Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/564



ENTLEMEN:—You have asked me in your letter to express my opinion, in any way that seems suitable to me, on the workingmen's movement and the means which it should use to attain an improvement of the condition of the working class in political, material, and intellectual matters—especially on the value of associations for the class of people who have no property.

I have no hesitation in following your wishes, and I choose the form which is simplest and most suitable to the nature of the matter—the form of a public letter of reply to your communication.

Last October in Berlin, at a time when I was absent from here, during your first preliminary discussion concerning the German Workingmen's Congress—a discussion which I followed in the newspapers with interest—two opposing views were brought forward in the meeting.

One was to the effect that you have no concern whatever with political agitation and that it has no interest for you.

The other, in distinction from this, was that you were to consider yourselves an appendix to the Prussian Progressive party, and to furnish a sort of characterless chorus or sounding-board for it.

If I had attended that meeting, I should have expressed myself against both views. It is utterly narrow-minded to