Ryde, 12 August 1892 
The Firs, Brading Road 

Dear Baron, 

Herewith the proofs, returned with thanks.°?’ 

August will already have told you that my trip to Germany has fall- 
en through. The after-effects of the old trouble, which laid me up 
9 years ago when you came to visit me on my birthday, have once 
more asserted themselves and at just the wrong time so that I have 
got to lie here on the sofa instead of tippling with you. Luckily I can 
breathe good sea air here — the house is right out in the country, high 
up, with a view of the sea—and this, together with rest and absti- 
nence from alcohol will no doubt set me on my legs again within 3 or 
4 weeks. But it’s a pity it should have happened just now. Well, to 
postpone isn’t to put off indefinitely. 

Thank you for your book *— unfortunately I have so far been pre- 
vented from reading it by the upsets of the past few days. 

A pity that the bits in Tussy’s article about the Socta, Democratic FE- 
peRATION 29 and the Fasrans,8? and also about Taylor’s candidature,” 
didn’t go in.°?8 I saw these in ms. after the event and they are vir- 
tually indispensable if you are to have a complete picture of the elec- 
tions. The total collapse of the Socra, Democratic Feperation the mo- 
ment it was really put to the test was significant in view of the boast- 
ing which that ‘one and only’ Social-Democratic organisation and 
One True Church has for years indulged in. I don’t know whether 
you saw Bax in Zurich, but he’s a very indifferent authority on the So. 
ciaL Democratic Feperation. He edited Justice for 6 weeks and got rid 
of all its many vulgarisms but was wholly incapable (for otherwise he 
would surely have done so) of giving the paper a character that was 
anything but sectarian. For the Socta. Democratic Feperation is in 
fact a sect pure and simple. It has ossified Marxism into a hard and 
fast dogma and, by repudiating any labour movement that isn’t 

4K. Kautsky, Das Exfurter Programm in seinem grundsdtzlichen Theil erldutert.- See 
this volume, pp. 497 and 515. 

orthodox Marxist (and, what’s more, Marxist in a very wrong-head- 
ed way) —i.e. pursuing a policy exactly the reverse of that recom- 
mended by the Manifesto,* has put itself in such a position that it can 
never become anything other than a sect. There were many reasons 
why Bax should have got into touch with these people again, but if 
they go on as they are it won’t be long before he discovers that they 
are trying to exploit him politically and financially and that he is un- 
able to assume any responsibility for them. But that’s something he 
will have to learn from personal experience; for the time being he has 
so far compromised himself as to be obliged in some measure to be 
their advocate. Come to that, Bax is completely out of touch with the 
workers as such. 

The Fasians have become a real stumbling-block, tailing along 
behind the big Liberal Party on the pretext, so they say, of imposing 
their candidates upon it. They may pull this off for a time in the case 
of the Country Councit,*!? where they can dabble in Possibilist pro- 
grammes of municipal reform,*** but even there the pious sham will 
pass muster only until such time as it is rumbled by the middle classes. 
In the case of parliamentary elections none of this applies, for here the 
Liberals will give the Fasians, like all other self-styled Labour candi- 
dates, only such constituencies as are hopeless. If one wants to impose 
Labour candidates upon the Liberals, it must be done after the man- 
ner of Burns and Keir Hardie, by holding a pistol to their heads, and 
not after the manner of the Fasians, by sucking up to them under false 
pretences. Fortunately the call for an INpepenpent Lasour Party is now 
already so loud and so general that even the bland inducements of 
Fabian cajolery and Fabian cash will eventually be overcome. 

Burgess, the Workman’s Times man, now proposes to found an Inpe- 
PENDENT Lagour Party himself— yet another competitor for the other 
two”! Burgess is a vain, ambitious johnny, hitherto most unreliable. 
Whether and to what extent he will make out remains to be seen. At 
all events his present action is a straw in the wind. 

A very good bit of news: So proud were the factory workers of the 
North of their old Ten Hours Bit that it was largely they who opposed 
the eight hour day (cf. Newcastle Trapes Unton Congress ?°°). This is 
now changing; the masses are gradually being converted to 8 hours 
while the leaders with their 10 hours are beginning to find themselves 

* The Manifesto of the Communist Party-” the Social Democratic Federation and the 
Fabian Society 

out on a limb. This will no doubt be more or less in evidence at this 
year’s Trapves Union congress.°*° 

The Avelings have gone to Norway. Just before they left, Tussy got 
a letter from Greulich in which the latter requested her on behalf of 
the Zurich International Congress Committee 54! to oblige them with 
an English draft of the invitation to the English Trapes Union Con- 
gress, and to translate all their other stuff into English. So Mr Seidel’s 
machinations, aimed at getting the confounded Marxists cold- 
shouldered on that occasion (which could only have led to the instal- 
lation of Mr Adolphe Smith Headingley), would seem to have been 
happily nipped in the bud. 

Pumps and Percy send their kindest regards. 

Your 
F. E.