The Marx He Knew | Page 7

and loved, but
only Marx, the great leader and teacher, with a thousand heavy
problems burdening his mind. But the Marx that I knew--my friend
Karl--was human, boy, very human. He could sing a song, tell a good
story, and enjoy a joke, even at his own expense."
A smile lit up the face of the Young Comrade. "I'm so glad of that,
Hans," he said. "I've always been told that he was a sad man, without a
sense of humor; that he was never known to unbend from his stiff
gravity. But you say that he was not so; that he could laugh and joke
and sing: I like him better so."
Old Hans seemed not to hear the words of the Young Comrade, though
he was silent while they were spoken. A faint smile played around his
lips, and the far-away expression of his eyes told that the smile
belonged to the memory of other days. It was dark now in the little
shop; only the flickering light of the fitful fire in the tiny grate enabled
the Young Comrade to see his friend.
It was the Young Comrade who broke the silence at last: "Tell me more,
Hans, for I am still hungry to learn about him."
The old man nodded and turned to put some chips upon the fire in the
grate. Then he continued:
"It was about the last of February, 1848, that we got the first copies of
the Communist Manifesto at Cologne. Only a day or two before that we
had news of the outbreak of the Revolution in Paris. I have still my
copy of the Manifesto which Karl sent me from Paris.
"You see, he had been expelled from Brussels by order of the

Government. Prussia had requested this, so Karl wrote me, and he was
arrested and ordered to leave Belgium at once. So he went at once to
Paris. Only a week before that the Provisional Government had sent
him an official invitation to come back to the city from which Guizot
had expelled him. It was like a conqueror that he went, you may
imagine.
"Boy, you can never understand what we felt in those days. Things are
not so any more. We all thought that the day of our victory was surely
nigh. Karl had made us believe that when things started in France the
proletariat of all Europe would awaken: 'When the Gallican cock crows
the German workers will rise,' he used to say. And now the cock's
crowing had been heard! The Revolution was successful in France--so
we thought--and the people were planting trees of liberty along the
boulevards.
"Here in England, too, the Spirit of the Revolution was abroad with her
flaming torch. The Chartists had come together, and every day we
expected to hear that the monarchy had been overthrown and a Social
Republic established. Of course, we knew that Chartism was a 'bread
and butter question' at the bottom, and that the Chartists' cause was
ours.
"Well, now that we had heard the Gallican cock, we wanted to get
things started in Germany, too. Every night we held meetings at the
club in Cologne to discuss the situation. Some of us wanted to begin
war at once. You see, the Revolution was in our blood like strong wine:
we were drunk with the spirit, lad.
"When Karl wrote that we must wait, that we must have patience, there
was great disappointment. We thought that we should begin at once,
and there were some who said that Karl was afraid, but I knew that they
were wrong, and told them so. There was a fierce discussion at the
meeting one night over a letter which I had received from Karl, and
which he wanted me to read to the members.
"George Herwegh was in Paris, so the letter said, and was trying hard
to raise a legion of German workingmen to march into the Fatherland

and begin the fight. This, Karl said, was a terrible mistake. It was
useless, to begin with, for what could such a legion of tailors and
cigarmakers and weavers do against the Prussian army? It was plain
that the legion would be annihilated. Besides, it would hurt the cause in
another way by taking out of Paris thousands of good revolutionists
who were needed there.
"'Tell the comrades,' he wrote, 'that it is not a question of cowardice or
fear, but of wisdom. It takes more courage to live for the long struggle
than to go out and be shot.' He wanted the comrades to wait patiently
and to do all they could to persuade their friends in Paris not to follow
Herwegh's advice. Most of the Germans in Paris followed Karl's advice,
but a few followed Herwegh and marched