The Marx He Knew | Page 7

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 into Baden later on, to be scattered by the regular troops as chaff is scattered by the wind.
"The German comrades in Paris sent us a special manifesto, which Karl wrote, and we were asked to distribute it among the working people. That would be a good way to educate the workers, Karl wrote to our committee, but I tell you it seemed a very small thing to do in those trying times, and it didn't satisfy the comrades who were demanding more radical revolutionary action. Why, even I seemed to forget Karl's advice for a little while.
"On the 13th of March--you'll remember that was the day on which more