London, 5 July 1892 

Dear August, 

You forbid me to write to you,*!° i.e. I am to give up the only cor- 
respondence I always find enjoyable and, instead, hammer away at 
the letters which bore me. But I’m not going to do it simply to oblige 
you. 

And even if I were so docile, the Vorwdrts’ colossal howlers>5!! 
about the elections over here *°* would make me fly off the handle. 
To say nothing about it would be really too deplorable. For the 
Vorwdrts has now actually succeeded in transforming South 
Paddington into a rural district of London—-South Paddington 
which is situated right in the middle of the town, slightly to the north 
of Hyde Park and west of Regent’s Park, and in which the only rural 
districts are a couple of green squares—about as rural as the 
Donhoffplatz *! 

The England of the Vorwdrts exists only in the imagination of the 
writer. The view that the Tories of today are more favourable to the 
workers than are the Liberals is the reverse of the truth. On the con- 
trary, all the Manchesterian prejudices °'? of the Liberals of 1850 are 
today articles of faith only to the Tories, while the Liberals know very 
well that if they are to survive as a party they must capture the La- 
bour vote. Because they are jackasses, the Tories can, from time to 
time, be induced by an outstanding man such as Disraeli to carry out 
a bold coup of which the Liberals would not be capable; but in the 
absence of an outstanding man it’s the jackasses among them who 
rule the roost, as at present. The Tories are no longer simply the tail 
of the big landowners, as they were up till 1850, for between 1855 and 
1870 the sons of the Cobdens, Brights, etc., of the upper middle 
classes and the Anti-Corn Law men,*!? have one and all gone over to 
the Tory camp, and the strength of the Liberals now lies in the dis- 

a 

a square in the centre of Berlin 

senting middle and lower middle classes. And, since Gladstone’s 
Home Rule Bite of 1886,°'* the last remnants of the Whigs and the 
old Liberals (middle-class and university men) have gone over to 
the Tory camp (as dissident or Unionist Liberals °°). 

Hence the need the Liberals face of making apparent or real con- 
cessions — primarily the former — to the workers. And nevertheless 
they are too stupid to know where to begin, many of them being, after 
all, still too hidebound by their antecedents. 

So far the elections have proceeded as if in response to our orders. 
The Liberals are obtaining a slender majority and in many places are 
actually losing votes by comparison with the last election; thus there 
has so far been no sign of the great Liberal wave that was to sweep 
across England. Today is a very important day and the results will 
probably be decisive; should the Liberals score a brilliant victory to- 
day, the vacillating philistine— by no means a rare animal— will 
be driven over onto their side and that will give them the upper 
hand. What we need is a moderate Liberal majority (including 
the Irish) so that Gladstone is dependent on the Irish over here -— 
otherwise, if able to exist without them, he is sure to do the dirty 
on them. 

But it’s capital that Keir Hardie, the Labour candidate in West 
Ham in the East End of London,— one of the few who did not take 
any money from the Liberals and did not therefore place himself 
under an obligation to them — should so far be the only one to have 
turned a Conservative majority of over 300 in the last election into an 
anti-Conservative majority of 1,200. Excellent, too, that elsewhere — 
in Aberdeen, etc.— the Labour candidates who stood against Liberals 
and Conservatives should have obtained anything up to a thousand 
votes. The Independent Labour Party is casting its shadow before 
it.° 15 

There are three kinds of Labour candidate here: 

1. Those who were paid by the Tories to filch Liberal votes. 
Nearly all of these will fail and know it. 

2. Those who take Liberal money and are bound to serve the Libe- 
rals. These are mostly put up in places where there is no prospect of 
their getting in, and amongst their number there are also men who, 
like the miners’ candidates, are Liberals by nature. 

3. The genuine Labour candidates, who are acting off their own 
bat and do not ask themselves whether they are standing against Li- 
berals or Tories. Of these, the Liberals accept the ones they have 

to (Keir Hardie and Burns) and try to undermine the others. In 
Scotland there are many such candidates, though it’s difficult to 
say what their chances are. Goodbye and warm regards to your 
wife.* 

Your old friend, 

F.E.