Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 7, 1855

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 7 August 1855


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 28, Moscow, 1962
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 7 August 1855 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Engels,

The FAMILY (hence, for the most part, myself also) still in Camberwell. Pieper came and stayed with us for a week. I was thus prevented from writing, save for the necessary pieces for New York AND GERMANY. The article on the 'ARMIES' is splendid.[1]

From the enclosed letter from Steffen you will see what a bad state our friend Daniels and Bürgers are in. I am particularly sorry about the first. I don't know whether, in my résumé of the report by the visitor from Yankeeland,[2] I mentioned that Conrad Schramm is consumptive and is taking a cure of ass's milk chez former Field Marshal Blenker.

In the past weeks I have sent the Tribune a series of articles—i.e. 3—about Lord John Russell in which the little man is passed in review from the very beginning.[3] However, it will soon be necessary to say SOME WORDS about the war and also, perhaps, about how the affaire is going in Asia.

Dronke has suffered a bitter disappointment. For it eventually transpired that the issue of a passport to Paris had been due to a misunderstanding on the part of the French Embassy; rather, express instructions had been given that he was not to be admitted into France. In a few days it will be decided whether or not he has obtained a post in Jersey.

Bonaparte has, within the bounds of pure reason, solved the problem I set him, namely 'to steal the whole of France in order to make a present of it to France again'.[4] His manoeuvrings over the loan are significant experiments in that direction.

What do you think of the Austrian concentration of troops in Italy? Have you seen the 2nd Mémoire d'un Officier Général?[5]

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ F. Engels, 'The Armies of Europe'.
  2. ↑ Pöckel (see this volume, p. 542)
  3. ↑ Marx's pamphlet Lord John Russell was published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 28 August 1855 condensed into a single article. The pamphlet was published in full in German in the Neue Oder-Zeitung as a series of six articles which appeared from 28 July to 15 August 1855 (see present edition, Vol. 14)
  4. ↑ Marx quotes from his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (see present edition, Vol. 11, p. 195).
  5. ↑ On the first Mémoire see Note 642; the second Mémoire—Deuzième mémoire adressé au gouvernement de S. M. l'Empereur Napoléon III sur l'expédition de Crimée et la conduite de la guerre d'Orient, par un officier général, Genève, mai 1855—was ascribed to the French journalist Tavernier and the Belgian officer, adjutant of the War Minister, T. F. Sterckx. Like the first Mémoire it was aimed at justifying the actions of the French Command in the Crimean campaign