London, 30 March 1892 

Dear Baron, 

Yesterday evening I sent back to you the preface duly corrected 
and I also added a couple of lines to the 2nd edition.**° I think that 
should do. The old preface will still serve the purpose of preventing 
the resurrection of the Rodbertus nonsense which, like any article of 
fashion, has a tendency to keep recurring. It certainly acted remark- 
ably quickly, though it is no credit to me if the great men pitted 
against us are the sort of chaps who can be done to death in two pref- 
aces. Besides, the economic arguments set out therein will still do the 
Germans some good; the awkwardness of many of our people when 
engaged in economic polemics is curious though hardly edifying. 

Congratulations on the birth after a difficult confinement of your 
pamphlet on the programme.?’° The child will get on in the world all 
right. A new popular digest is always most useful; people’s speeches 
frequently make one realise how necessary such refresher courses are; 
and a fat tome is the last thing they are either willing or able to read. 

Rather than complain about the carelessness of German writers, 
you should adopt the principle of marking with coloured ink such ar- 
ticles as you intend to accept and returning them to the authors for 
correction; then they would soon mend their ways. Obviously if the 
editors are so obliging as to place their own style at the author’s dis- 
posal, he will become more and more slovenly. 

I can understand your complaining about your correspondence, 
for you speak to a fellow sufferer. But then you are also an editor, 
which I am not, and are entitled to confine yourself exclusively to 
business matters— after all, anything more you do is for your own 
personal pleasure— and that is precisely what is denied me. 

Apropos, I did not read Marx’s article on Proudhon from the Ber- 
lin Social-Demokrat **' in proof; I had no time. 

As regards Adler,*#5? you learned rather more from Dietz than 

I did. I therefore passed on your comments to Louise and asked her to 
prepare a memorandum on the affair for your own use — this I en- 
close. From her discretion towards me I gather, as no doubt you will, 
too, that this is a case which calls for the utmost discretion on the part 
of us all and where any incautious revelation could have the most dire 
consequences. Unfortunately, in a case like this, there are so many 
people who sympathise that out of sheer sympathy they are incapa- 
ble of keeping their mouths shut. It’s already quite bad enough that 
the affair should have been bandied about so freely in Berlin. 

The Condition of the Working-Class* has at last come out over here. 
Unfortunately I have no copies to send you but have arranged for the 
Neue Zeit to be recommended to S. Sonnenschein & Co. Socialism: 
Utopian and Scientific is also finished, as far as it goes, but since the little 
book has turned out to be much too meagre for its price of 2s. 6d. 
(though the jackass of a publisher knew this from the beginning!), 
I am to swell it out with a long preface.” Well, we shall see. That, 
however, will be the last of my own jobs, after which I shall then get 
on with Volume III.‘ I have had word from Petersburg (this is between 
ourselves) that the Origin of the Family will probably be appearing in 
Russian shortly. The article on ‘socialism in Germany’ has now come 
out in Italian, Romanian (Critica Sociala), English (The People, New 
York) and Polish (Przedswit, here), the last two having been taken 
from the Neue eit. 

Kindest regards from one household to the other. 

Your 
General