Accept my heartiest thanks for your friendly invitation to the 
tenth anniversary celebrations for the Volksfreund. Unfortunately I 
shall be unable to come myself, since my work on the third volume 
of Marx’s Capital, which must finally be published, keeps me here. 
These lines must represent me. 

I can however congratulate you heartily on this momentous 
occasion. I know what it costs to keep alive a militant Social 
Democratic paper like the Volksfreund for ten years under the 
Austrian press and police laws, and I know too, at least in general, 
the sacrifices which have had to be made to do this. That you have 
succeeded despite everything is all the more praiseworthy as the 
Austrian press laws, drafted in realisation that by and large the 
organs of the propertied classes are not dangerous, appear to aim 
at ruining or taming the workers’ papers by pressure upon their 
financial resources. And therefore, if the workers of Brünn have 
managed, despite this financial pressure, to maintain their paper 
for ten years without in any way denying their banner, this is once 
again proof of the tenacity and readiness for sacrifice which is to 
be found today only amongst the workers. 

I cannot end this letter without expressing once again my 
pleasure that, while young Czech?” and old German bourgeois are 
everywhere at loggerheads, the Czech and German workers are 
fighting united, shoulder to shoulder, for the liberation of the 
entire proletariat. 

Once again, heartiest thanks and best wishes from your old 

Fr. Engels 
No. 22, November 25, 1891 paper, checked with the rough 

manuscript