To the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, April 15, 1873

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Author(s) First International
Frederick Engels
Written 15 April 1873


First published in an abridged form, in English, in Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906
Reproduced from the manuscript
Source : Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 23
Keywords : Organization

122 Regent’s Park Road N. W.

London 15-th April 1873

Citizens,

I have received your letter of the 21-st March along with Bill £8.-6 for Lodi. At the same time I received a letter from Bignami stating that he was again hiding in order to avoid being dragged to prison to undergo a sentence of imprisonment which he prefers doing later on after having been restored to better health. The money could therefore not have arrived at a more favourable moment. I got it changed for 200 francs in French banknotes which I sent to him immediately.

Le Moussu has undertaken to do the stamps[1] and I have repeatedly reminded him of it, but as far as I know they are not much advanced yet.

The Arbeiter-Zeitung has come to hand regularly.

The cost of printing of the Rules[2] in English and French was about £15 each, those in German were much cheaper as they were first printed in the Volksstaat and nothing charged for composition, but only for paper, printing and binding.[3] This of course could not be repeated now.

The report on the Alliance[4] is now being drawn up, and Lafargue & I work at it daily, no time is being lost. The documents were kept by Lucain at Brussels until after Christmas,[5] and he has some still.

German Rules are still here, several hundreds which are at the Council’s[6] disposal. English none. French have all been sent to France, but not arrived. Perhaps we can recover some. We are trying.

As soon as the Alliance is put into shape, we shall do the Congress minutes.[7]

The Emancipacion of Madrid is dying if not dead. We have sent them £15.-, but as scarcely anybody paid for the copies received, it appears impossible to keep it up.[8] I am in correspondence with Mesa with regard to another paper to be started but cannot say what will be the result.

The Pensamento Social of Lisbon, an excellent paper which in its last number had a very good reply to the Spanish federal Commission of Alcoy on the Alliance question,[9] will also have to suspend its publication for a short time, but will reappear.

The International Herald, as you will have seen, also is on its last legs. We may try to keep it alive till the next English Congress (Whit-week)[10] after which it may be possible to start something else. The Herald is not worth much except as an organ of publicity for the B.F.C., but, as such, for the moment almost indispensable.

You will have seen from the French papers that Walter (Heddeghem) comes out as a downright spy. He is said to have been a Bonapartist mouchard.[11] At Toulouse, Swarm (Dentraygues) has not behaved much better, but not having read the full report, I cannot speak with certainty; at all events he was no mouchard before, but seems weak & capricious.

Fraternal Greeting

F. Engels

So far, no money has been received by me for the Council. No news either from Italy, except that temporarily the Plebe appears to be suspended too. The arrest of the Alliancists at Bologna & Mirandola will not last long, they will soon be liberated; if some of them are now and then arrested by mistake, they never suffer

  1. ↑ See Note 290.
  2. ↑ See this volume, pp. 3-20.— Ed
  3. ↑ See Note 1.
  4. ↑ Ibid., pp. 454-580.— Ed.
  5. ↑ This refers to the papers of the Commission to investigate the Bakuninist Alliance appointed at the Hague Congress.— Ed.
  6. ↑ British Federal Council.— Ed.
  7. ↑ On the preparing the Hague Congress minutes for publication see Note 197
  8. ↑ The last issue of La Emancipation came out on April 12, 1873
  9. ↑ "Da commissao de correspondencia...", O Pensamento Social, No. 51, April 5, 1873.— Ed
  10. ↑ This refers to the Second Congress of the British Federation of the International fixed for June 1 and 2, 1873 in Manchester (see Note 237).
  11. ↑ Police agent.— Ed.
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