Our European Letter.

[From Liberty's Special Correspondent.]

ROTTERDAM, Holland, August 20. - How they turn and twist! How they try to laugh and ridicule in order to dissimulate their freight, whistling, like a boy in a dark room, to keep up their courage, our good bourgeois souls!

In spite of all their noisy contempt, - too noisy to be sincere, - our Congress must have given them a very serious bellyache, for they trumpet through all their newspapers that "the English government is not making earnest inquiries about the number and names of the delegates to the late Revolutionary Congress, in order to commence a prosecution against them." Well, up to to-day, the Dutch have never hanged anyone before catching them; neither, I suppose, have the English.

The reconstitution of the "International" was, at all events, a splendid stroke. New sections and groups are sending in their adhesions with astonishing rapidity. We expect that the United States, so ably represented at the Congress, will soon show that the hopes now inspiring the whole proletarian world anew with confidence and courage find a hearty echo within their borders. I submit to you the idea of an American Congress for the constitution of a national organization on that basis of, and in harmony with, the ideas of the "International." I consider this of vital importance and of little difficulty, the more so, as you have now "Liberty" a new organ at your disposition.

By the way, curious news comes by cable over the big pond from your "free country." Hartmann - missing? Vanishing before the brawling of a few stupid five-cents-a-columners? Indeed, I rated his courage higher; for, without doubt, there was and is no danger that the United States would deliver a political refugee over to Russia. And even should its government be so hypocritical, so infamous, so base, there is still something besides the government, namely, the people, who would never allow the perpetration of so monstrous a villainy. Hartmann, by this inconsiderate act, made himself ridiculous, a very bad sequel to the seven columns of "revelations" in the "New York Herald," which were not altogether to the taste of his friends in Europe. When the cruel and heartless war of European governments forces us to these inevitable and only means of resistance, we use them, considering them as a sacred right; but we use them always with a deep regret that they are the only ones, and never try to achieve notoriety for courage or intrepidity by telling our story to urbi et orbi.

Germany and France are now in full electoral agitation. A curious phenomenon in the former country is that fact that, for the first time, the elections will have a purely economical background, and that the old political parties are decomposing to make room for a new, economical organization. The formation of an anti-semitic party is based on reasons purely economical. The agitation is not directed against the Jewish religion, that having nothing to do with it. This stratagem, low and vile as it is, was one of Bismarck's master-strokes. The masses are always fond of seeking the cause of their misery in a positive being, in a visible, existing person, instead of in the system of exploitation itself. The misery and poverty which in some German provinces, by the ridiculous and disastrous financial schemes of Bismarck, have reached their highest point, must now find an object against which to direct their growing dissatisfaction. If they should find out the real cause, the State would be lost; therefore it must be the Jews. The Social Democrats, who, in the late parliament, had thirteen seats, will get this time only three or four, at the utmost, five. Some of their constituents have gone to the Progressist and liberal bourgeois parties, but the larger part, appreciating at last the delusion of suffrage, will abstain from voting, and intend to store up their election tickets to serve at the proper time - which they await none too patiently - as wadding for their rifles.

I am able to give you the first announcement of an important piece of news. When you receive this letter, the first number of the clandestine German periodical, "Der Kampf" (The Fight), printed in Germany itself on the secret press of the Executive Committee, will have appeared. This is the first step in the line of the new tactics, political and economical terrorism, - the first sign of the life of a new element in German socialistic agitation, to be soon followed by a series of acts.

The high court of Berlin gave its decision this week in the famous "high treason" process against forty-four of our friends. About thirty were discharged after nine months of detention, some were sent down to lower courts, and eleven are spared for the final trial in October. There is another process for high treason against fourteen persons, the result of which will be awaited by them with all tranquility of the soul, for they had the impoliteness not to accept the invitation of the Prussian government to appear, preferring to remain at London and Paris. Bismarck's satisfaction will therefore be most platonic in its nature.