ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE[1]
IN HOBOKEN
London, 10 October 1888
Dear Sorge,
We finally got back here last Saturday week[2] and since then I have sent off to you 2 To-Days and a pile of Commonweals and today a pile of Gleichheits as well as 2 more Commonweals. One Gleichheit is miss- ing. Ede Bernstein took it and I haven't got it back yet.
Little has changed over here; the next No. of the Sozialdemokrat will be printed in this country.[3] Otherwise nothing at all seems to have happened.
The City of New York is a humbug; in a calm sea she is steady, of course, but once she starts rolling, no one can do anything to stop her. Moreover, her engines are in a deplorable state; one of them was operat- ing at barely half power, while the other threatened to break down at any moment because of the excessive strain. We never did more than 370 sea miles in a day and once it was only 313.
In so far as the political situation makes a survey possible, the esti- mate we formed of it over there was quite right. Bismarck has gone on for so long spinning silly young William[4] the yarn that he's a greater version of old Fritz[5] that the lad is now taking it seriously and wants to be 'Emperor and Chancellor in one person'. Bismarck is presently letting him have his way in order that he may make a thorough ass of himself, whereupon Bismarck will step into the breach as his guardian angel. Meanwhile he has assigned his Herbert[6] to the insolent lad as spy and custodian. A row between the two will not be long in coming and then the fun will begin.
In France the Radicals[7] in the government are making bigger asses of themselves than one could have hoped for. They have renounced the whole of their old programme vis-à-vis the workers and are behaving like out and out Opportunists[8] ; they are pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for the Opportunists and doing their dirty work for them. That would be quite splendid but for Boulanger and provided they weren't virtually forcing the masses into his arms.[9] As a person the man is not particularly dangerous but his popularity among the masses is driving the entire army over to the his side and that constitutes a grave danger— the temporary ascendancy of the said adventurer and, by way of an escape from his predicament, war.
So Jonas has wriggled quite cleverly out of it after all and faked an interview I can't very well disclaim.[10]
Mother Wischnewetzky is furious because I 'spent 10 days in New York and didn't find the time to make the two hours easy railway journey to her home. There was really so much she wanted to talk to me about'. All very well if I hadn't caught a cold and been plagued with indigestion and if I had had 10 consecutive days in New York in the first place.
Warm regards to your wife.[11]
Your old friend,
F. Engels
- ↑ This letter was first published in English in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895. A Selection, International Publishers, New York, 1953.
- ↑ 29 September
- ↑ At the insistence of the German authorities the Swiss Federal Council on 18 April 1888 expelled several associate editors of and contributors to the Sozialdemokrat (Eduard Bernstein, Julius Motteler, Hermann Schluter and Leonard Tauscher) from the country. Until 22 September the paper continued to appear in Switzerland, edited by the Swiss Social Democrat Conrad Consett. From 1 October 1888 to 27 September 1890 the paper was published in London.
- ↑ William II
- ↑ Frederick II
- ↑ Herbert von Bismarck
- ↑ The Radicals were a parliamentary group in France in the 1880s and 1890s that emerged from the party of moderate republicans ('Opportunists', see note 199). The Radicals relied chiefly on the petty bourgeoisie and to some extent on the middle bourgeoisie; they upheld the bourgeois-democratic demands: a unicameral system of parliament, separation of the church from the state, a progressive income tax, limitation of the workday, among other social issues. The Radicals were led by George Clemenceau. This group transformed itself into the Republican Party of Radicals and Radical-Socialists (parti republicain radical et radical-socialiste') in 1901.
- ↑ Opportunists was the name given in France to the party of moderate bourgeois republicans upon its split in 1881 and the formation of a left-wing party of radicals under Georges Clemenceau. The name was first used in 1877 by Henri Rochefort, a journalist, after the leader of the party, L. Gambetta, had said that reforms were to be implemented at 'an opportune time' ('un temps opportun').
- ↑ After his resignation from the post of War Minister, General Boulanger continued to whip up a revanchist campaign with the support of the chauvinist elements of different parties, from the radicals to the monarchists. On 8 July 1887, when Boulanger was leaving for Clermont-Ferrand to assume command of the 13th Corps, his supporters staged a chauvinist demonstration at the Lyons railway station. Boulangism was a reactionary movement in France in the mid-1880s, led by ex-War Minister General Boulanger. It urged a revanchist war against Germany to win back Alsace, annexed by Germany in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. In alliance with the monarchists, the Boulangists sought to capitalise on the masses' discontent with the government's policy. Their large-scale demagogic propaganda was especially effective among the lower ranks of the army. France was under the threat of a monarchist coup. Measures taken by the republican government, with the support of the progressive forces led to the collapse of the Boulangist movement. Its leaders fled from France.
- ↑ On 20 September 1888 the newspaper New-Yorker Volkszeitung carried Engels' interview with Theodor Cuno (see present edition, Vol. 26, pp626-27), formerly a member of the First International. Acting on the assignment of the editor-in-chief Alexander Jonas who had learned about Engels' sojourn in New York (see note 281), Cuno had the interview published without prior consultations with Engels. In October 1888 this interview was reprinted by Der Sozialdemokrat.
- ↑ Katharina Sorge