Page:Karl Kautsky - Frederick Engels - 1899.djvu/18

 Through the knitting firm "Ermen & Engels" his name became familiar to many working women who knew nothing of his labors for the working class.

Twenty years the two friends were separated except for short intervals, but their intellectual intercourse was unbroken. Almost every day they wrote to each other and exchanged views on events in the sphere of politics, economics and science. This correspondence still exists. When it is published it will constitute one of the most important sources for understanding the time from 1850 to 1870.

In Manchester Engels continued his studies along with his business. In the first place he worked on military history and science. The campaign of 1849 had shown to him the absolute necessity for such a work, and his service as a volunteer in the artillery gave him a practical foundation for his studies. Aside from this he busied himself with comparative philology—always his favorite study—and with natural science. During the Italian war of 1859 he published anonymously a military pamphlet—"The Po and the Rhine"—wherein, on the one hand, he opposed the Austrian theory that the Rhine must be defended on the Po, and, on the other hand, the "little German" Prussian Liberals, who rejoiced over the downfall of Austria, and did not realize that Napoleon was the common enemy. A second pamphlet, similar in its contents—"Savoy, Nice and the Rhine"—followed after the war. During the Prussian military conflict of 1865 he published another pamphlet called "The Prussian Military Question and the German Labor Party," wherein the opposition and half-heartedness of the Liberals and Radicals were exposed and criticised. It was set forth that an actual solution of the military problem as well as of all other serious questions could only be attained through the Labor Party. During the Franco-Prussian war he wrote a series of military articles for the London Pall Mall Gazette, wherein he was so fortunate as to prophesy on the 25th of August the battle of Sedan and the defeat of the French, which took place on September 2d.

If there had already been a division of labor in the studies of Marx and Engels, this division took on a peculiar character after Engels' removal to London in 1870. While Marx proceeded to work out systematically the fundamental theories for the scientific world, Engels took up the task of, on the one hand, sending out polemics whenever he found opponents worthy of his efforts, and on the other hand of treating