... As for subscriptions to your essay,  I shall do all I possibly can, but expect little success. The ragtag and bobtail that make up the various societies with the exception of the Workers Educational Association which has no funds whatever are all constitutionally disposed, and even favour the Prussian National Association.  Those fellows would rather give money to suppress an essay like yours. I must tell you, these Germans, young and old, are all very clever, robust, prudent and practical men; they consider people like you and me immature fools who have still not been cured of their revolutionary fantasies. And that riff-raff is as bad at home as it is here abroad. During my stay in Berlin and elsewhere I convinced myself that any attempt to influence that mob by means of literature was absolutely futile. The self-complacent stupidity of those fellows, who regard their press, that woebegone press, as an admirable elixir of life, is simply incredible. Add to this that mental lassitude: caning is the only means to resurrect the ordinary German who, ever since he lost his philosophical illusions and took to moneymaking, and moreover to the idea of Little Germany and practical constitutionalism , has become a superficial impulsive clown...
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1862