Letter to Charles Bonnier, December 3, 1892

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 3 December 1892


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


ENGELS TO CHARLES BONNIER

IN OXFORD

[Draft]

[London, 3 December 1892]

My dear Bonnier,

Es wird nichts so heiss gegessen, wie es gekocht wird.[1] You have the admirable habit of serving warm, very warm, but would I not sometimes risk burning my lips? The newspaper, as you know, is not yet being published.

You ask me to convey to the Germans a kind of ultimatum from the French. If I undertake to do so, will you guarantee that, in reply to a direct query by Berlin to Paris, Paris without disavowing me entirely would not say that I had exaggerated.

As to the core of your ultimatum:

1) let us first see what will happen here between now and 1st May, and what will happen this 1st May.

2) Between May and August a number of things might happen before Zurich which cannot today be anticipated,

3) and, all the more so, between August 1893 and May 1894. With the military question in Germany, with Panama in France, with the Irish complication in England—three acute imminent political crises—with an industrial crisis everywhere, it seems to me that we could put our time to better use than quarrelling over how to mark 1st May, 1894, a day on which, perhaps, we will have better things to do than 'demonstrate'!

As for your perennial Protot, I couldn't care less about him, any more than about his fellows, the agents-provocateurs of the German police. When will you adopt a similar attitude?

In any case, it seems to me rather odd that you are prepared to allow the English to disregard the resolutions of Brussels but them alone. What will French logic say to that?[2]

As for the rest I know only one party which has the right to reproach the Berlin Congress. That is the Austrian party. Until now 1st May in Berlin has been worth far more than those in Paris.

I am writing today to Bebel.[3] I will tell him of your ultimatum, but for the moment only as your personal opinion.

  1. ↑ If you don't cool it, you'll not be able to drink it.
  2. ↑ The following sentence is crossed out in the draft: 'The article by Bebel has probably gone to press already, if in Paris they wanted to prevent it.'
  3. ↑ See next letter.