Letter to Hunter Watts, April 3, 1894

Author(s)	Friedrich Engels
Written	3 April 1894

First published, in Russian, in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946
Reproduced from the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 50

ENGELS TO HUNTER WATTS

IN LONDON

[Draft]

[London,] 3 April 1894

Dear Comrade,

I am very much obliged to you and the comrades of the S.D.F. 44 whose feelings you express for the honour you do me by asking me to lecture at your hall. But I am afraid I must decline. My work for our common cause lies in another branch of activity, where I believe I can be more useful, and where I find full occupation for all the time at my command. Were I once to begin lecturing, at which trade moreover I am but a poor hand, I should no longer have a valid plea for resisting other invitations, and then I should have entirely to give up my present class of work. For this reason I have regularly declined all similar calls from the Fabian Society, 43 the I.L.P., 114 and other bodies, with the exception made this year of the old Communist Verein,^[1] where they claimed a fifty years' hold upon me. 62

But then, as far as the S.D.F. is concerned, there is another question to consider. You cannot but be aware that for years, up to a comparatively recent period, Justice, the official organ of the S.D.F., has been in the habit of charging me with all sorts of offences. These charges, mostly vague insinuations of mysterious crimes, Justice has never specified, never attempted to provide, and yet never withdrew.^[2]

↑ Society
↑ Then there follows a number of unfinished and crossed out phrases which amount to the following: 'I am therefore compelled to consider whether under these circumstances I do not owe it to myself for the present to refrain from presenting myself as a speaker in the hall of the S.D.F., And further, whether my appearance in that capacity would not be unwelcome to a large portion, perhaps even a majority, of those to whom the hall belongs.'

[1] Society

[2] Then there follows a number of unfinished and crossed out phrases which amount to the following: 'I am therefore compelled to consider whether under these circumstances I do not owe it to myself for the present to refrain from presenting myself as a speaker in the hall of the S.D.F., And further, whether my appearance in that capacity would not be unwelcome to a large portion, perhaps even a majority, of those to whom the hall belongs.'

[1]

[2]