London, | February 1892 

Dear Baron, 

Herewith Labriola’s letter to Tussy; I don’t believe that you could 
pull off publishing it without creating bad blood amongst divers per- 
sons in Italy, and in the end it would be the German party that would 
have to suffer for it, in as much as the latter would be held responsible 
for taking sides with or against those people who felt affronted by the 
article. For in Italy things are in such a mess that all kinds of people 
are sure to feel affronted, whether rightly or wrongly, as indeed 
I have written and told Labriola.'°* And those people would then be 
driven into the arms of the Possibilists,* Hyndmanists, Fabians *’ and 
God knows what other dogs-in-the-manger. 

I have written and told Labriola that I thought it better not to 
publish but would leave the matter entirely in your hands and that 
you two should sort it out between you. At all events, Tussy wants to 
have the letter back. 

It recently occurred to me that an account of Luther based on his 
actions and writings is urgently called for. In the first place a rectifi- 
cation not only of the Protestant legend, but also of the blinkered 
Catholic attack upon it by Janssen (who is now doing so well in Ger- 
many) would certainly not come amiss just now, and there is a dis- 
tinct need for a demonstration, from our standpoint, of the extent to 
which the Reformation was a bourgeois movement. Also of particular 
importance would be a parallel between Luther before and Luther af- 
ter Karlstad, the Anabaptists and the Peasant War,*°° on the one 
hand and, on the other, the bourgeoisie before 1848 and after that 
year. Likewise a detailed demonstration of how this transformation 
came about in Luther’s case. There’s still something to be accom- 
plished in this field, and without any need for undue study; also it’s 
something for which you are particularly fitted as a result of your 

Thomas Morus.* And again you have in Stuckert” a library on Pro- 
testantism that is second to none. Surely that would be better than 
translating Rogers ?°° whom any child could translate. 

Greetings from one family to the other. 

Your 
F. E.