[Draft] 
[London, after 21 October 1894] 

Dear citizen Vandervelde, 

Allow me to express my congratulations to you personally on your elec- 
tion, and also to our Belgian comrades in general on their splendid successes 
these last two Sundays. *'* This second victory of the Belgian proletariat is of 
great importance for us all.° Small countries such as Belgium and 
Switzerland are our modern political laboratories, the testing ground 

* ruin - ° The following phrase is crossed out by Engels: “If a small country like yours is not 
destined to resolve the great problems of our epoch on its own...” 

where experiments are carried out which can be later applied to the large 
states. It is often from these small countries that there comes the first impulse 
of a movement destined to overturn Europe. Thus, before the February 
revolution,’ there was the Swiss war of the Sonderbund. °” 

At the moment we are, it seems to me, in a period of high tide, a period 
which dates from the suffrage victory of the Belgian workers. *” After 
Belgium, Austria joined the suffrage movement; following Austria, pro- 
letarian Germany has just requested that universal suffrage be extended from 
the Reichstag to the parliaments of the federal states. The repressive laws 
launched against the worker parties in France **’ and Italy, *°' similar laws 
being prepared in Germany, will have no more success than the violent 
measures of the Austrian government. Today the socialist movement 
everywhere is more powerful than the so-called public force.” 

As for the Belgian workers, 14" October assures them an even stronger 
position. For the first time they have learned to know precisely their own 
forces and those of the enemy; thus henceforth they will be able to base their 
tactical decisions on knowledge of the situation; and you and the other 
socialist representatives will be able to raise your heads still higher, and will 
be listened to with considerably more attention following official recognition 
of the fact that you are the mouthpiece of 350,000 Belgian citizens. It is with 
you that the Belgian proletariat is making its ‘joyous entry’ into parliament, 
an entry that is joyous not only for you, but for the proletarians of the whole 
of Europe!