Covering Letter to the Editor of The Times

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

This covering letter to the editor of The Times of August 7, 1871 attached to Engels’ letter printed below, was written by Marx in connection with an article published in the newspaper on July 29, 1871. Along with the appeals to prosecute the leaders of the Paris Commune, the newspaper admitted that a great many citizens suspected of participating in it were being kept under terrible conditions in the Versailles prisons without trial for two months and brutally treated. The Times article and an attempt by Thiers’ Journal officiel to refute it aroused protests in the press of various countries against the brutal treatment of the arrested Communards. However, Marx’s and Engels’ attempt to make use of the polemic between the two papers in order to defend the victims of the Versailles terror in the columns of the widely read British newspaper failed. The editor of The Times did not publish Engels’ letter.

This letter was first published in English in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On the Paris Commune, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971, pp. 260-61.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES

7 August 1871

4, Maitland Park, Haverstock Hill, N.W.

Sir—

The note of the Journal officiel in contradiction to The Times article on the postponement of the Versailles trials’ being much commented upon by the Continental Press, the enclosed may perhaps prove of interest for your readers. The letter quoted is from a barrister engaged in the defence of some of the prisoners.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

Karl Marx