Engels on International May Day. In his preface to the fourth German edition of the ‘Communist Manifesto’, which he wrote on May 1, 1890, Engels, reviewing the history of the international proletarian organizations, calls attention to the significance of the first International May Day: “As I write these lines, the proletariat of Europe and America il holding a review of its forces; it is mobilized for the first time as One army, under One flag, and fighting One immediate aim: an eight-hour working day, established by legal enactment… The spectacle we are now witnessing will make the capitalists and landowners of all lands realize that today the proletarian of all lands are, in very truth, united. Il only Marx were with me to see it with his own eyes!”. The significance of simultaneous international proletarian demonstration was appealing more and more to the imagination and revolutionary instincts of the workers throughout the world, and every year witnessed greater masses participating in the demonstrations. The response of the workers showed itself in the following addition to the May First resolution adopted at the 1893 Congress of the International at Zurich at which Engels was present. “The demonstration on May First for the 8-hour day must serve at the same time as a demonstration of the determined will of the working class to destroy class distinctions through social change and thus enter on the road, the only road leading to pace for all peoples, to international peace””  [Alexander Trachtenberg, History of May Day, 1947]