[Draft] 
[London, 26 June 1891] 

Dear Adler, 

I would request you to pass on to the conveners of the Austrian So- 
cial-Democratic Party’s Second Congress my sincere thanks for their 
kind invitation to this your party congress and to convey to them my 
regrets at being unable to attend in person as also my best wishes for 
a successful outcome to the proceedings. 

Since Hainfeld, when the Austrian Workers’ Party came into its 
own again, you have made immense progress. That is the best guar- 
antee that your Second Party Congress will be the point of departure 
for even more significant triumphs. 

How invincible is our party’s inner strength is evident not only 
from the rapid succession of external victories, not only from the fact 
that last year in Germany, just as this year in Austria, it overcame the 
state of emergency. 7°? This, its strength, is even more evident in the 
party’s ability in every country to surmount obstacles and accomplish 
things in the face of which the other parties, who are recruited from 

* It’s a beautiful town, I know it—have you learnt how to talk like the Milanese? 

the propertied classes, are helplessly halted in their tracks. While the 
propertied classes in France are engaged in an implacable struggle 
with the propertied classes in Germany, French and German Social- 
Democrats work hand in hand in full accord. And while in Austria 
the propertied classes in the various Crown Lands are forfeiting, in 
the mindless squabble over nationalities, the last vestige of their com- 
petence to rule, your Second Party Congress will project a picture of 
an Austria in which the squabble over nationalities is a thing of the 

past, of the Austria—of the working people. ?°°