London, 7 October 1892 
Dear August, 

First to business. 

Lafargue sent me a France with the enclosed notice of an interpellation by 
Millevoye, ° a Boulangist. ° He intends to make use of this opportunity to 
remind the Chamber of everything done by the German Socialists in 1871 
and thereafter to maintain or restore good relations between France and 
Germany, and of what they have had to endure as a result. He would like to 
have: 

les dates des protestations des socialistes allemands, les paroles prononcées 
au Reichstag et ailleurs, et les condamnations subies“ . 

Now since the things I have here are incomplete or only to be extracted 
with untold labour from collections of periodicals buried in numerous 
packing-cases, during which process I might easily overlook what is most 
important, you would greatly oblige me and the French if you would take out 
the most cogent items and send them to me together with dates and 
references (from the official stenographic report). That is, 

“ The dates of the protests by the German Socialists, the speeches made in the Reichstag and 
elsewhere, and the sentences served. 

1. The statements which led to the incarceration of the Brunswick 
Executive in 1870 in Létzen, along with date and period of detention. ’ 

2. Your protest in the Reichstag against the annexation * and perhaps also 
one or two cogent passages from the Volksstaat attacking the war and the 
annexation; 

3. A few trenchant excerpts from later Reichstag speeches by you and 
Liebknecht, along with dates and particulars of the subject of the debate in 
which they were made; 

4. Anything else that seems to you important. 

Not a great deal is needed. You will know roughly how much is needed 
for a speech and if you then add | or 2 spare quotations, that will do. I should 
be glad if you would also quote some of your own statements, lest the French 
should imagine that Liebknecht did it all himself or even say that Liebknecht 
was an exception and that the others thought differently. 

Yesterday we sent you in the Workman’s Times 2 French newspapers with 
reports on Liebknecht’s speeches and also a piece by Guesde which will 
have pleased you. a 

Lafargue will be drumming up support in Carmaux and other towns in the 
South until his return on the 16th or 17th of this month, That is when the 
Chamber reassembles, and he must have the material by then. ’ 

He writes to say that the patriotic press, all of which, and particularly La 
France, is in the pay of Russia, has launched furious attacks on Liebknecht. 
The Russian embassy now pays the newspapers by the job—so much for 
each individual article accepted. Which is also a sign that the Russians are 
short of funds. There is no doubt that Liebknecht has raised a furore. I don’t 
begrudge the old man his popularity and, in two respects, can only hope, 1. 
that it won’t make him even more obstinate with regard to the editorship of 
the Vorwarts and, 2. that in the Reichstag the malicious sniping of the 
German patriots and accusations of high treason, etc., don’t suddenly 
provoke him into maintaining the opposite, thereby landing not just himself 
in the cart but us as well. A reporter on the Gaulois quotes him as saying: 
“Were Germany to declare a war of aggression on France, the German 
Socialists would declare war on their own government, et moi-méme je 
prendrais un fusil pour 

* J. Guesde, “Vive I’Internationale!” Le Socialiste, 16 October 1892. 

défendre / intégrité du territoire francaise’ “ When he corrects this obviously 
exaggerated report, it is not impossible that he will go to the opposite 
extreme, should the Junkers and bourgeois in the Reichstag work him up into 
a real passion. 

Lafargue says that Loubet and the Minister for Public Works, Viette, 
would go to considerable lengths to bring about an acceptable settlement of 
the strike at Carmaux '° and compel the company to climb down, but that 
Freycinet is against it. The latter has designs on the presidency of the 
Republic and therefore wants to keep in with the voters of the Right and the 
Centre. 

Otherwise, Lafargue is very satisfied with the Congress. |! 

The 12 copies of the Neue Zeit '’ arrived here and were passed on to 
Tussy. The chaps ought to have sent them to her instead of to me, but as it 
was a day was lost. Unfortunately there has recently been a change of 
ownership at the Pall Mall Gazette and we don’t yet know what prospects the 
paper will now hold out for us. 

Your account of the movement among the miners tallies with our 
experience in this country; here, too, the chaps keep themselves very much 
apart from the other branches of labour and are progressing more slowly than 
the rest. But in our case, the fact that there is already a strong workers’ party 
behind them will eventually see us through; the chaps are bound to join us, 
once the movement has taken a hold on them. On the other hand there are, 
both here and in Germany, bad and unreliable leaders who cannot be induced 
to trust the workers in other branches. In this country, moreover, the petty 
jealousies existing between the men of one coal-field and another have so far 
not even permitted the creation of a united guild comprising all mine 
workers. 

I shall do my utmost to stop the French from dispensing with your con- 
tributions. It is vitally important that occasionally, at any rate, accurate 
reports on the German movement should appear in Paris and particularly that 
the public should be made aware of the general political situation in which 
you people have to carry on the fight. You alone can do that, nor is there any 
need at all for you to come into conflict with Liebknecht as a result, provided 
he doesn’t regard contributions to the French paper? as his monopoly. That 
wouldn’t do at all. 

* and I myself would take up a musket in order to defend the integrity of French territory. Le 
Socialiste 

You need have no fear that Burns is keeping too much in the background. 
The man’s vanity is on a par with Lassalle’s. But compared with the 
precipitate way in which K. Hardie thrusted himself to the fore to secure 
pride of place by resorting to little dodges, he was unquestionably right in 
adopting a non-committal attitude. 

At the moment I am reading Hans Müller* and have not yet finished. It is 
all stale stuff and long familiar to us. The few bad speeches he quotes are not 
even skilfully chosen. Had I wanted to make out a case against the petty- 
bourgeois goings-on in the party or parliamentary group, I should have 
provided quite different material. The Steamship Subvention alone provides 
eight times as much as he does and of better quality. '’ He takes a speech 
made by Liebknecht in 1881 '* during the period of general confusion that 
followed the promulgation of the Anti-Socialist Law '° instead of later ones 
when the political situation makes the pacific, philistine overtones seem far 
less excusable, and then goes so far as to assert that power is in all 
circumstances revolutionary and never reactionary. The jackass fails to notice 
that where there is no reactionary power to be overthrown there can be no 
question whatever of revolutionary power. After all, you cannot start a 
revolution against something that can be removed without the least effort. 

If there is one thing that sends the self-opinionated students, the men of 
letters and the would-be literati of the working class into a state of impotent 
rage, it is the sight of our party calmly continuing along its victorious course 
without needing the help from these petty panjandrums. If mistakes are made, 
the party is strong enough to deal with them itself. Witness the undeniably 
tame philistinism of the majority of the parliamentary group at the time of the 
Steamship Subvention, wit-ness the traditional tendency of the Party 
Executive, a tendency which continued to manifest itself for a short while 
after the Anti-Socialist Law had been repealed, to intervene in a dictatorial 
manner (and which, moreover, had its counterpart in an identical tendency 
among the executives of the previous Berlin organisation), etc., etc. Our 
Party is now so strong that it could, without risk of degeneration, digest not 
only a goodly number of petty bourgeois but also the “heddicated” and even 
the worthy Independents, '° had not the latter given themselves their 
marching orders. 

“H. Müller, Der Klassenkampf in der deutschen Sozial Demokratie 

Time for the post. Regards to your wife" and yourself from Louise” and 

Your 
F.E.