| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 3 December 1891 |
ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE
AT LE PERREUX
London, 3 December 1891
My dear Lafargue,
After your formal repudiation of all those passages in the Bordeaux report[1] of which I had a right to complain, it only remains for me to take back all the wounding words I may have used about you and outright to ask your forgiveness.
As my only excuse I shall describe for your benefit the situation in which I found myself. One evening[2] The Evening Standard arrived with the Reuters report you know about[3] ; the next evening a bundle of newspapers from Laura, amongst them the Intransigeant with the report in question; then a cutting from yet another paper with the same report. All three versions were in agreement on the main point. So what conclusion could I have come to other than that Laura had read those reports and that, if she had sent them to me without a word of comment, they were to all intents and purposes accurate. Hence Paul must have said something of the sort.
Again, it contained things — whether true or not — which could only have been said by you or by Ranc. If said by Ranc, you would certainly not have hesitated to advise me of a fact that could have the gravest repercussions on the situation of the German socialists — well then?
Just so. For our friends in Germany it would mean at best the re-introduction of the Anti-Socialist Law,[4] frenziedly acclaimed by all the Chauvins in our ruling classes, the suppression of our newspapers and meetings, of all our literature and, in the event of war, the arrest of all the LEADERS at the very time when we would have most need of them to take advantage of the impending revolutionary moment. It would also mean the implantation of an element of discord, of mistrust, between French and German working men at the very moment when unity was more necessary than ever.
Thanks to the stupidity of our enemies, these accounts have not yet been cited in the German press. But the Embassy will undoubtedly have made use of them in its reports. And although your disavowal, which was at once passed on to Berlin,[5] has lifted a terrible weight from my mind, there is always the danger that the German government will keep this accusation up its sleeve so as to imprison our best men at the outbreak of war and annihilate them with an accusation that would be doubly appalling at a time when chauvinist passions were running riot. So your disavowal would go only halfway towards protecting them and this is why.
You say that the reporter embroidered the article by Ranc. But that embroidery, such as it is, would not have been possible had not Ranc at least sketched out the design on the canvas. I haven't set eyes on that canvas. So please be so kind as to send me either the article itself or at least a copy of the relevant passages; or else let me know the name of the paper and the date of the number in which it appeared so that I can seek it out here. Then we shall at least know what the attacks will be which we shall have to parry.
Yours ever,
F. Engels