as such, without as yet holding Lafargue responsible for 
it. After all, this would not preclude a further statement as soon as the 
text is known; I shall let you have this the moment [I get it. 

What Lafargue can have said and what he had in mind, I simply 
cannot conceive. For neither did we, the General Council of the 
International in this country, have any connections of any kind with 
German officers, and thus were never in a position to send him ‘plans’ 
of that description from gentlemen of that ilk. And even if he had 
been able to establish connections elsewhere in France upon his revis- 
iting that country—I believe in 1868, after his marriage (or in 
1869—I couldn’t exactly say at the moment)—he concealed the 
fact from us so carefully that nothing whatever transpired before his 
return to France in 1880, nor, for that matter, has it done so since. 

At all events, he has committed a quite unpardonable blunder— 
whether he told lies or tales out of school is something he himself must 
decide—and placed you people in a position such as might very 
well rob you of all desire for international intercourse. While I fore- 
see the nature of the deluge that is about to engulf you, I cannot yet 
see how it is to be stemmed. I can only suppose that it’s the eighth or 
sixteenth part of negro blood which flows in Lafargue’s veins and oc- 
casionally gains the upper hand that has led him into this quite inex- 
plicable folly—it is, to put it mildly, a quite inconceivable piece of 
stupidity. 

In view of the large number of German officers who settled abroad 
in 1848/49 and after, there is always the possibility that something of 
the kind came into his hands, but to make the /fréres d’ Allemagne* re- 
sponsible really does take the cake. 

Should you so wish, I shall at all times be prepared to testify that 
on no occasion during the war was the General Council of the Inter- 
national in a position to pass on to France information of any kind 
deriving from you, other than what was to be found in your own 
newspapers; indeed I should be prepared to make any statement that 

* brothers in Germany 

might help to clear you of the slightest suspicion of conniving at such 
foolishness. For if anything of the kind did happen, you people were 
as innocent of it as the unborn babe. 

Nevertheless, these confounded vexations gave way to joy last 
night upon our learning from The Evening Standard of the victory in 
the Halle elections. This does after all go to show that, despite all 
the blunders made by individuals, we as a mass continue to advance. 

Apropos, what I wrote on the postcard }°°— I thought somebody 
over there would be able to read. it—-was Russian: Da zdrdustvuyet 
Berlin! Long live Berlin! 

But now, luckily, it’s time for the post — registered, which is safer, 
so I shall deal with the contents of your letter in my next. The Rus- 
sians would appear to be drawing in their horns; the bankers in Paris 
have had difficulty moving the loan and the Russian government has 
had to take back a third or more as unplaceable °°?— on this occa- 
sion the unpatriotic character of capital again appears in a favour- 
able light. 

Writing to your wife* is another pleasure I shall have to keep in 
store. She will have had a letter from Louise. 

Your 
F.E.