To The Editor Of The Allgemeine Militär-zeitung

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This letter to the editor of the Darmstadt Allgemeine Militär-Zeitung obtained for Engels the opportunity to publish his military articles in this weekly. The editor’s reply survives, dated October 11, 1860, making it clear that Engels was allowed to contribute provided he abstained from a political appraisal of military events. It reads as follows:

“Darmstadt, October 11, 1860

“Dear Sir,—Immediately upon our return from a long journey to Berlin, Danzig, etc., we found your kind letter of August 24 of this year, to which we hasten to reply.

“It would be very desirable for us and the Allgemeine Militär-Zeitung to receive literary contributions from you from time to time, but we would ask you above all to include in your accounts only facts (not mere political observations, etc.). To this end we beg to suggest that you should send us informal ‘Letters from and about Great Britain’ (say, one every six weeks) and to deal with one or several definite themes in each. Especially welcome would be accurate accounts of the results of shooting exercises, military establishments (Woolwich Arsenal, for example), military schools, etc., similar to those we published about France last year and the year before.

“It would be also desirable for us to know exactly your conditions as regards payments.

“With the highest regard

“Yours faithfully

“The Editorial Board of the Allgemeine Militär-Zeitung”

Engels contributed to this weekly from 1860 to 1864, during which time several military items were published, beginning with the one suggested in the above letter. Some of his reports for the Allgemeine Militär-Zeitung were not published and have come down to us in manuscript form. This volume contains Engels’ articles published in the newspaper in 1860-62. His articles for 1863 and 1864 are included in Volume 19. p. 407

6, Thorncliffe Grove, Oxford Road, Manchester, August 24, 1860

To The Editor Of The Allgemeine Militär-zeitung In Darmstadt

As a subscriber to your esteemed journal and encouraged by the appreciative review of my pamphlet Po and Rhine (Duncker, Berlin) published therein last year, I take the liberty of sending you herewith an article that may be of interest to your readers. If I could help you in any way with news items, occasional articles and so forth, I should be glad to do so; I might soon be in a position to supply you with interesting information on the Whitworth gun, etc. That England’s rapid military progress is also of significance to Germany is something of which you will in any case be aware: save for Russia, England is, in the final count, our only natural and necessary ally against Bonapartism.

If you ask a service-record of your contributors, then I am truly in poor case. As a one-year volunteer in the Artillery Brigade of the Prussian Guard I did not rise above the rank of bombardier. Later, in Baden, I took part in the campaign of 1849 on the side of the insurgents. Since my period of service, however, I have constantly busied myself with military matters.

Should you find my paper worthy of acceptance, I should be much obliged if you would at once mail me a proof copy in a wrapper, and I shall immediately publish it in translation in English newspapers as an excerpt from the Allgemeine M.-Z., which could not but be of benefit to your journal; otherwise I would beg you to return the manuscript to me. Since my copy of the A. M.-Z. comes to me through a bookseller and never arrives till a month after publication, any other course would mean undue delay and the article would lose all interest here.

Might I recommend that my most recent pamphlet, Savoy, Nice and the Rhine, published in April, should be accorded an early if impartial review in your paper?

I remain, Sir,

Your most obedient servant

Frederick Engels