CALUMNIATING . MARX [To the Editor of TI:m SPECTATOR.]
Sta,_—No finer example of the workings of petty prejudice could be provided. than a sentence in Mr. Ensor's review of Mr. E. Carr's biography of Karl ,Marx.
Mr, Ensor says " he was, a bad son-to both his parents, and his later references to: his mother-Mins letters are hopes that .she may die that money. may come to him," Mr. Ensor has • invented these references, but the stimulus,. .this ridiculous calumny is interesting. The .biographer, quotes, on page. 93 of his book; from a .letter frern. MiurN to-Engels, in which he
• first says he has had no remittance from his mother in accor-
• dancekwith•an earlier prornise,.and then goes on to say : " The . only good news; war. have conies from my sister-in-law, the minister's wife, who announces that my wife's uncle is ill at last. If the hound dies now, I am out of the mess."
When one remembers.that-the biographer of Marx through- out his work shows prejudice, and distorts systematically in . order to darken the character of Marx, one is better able to realize that even in this quotation which has served as sugges- tion for Mr. Ensor's calumny, one has- a false picture. In the first place the prominence given to such a trifling passage from one of Marx's private letters is lamentable, and, in the second place the typical ironical and jocular tone of Marx's letter is coloured differently by turning the phrase " if the dog " into " if the hound."—I am, Sir, &c., ALEC BROWN, Fressingfiekl, near Diss, Nwfolk.
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