Letter to S. F. Kaufmann, March 11, 1881

Author(s)	Friedrich Engels
Written	11 March 1881

First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 46

ENGELS TO S. F. KAUFMANN

IN LONDON

[Draft]

[London,] 11 March 1881
122 Regent's Park Road, N.W.

Dear Mr Kaufmann,

In reply to your esteemed note of the 9th inst. I regret that I am unable to fall in with your wishes regarding the guarantee. My expe- riences with guarantees have been such that I have resolved once and for all to advance the money straight away myself, if I can, rather than give a guarantee. However the money is not available; if I had it and could do without it, I should regard it as my prime duty to hand it over to the party in Germany to whom we now owe every penny we can spare.^[1]

Trusting that you will find elsewhere the means of obtaining the funds you need,

I remain,

Yours very truly

↑ Here Engels deleted the following passage: 'There is, however, another reason. Over the past 10 years I have seen all too often how rapid is the turnover here of the people who go to make up the local German working men's associations and, such being the case, it might well come about that the Society adopted a line quite different from its present one before my guarantee expired and that in the last resort I was standing guarantee for Mr Most, which surely cannot be asked of me.'

[1] Here Engels deleted the following passage: 'There is, however, another reason. Over the past 10 years I have seen all too often how rapid is the turnover here of the people who go to make up the local German working men's associations and, such being the case, it might well come about that the Society adopted a line quite different from its present one before my guarantee expired and that in the last resort I was standing guarantee for Mr Most, which surely cannot be asked of me.'

[1]