London, 3 January 1891 * 

Dear Sorge, 

Avant tout a Happy New Year to you and your wife.* 

Unfortunately I didn’t make a note of the date of my last postcard 
in which I replied to the more urgent points in your letter.!! 

Many thanks for the excellent photograph of you and your wife. 
I should like to send you one of myself but the constant fog and snow 
we have had since 25 November have made it impossible to obtain ei- 
ther a photograph or a print from the negative plate. As soon as the 
light is suitable, I shall have my photograph taken again so as to see 
what I look like at the age of 70, and your requirements will then be 
promptly attended to. 

Louise Kautsky is staying with me. I’m very very grateful to the 
good child for the sacrifice she is thereby making on my behalf. Once 
again I am able to work in tranquillity, indeed better than ever, as 
she will also be my secretary. I have enough for her to do but not for 
a man brought in from outside. So everything is proving unexpect- 
edly pleasant and snug and there is sunshine in my house once more, 
even though the fog is as thick as ever outside. 

@ 1890 in the original. - ° First of all - © Katharina Sorge 

I think I have already told you that you may use my letters in any 
way you think fit. But after all it’s you who are supposed to keep us in- 
formed about America! 

Your complaint was promptly forwarded to Paris.'!7 But will it do 
any good? Business Is NOT THEIR FORCE! 

According to latest reports Sam Moore, Chief Justice at Asaba on 
the Niger, is in poor health. Having stood the climate so well, he has 
now been afflicted all of a sudden with diarrhoea, fever, and conges- 
tion of the spleen and liver—I am anxiously awaiting the next post 
the day after tomorrow. He will be back here in April on 6 months’ 
furlough. 

In Europe the most important event of the last 3 months has been 
the slaying of Seliverstov by Padlewski'! and—which is what the 
government wanted—the latter’s escape. Evidence that Paris was the 
headquarters of Russia’s mouchards* abroad, that the French Republic 
was to Carry out espionage and render ignoble services for the Tsar as 
the prior condition of an alliance with Russia and, finally, Pad- 
lewski’s bold deed which evoked a powerful and sympathetic re- 
sponse from every fibre of the French tradition—all this proved the 
last straw. The Franco-Russian alliance was dead before it had 
reached its term and been born (Louise Kautsky is a midwife, hence the 
simile) and this, not only because the bourgeois Republicans would 
not have liked it, even today, but also because the people in Peters- 
burg have realised that it would misfire at the crucial moment and 
hence isn’t worth a damn. As far as world peace is concerned, that is 
a tremendous gain. 

Fog, darkness—must stop. 

Many regards to your wife and you yourself. 

Your 

F.E,