From the French.

["Le Socialiste" Nr. 14 vom 25. Dezember 1890]

Citizens,

I thank you heartily for your kind congratulations on my seventieth birthday.

Rest assured, what life and strength remain to me will be expended in the struggle for the proletarian cause. May it be granted to me to die at the moment when I am no longer fit for the struggle.

But the battles won by you and by our brothers in Germany, England, Austria-Hungary, Russia, in short, everywhere, form a brilliant series of victories that would suffice to rejuvenate an older and more exhausted man than myself. And what delights me most is the sincere brotherhood between the French and German proletarians, established, as I hope, for ever, despite the chauvinist clamour of our corrupt bourgeoisies.

Your great countryman Simon was the first to foresee that the alliance of the three great western nations – France, England and Germany – is the primary international condition for the political and social emancipation of the whole of Europe. This alliance, the core of the European alliance that will put an end to cabinet and dynastic wars for ever, I hope to see realised by the proletarians of the three nations.

Long live the international social revolution!

London, 2 December 1890
Friedrich Engels