ENGELS TO CHARLES BONNIER “* 

[Draft] 
[London, 3 December 1892] 

My dear Bonnier, 

Es wird nichts so heiss gegessen, wie es gekocht wird.“ You have the ad- 
mirable habit of serving warm, very warm, but would I not sometimes risk 
burning my lips? The newspaper, as you know, is not yet being published. ** 

You ask me to convey to the Germans a kind of ultimatum from the 
French. If I undertake to do so, will you guarantee that, in reply to a direct 
query by Berlin to Paris, Paris without disavowing me entirely would not say 
that I had exaggerated. 

“Tf you don’t cool it, you’ll not be able to drink it. 

As to the core of your ultimatum: 

1) let us first see what will happen here between now and Ist May, and 
what will happen this 1st May. 

2) Between May and August a number of things might happen before 
Zurich °° which cannot today be anticipated, 

3) and, all the more so, between August 1893 and May 1894. 

With the military question in Germany, ” with Panama “’ in France, with 
the Irish complication in England ‘“—three acute imminent political crises— 
with an industrial crisis everywhere, it seems to me that we could put our 
time to better use than quarrelling over how to mark Ist May, 1894, a day on 
which, perhaps, we will have better things to do than ‘demonstrate’! 

As for your perennial Protot, I couldn’t care less about him, any more than 
about his fellows, the agents-provocateurs of the German police. When will 
you adopt a similar attitude? 

In any case, it seems to me rather odd that you are prepared to allow the 
English to disregard the resolutions of Brussels ~* but them alone. ” What 
will French logic say to that?* 

As for the rest I know only one party which has the right to reproach the 
Berlin Congress. °' That is the Austrian party. *' Until now Ist May in Berlin 
has been worth far more than those in Paris. 

I am writing today to Bebel.” I will tell him of your ultimatum, but for the 
moment only as your personal opinion.