timately
associated with Marx. Possessed of remarkable intellectual gifts and an
easy conscience, Bucher was of invaluable service to Bismarck, both in
his knowledge of the inside workings of the labor and socialist movement
and as a go-between when the Iron Chancellor had any dealings with the
socialists. Through Bucher, Bismarck tried to bribe even Marx, and
offered him a position on the Government official newspaper, the _Staats
Anzeiger_. Bucher was also an intimate friend of Lassalle's, and it was
doubtless through him that Bismarck arranged his secret conferences with
Lassalle. The latter left no account of their relations, and it is
difficult now to know how intimate they were or who first sought to
establish them. About all that is known is what Bismarck himself said in
the Reichstag when Bebel forced him to admit that he had conferred
frequently with Lassalle: "Lassalle himself wanted urgently to enter
into negotiations with me."[20] It is known that Lassalle sent to the
Chancellor numerous communications, and that one of his letters to the
secretary of the Universal Association reads, "The things sent to
Bismarck should go in an envelope" marked "Personal."[21] Liebknecht
later exposed August Brass as in the employ of Bismarck, although he was
a "red republican," who had started a journal and had obtained
Liebknecht's cooeperation. Furthermore, when he was tried for high
treason in 1872, Liebknecht declared that Bismarck's agents had tried to
buy him. "Bismarck takes not only money, but also men, where he finds
them. It does not matter to what party a man belongs. That is immaterial
to him. He even prefers renegades, for a renegade is a man without honor
and, consequently, an instrument without will power--as if dead--in the
hands of the master."[22] "I do not need to say ... that I repelled
Bismarck's offers of corruption with the scorn which they merited,"
Liebknecht continues. "If I had not done so, if I had been infamous
enough to sacrifice my principles to my personal interest, I would be in
a brilliant position, instead of on the bench of the accused where I
have been sent by those who, years ago, tried in vain to buy me."[23] As
early as 1865 Marx and Engels had to withdraw from their collaboration
with Von Schweitzer in his journal, the _Sozialdemokrat_, because it was
suspected that he had sold out to Bismarck. This was followed by Bebel's
and Liebknecht's war on Von Schweitzer because of his relations