Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 15, 1870

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 15 August 1870


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. IV, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[Ramsgate,] 15 August 1870
36 Hardres Street

DEAR FRED,

You will see from The Daily News—and it is reprinted in today's Pall Mall[1] —that an EMINENT WRITER IS ABOUT TO ISSUE AN ENGLISH PAMPHLET in favour of the ANNEXATION of Alsace by Germany.

The EMINENT WRITER who has caused this notice about himself to appear in The Daily News is of course none other than ex-student Karl Blind. This miserable wretch could really stir up a lot of trouble in the English press at this moment with his intrigues.

Since you have some influence in the Pall Mall now, you must tear the rubbish to pieces as soon as it appears, and really flay the beast alive.

Between ourselves, the Prussians could bring off a great diploma- tic coup if—without demanding an inch of French soil for themselves—they were to insist on the return of Savoy and Nice to Italy and of the territory neutralised by the 1815 treaties to Switzerland.[2] No one could raise any objections to that. However, it is none of our business to offer advice on these territorial exchanges.

The family is amusing itself here royally. Tussy and Jennychen never come out of the sea and are building up a good stock of health. For my part, I am lying more or less fallow thanks to the rheumatism and the sleepless nights.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ The Pall Mall Gazette, No. 1717, 15 August 1870.
  2. ↑ By a decision of the Vienna Congress of 1815, the northern regions of Savoy (Chablais, Faucigny and Geneves), which formed part of the Sardinian Kingdom, were declared a neutral zone. After Savoy and Nice had been annexed by France in 1859, Switzerland laid claim to these neutral regions.