| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 18 December 1876 |
ENGELS TO HERMANN ENGELS
IN ENGELSKIRCHEN
London, 18 December 1876
Dear Hermann,
I have safely received your two letters of 14 and 17 November, made the appropriate entries and found the statement of the account to be correct, save for an item I had not previously been advised of—payment of 90.68 marks to Emil Blank on 24 January 1876. I presume this is the total of the amounts I owed him for various consignments of wine sent to me through his firm over here. In which case this, too, is in order.
I return herewith the Indian paper; the characters are badly defaced Devanagari or Sanskrit characters,[1] which is why I was only able to read one word; it's a kind of Jong-hand, whereas all I've come across is printed characters. It would seem to be a Central Indian dialect, since in the North they mostly use Arabic characters.
True, I have again been allotted another £600 gas shares at par (which show me a profit of about 60-70 per cent) but on the other hand sundry Americans came my way at the last drawing, so that
at the moment I don't need any money other than the interest due to me. Since, however, all my gas companies will be issuing new shares or debentures in the course of this year, it's very nice for me to know that I can call on you at any time for £300-£500; for sometimes the whole amount has to be paid up at once and that means getting hold of money quickly.
Many thanks for your information about Schaaffhausen.[3] I had rather suspected that the rumours I had heard were exaggerated; however, Mevissen's resignation from the board might well be a sign that the rats have begun to desert the ship.
I am positive that war is not far off.[4] The Russians have got so deeply implicated that they can no longer turn back, and the Turks will, of course, resist any incursion into their territory. Come what may, England will protect Constantinople and the Straits, though we've by no means reached that stage yet, and I'm convinced that the Turks will best cope with the Russians if they are left to fend for themselves. The position between the Danube and the Balkans is one of the strongest in Europe, and as long as no railways or highways are built there, the strength of a Russian army that could be employed and provisioned there, would be limited to a maximum of, say, a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand men at the outside. Hence it will probably be a protracted war fought out within the quadrilateral of fortresses Ruschuk, Silistria, Varna, Shumla,[5] and this the Turks are better able to withstand than the Russians. All that Bulgaria's so-called autonomy boils down to is the expulsion of the Turks from this strong position and the exposure of Constantinople to a Russian invasion. And the Turks, of course, aren't going to let themselves be bullied into this by any conference.[6] If you'd like to know exactly what obstacles the Russians will encounter there, give yourself a Christmas present in the shape of Moltke's Russo- Turkish Campaign of 1828/29,'[7] Berlin 1845.[8] It's a very good book which will, at the same time, provide you with the specialised maps you will need for the impending war. This time it will be different from 1828 in that:
1. the Turks have an army, 2. Silistria, Ruschuk, etc., are ringed with modern, detached
FORTS,
3. the Turks have, after the English, the most powerful fleet of iron-clads, and are in complete control of the Black Sea,
4. the Russian Army is in the throes of reorganisation and hence hardly fit for war.
Love to Emma[9] and the children, and the compliments of the season from
Your
Friedrich