| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 3 January 1891 |
ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE
IN HOBOKEN
London, 3 January 1891[1]
Dear Sorge,
Avant tout[2] a Happy New Year to you and your wife.[3]
Unfortunately I didn't make a note of the date of my last postcard in which I replied to the more urgent points in your letter. ' ' 6
Many thanks for the excellent photograph of you and your wife. I should like to send you one of myself but the constant fog and snow we have had since 25 November have made it impossible to obtain ei- ther a photograph or a print from the negative plate. As soon as the light is suitable, I shall have my photograph taken again so as to see what I look like at the age of 70, and your requirements will then be promptly attended to.
Louise Kautsky is staying with me. I'm very very grateful to the good child for the sacrifice she is thereby making on my behalf. Once again I am able to work in tranquillity, indeed better than ever, as she will also be my secretary. I have enough for her to do but not for a man brought in from outside. So everything is proving unexpect- edly pleasant and snug and there is sunshine in my house once more, even though the fog is as thick as ever outside.
I think I have already told you that you may use my letters in any way you think fit. But after all it'sjo« who are supposed to keep us in- formed about America!
Your complaint was promptly forwarded to Paris. ' ' 7 But will it do any good? BUSINESS IS NOT THEIR FORCE!
According to latest reports Sam Moore, Chief Justice at Asaba on the Niger, is in poor health. Having stood the climate so well, he has now been afflicted all of a sudden with diarrhoea, fever, and conges- tion of the spleen and liver—I am anxiously awaiting the next post the day after tomorrow. He will be back here in April on 6 months' furlough.
In Europe the most important event of the last 3 months has been the slaying of Seliverstov by Padlewski ' ° ' and—which is what the government wanted—the latter's escape. Evidence that Paris was the headquarters of Russia's mouchards[4] abroad, that the French Republic was to carry out espionage and render ignoble services for the Tsar as the prior condition of an alliance with Russia and, finally, Pad- lewski's bold deed which evoked a powerful and sympathetic re- sponse from every fibre of the French tradition—all this proved the last straw. The Franco-Russian alliance was dead before it had reached its term and been born (Louise Kautsky is a midwife, hence the simile) and this, not only because the bourgeois Republicans would not have liked it, even today, but also because the people in Peters- burg have realised that it would misfire at the crucial moment and hence isn't worth a damn. As far as world peace is concerned, that is a tremendous gain.
Fog, darkness—must stop. Many regards to your wife and you yourself.
Your
F.E.