Letter to Friedrich Engels, November 30, 1854

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 30 November 1854


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 30 November 1854 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Engels,

You forgot to return Dana's letter[2] —very important in view of my relations with the fellows. By some oversight the first two pages were omitted from your splendid article of Tuesday's date.[3]

However the substance was contained in the 5 following ones, so all that suffered was the style.

I have received from the worthy Dr Freund a third dunning letter which I enclose. How do you think I should reply to the fellow? It seems to me that ce bon ami[4] has a mind to take extreme measures. With the positive decline in income from the Tribune, as a result of which I have sunk below the level of the great Dronke, prospects for the noble Freund look gloomier than ever. The worst of it is that I shall be needing him again soon. I have been invited through Tucker to work on a Retrospective Review which is appearing here in London. However have not yet had a detailed reply about the punctum puncti,[5] the fee.

The day before yesterday I finally received the 2 volumes of Ripley's Mexican War, about 1,200 pages, large format. As a military historian, Ripley seems to me—i.e. a strictly lay opinion—to

have modelled himself plus ou moins[6] on Napier. The book is sensible and, to my mind, not uncritical. Dana has certainly not read it. Otherwise he would have seen that their hero, General Scott, appears BY NO MEANS in a favourable light, NEITHER as a commander-in-chief nor as a GENTLEMAN. The thing is of particular interest to me because not long ago I was reading about Fernando Cortes' campaign in Antonio de Solis' Conquista de Mexico. Some very interesting comparisons might be drawn between the two conquistas. By the by, although the two commanders-in-chief— Taylor as well as Scott—seem very mediocre to me, the whole war was certainly a worthy prelude to the military history of the great land of the Yankees. The vast spaces in which the action took place and the small number of men with which it was conducted— more VOLUNTEERS than REGULAR ARMY at that—impart to it an 'American' originality. As for Taylor and Scott, their only merit seems to have consisted in the conviction that Yankees would always be able to extricate themselves, however great the predicament they might be landed in. I shall send you the 2 volumes early next week. Write and tell me—for they are bulky—whether by post (I am not clear about the new regulations)

or PARCEL CO.

Addio

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ An abridged translation of this letter was first published in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979
  2. ↑ See this volume, p. 498.
  3. ↑ F. Engels, 'The Battle of Inkermann'.
  4. ↑ this good friend
  5. ↑ the crucial point
  6. ↑ more or less