Written March/early April 1893.
According to the May Day commemorative publication of the “Arbeiter-Zeitung” publishing house, Vienna, 1893.

London.

I have been asked to address a few words to the Austrian comrades in their May Day newspaper. What can I tell them? How one must celebrate a first of May they know better than I do. They have proved that from the very beginning. Since 1890, the Austrian workers have shown their brothers in all other countries, year after year, what a genuine May Day celebration in the spirit of the proletariat is. Nowhere has anyone been able to equal them, or even merely to imitate them.

In point of fact, the celebration of the first of May in Austria has a far greater significance than elsewhere. In Germany, in 1890, one could point to the Reichstag elections that had just been held, which were such a magnificent review of the militant German working class that any May Day celebration appeared pale beside it. In France, the municipal elections based on universal suffrage fell on the first of May 1892, bringing the workers colossal victories as well; here it was a matter of working for the cause of the proletariat on the first of May, not of celebrating. But in Austria the workers still have no suffrage, and as for the state of their press freedom and their right of association and assembly, Herr Ministerialrat Freiherr von Czapka can provide information on that if asked in the Reichsrat. And that is why the Austrian workers are right, and always right, when they insist, under all circumstances, on their strictly observed May Day celebration. For the workers of other countries this celebration is a predominantly international affair; it may therefore happen that, owing to peculiar domestic circumstances, it has to take second place. For the Austrians it is not only an international affair, but also, and perhaps predominantly, a domestic one, and therefore, for them, it always and unconditionally occupies first place.

May it proceed this year as brilliantly as it has done hitherto.