Marx-Engels Correspondence 1859
Source: MECW Volume 40, p. 393;
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, Moscow, 1929.
Dear Engels,
Po and Rhine is a first-class idea and must be put in hand straight away. You must set to at once, time being everything in this case. I have written to Lassalle this very day and am sure that little Jew Braun will put the thing through.
The pamphlet (how many sheets? Let me have the answer to this by return) must first appear anonymously so that the public believes the author to be an eminent general. In the second edition, which you may account a certainty provided the thing comes out on time, you will reveal your identity in a 6-line foreword, and then it will be a triumph for our party. In my ‘Preface’ I have done you a few honneurs; and thus it is all to the good if you yourself take the stage immediately afterwards.
Those dogs of democrats and liberal riff-raff will see that we're the only chaps who haven’t been stultified by the ghastly period of peace.
In any case, you'll get the copies of the Tribune. Not one of the military articles has so far been published. Mr Dana didn’t print the first, which you wrote a long time ago, but will probably do so now. I too constantly experience the like. It’s often three months before the asses discover that we've foretold events for them, whereupon they print the relevant articles.
My brother-in-law’s address is correct save that he forgot to add ‘City (near the General Post Office)’. But I imagine he'll be in Manchester by now and able to tell you about himself.
Salut.
Your
K. M.