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Special pages :
Letter to Friedrich Engels, September 2, 1870
Extract published in Marx Engels on Literature and Art, Progress Publishers, 1976;
Published in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44
Ton Engels in Manchester
London, September 2, 1870[edit source]
DEAR FRED,
Arrived here the evening before last. Today I shall go to see Dr Maddison.
Yesterday evening the enclosed note came from The Pall Mall Gazette together with a CHEQUE. Should I endorse the latter on your behalf and send it to Manchester, or cash it and send banknotes?
After the spectacular confirmation of your first article on MacMahon it would be a good moment to begin your next article with a summary of your own Notes on the War. As you know, the English need to have their noses rubbed in the ‘POINTS’, and too much reticence with regard to furnishing information WILL NOT DO with FULL-MOUTHED John Bull. The female members of the family are furious to find your articles plundered by all the London papers, but never quoted.
In my view the entire DEFENCE of Paris is nothing but a police farce, put on to keep the Parisians happy until the Prussians are standing at the gates, ready to restore order, viz., the dynasty and its mamelukes.
The wretched spectacle which Paris presents at this moment, and I mean by that throughout the entire war, shows that France had to be taught a tragic lesson if she was to be saved.
The declaration that no one can defend his ‘fatherland’ except in a uniform is an authentic piece of Prussianism !
The Prussians should surely have learned from their own history that it is not possible to achieve ‘eternal’ security from a defeated enemy through DISMEMBERMENT, etc. And even after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, France will not be battered as badly BY FAR as Prussia was by Napoleon’s horse-cure at Tilsit. And how much did Napoleon I benefit from that? It just helped Prussia onto her feet again.
I do not believe that Russia has actively intervened in this war up to now. I don’t believe that she is prepared for such intervention, but it is a diplomatic master coup for her to have proclaimed herself France’s SAVIOUR already at this stage.
In my detailed reply to the Brunswick Committee[1] I have once and for all abolished the fulsome ‘identity’ of interests between him and myself which our Wilhelmb invents to others whenever it suits his purposes. It is a good thing that his initiative should have given me the opportunity to make an official statement for once about this malentendu0 fostered by him so intentionally and with a bad conscience.
What do you think of Freiligrath as a family poet? Even historical catastrophes like the present one do no more than provide an opportunity for him to extol his own BRATS. In the process the VOLUNTEER ‘medical orderly’ is transformed into a ‘SURGEON’ for the benefit of the English.
The correspondence between the former Swabian seminarist David Strauss and the former French pupil of the Jesuits, Renan, is an entertaining episode. Once a priest, always a priest. The history course of Mr Strauss seems to have its roots in Kohlrauschd or a similar school textbook.
Addio!
Your
K. M.
The Prussians do seem to have told infamous lies after all about the bombardment of Saarbrücken.
In Paris farcical episodes follow thick and fast. But the nicest of all is that of the soldiers who march out of one gate and march in again by the next.
Enclosed a letter from Laura. The fools’ dawdling over their retreat to Bordeaux is unforgivable.
- ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, 'Letter to the Committee of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party'.