Paris and the Social Revolution
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Title: Paris and the Social Revolution
Author: Alvan F. Sanborn
Illustrator: Vaughan Trowbridge
Release date: September 25, 2012 [eBook #40865]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PARIS AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION ***
PARIS AND THE
SOCIAL REVOLUTION
[Illustration: SELLERS OF CHANSONS
“_They teach their motley audiences to sing
the songs they have the wit to sell them._”]
[Illustration: Title page]
_The consequence is, being of no party,
I shall offend all parties; never mind!_
LORD BYRON.
_I have no mockings or arguments
I witness and wait._
WALT WHITMAN.
PARIS AND THE
SOCIAL REVOLUTION
A STUDY OF
THE REVOLUTIONARY ELEMENTS IN THE
VARIOUS CLASSES OF PARISIAN SOCIETY
BY
ALVAN FRANCIS SANBORN
With Illustrative Drawings By
VAUGHAN TROWBRIDGE
[Illustration: Printer’s Mark]
BOSTON
SMALL MAYNARD & COMPANY
MCMV
_Copyright, 1905, by
Small Maynard & Company
Incorporated_
_Entered at Stationers’ Hall_
_Press of
Geo. H. Ellis Co.
Boston, U.S.A._
TO THE
PROLETARIAT OF AMERICA
THIS BOOK IS
REVERENTLY INSCRIBED
PREFACE
_It was the author’s original intention to let this book make shift
without the conventional preface, as befitted the unconventionality of
its theme. But he has learned since it was begun—what it was very
stupid of him not to have known at the outset—that in the matter of
heresies, ethical, social, and political as well as theological,
interest is bound to pass for approval, explanation for advocacy, and
sympathy, be it ever so slight, for profound belief: as if a man who
showed a curiosity about and appreciation of dogs should, by that very
fact, become a dog; or as if (since there may seem to be an unfortunate
implication of contempt in this illustration) a German who attempted to
expound honestly English temperament, opinions, and traditions should,
by that very fact, become an Englishman._
_Once for all, then, the author is not a_ revolutionist, _though there
are moments when he fancies he would like to be one, it appears such an
eminently satisfying state. It takes faith to be a revolutionist; and he
is, alas! mentally incapable of faith. He is not an anarchist, not a
socialist, not a radical, not a “red republican,” nor a_ “mangeur de
prêtres.” _His affiliations have not been even_ Dreyfusard _in France,
nor even Bryanite in America. He is a conservative of the conservatives,
only prevented from being a reactionary by the fact that reaction is but
another form of revolution, and the most hopeless and faith-exacting of
them all. So far from being a revolutionist, he is an evolutionist only
under protest_,—vi et armis, _as it were. He favours things as they
are, things as they were quite as often, while things as they might be
contain for him no allure. He cherishes enormously this imperfect old
world as it is, still more as it was; has not the slightest desire to
reconstruct it after his own formula, and would not willingly exchange
it for any hypothetical world which, up to the present hour, restless
human ingenuity has devised._
_He is “naturally beforehand shy of novelties, new books, new faces, new
years,” and is “sanguine only in the prospects of other [former] years.”
He likes old cabinets, old comedies, old prints, old stuffs, old pipes,
old wine, old ships, old trees, old shoes, old friends, old customs, old
crotchets, and old ladies._
_He prefers infinitely—it is very wrong and foolish, perhaps, but he
cannot help it—ancient hostelries to modern hotels, spontaneous
neighbourliness to organised benevolence, fireplaces to furnace-heaters,
and waving meadows to close-cropped lawns; a blooded aristocrat to a
social struggler, a patriot to a cosmopolite, a brave drinker to a total
abstinence apostle, an illiterate Breton peasant to the “smart” product
of improved schools, a mediæval cloister to a free-thinker’s hall, and
an easy-going priest to a nervous sceptic; beauty to utility,
superstition to science, ritual to plain sense. A uniform appeals to him
more than a business suit, a coquettish gown more than the most advanced
hygienic bloomer, a solicitous mother and competent housewife more than
a brilliant club woman. He finds more satisfaction in old-fashioned,
comfortable ideas than in disquieting progressive ones. He would quite
as soon be domineered over by a noble as by a parvenu or a pot-house
politician, and is less shocked by the colossal pretensions of a pope
than by the puerile bumptiousness of a small-minded clergyman. He
deplores railways, trolleys, bicycles, automobiles, and compulsory
education, because they all tend to destroy native dialects, customs,
and costumes, obliterate all local colour, and so render lands far
separated dully alike. He resents the presumptuousness of that Reason
which is so seldom reasonable, and would not shed a tear nor distil a
regret if telephones, telegraphs, and psychical research were swept off
the face of the earth._
_He is well aware, therefore, that there is good to be said of
time-honoured institutions: of the state; of the army, the church, and
the courts of law, the props of the state; and of capitalists, the pets
and protégés of the state. On occasion he could write a fervid defence
of each and every one of these established things. But he is equally
aware that there is good to be said of the conscientious opponents of
the state, its props and its protégés. To say this good is his present
business; and, if he seems to bend over backward sometimes in saying it,
it should be borne in mind that they also have bent over backward—nay,
turned double somersaults backward—who, prompted by terror, prejudice,
intolerance, hatred, or contempt, have pronounced unqualified
condemnation on the consecrated antagonists of things as they are; and
it should at least be queried whether his indiscretions may not be
excused (if not altogether justified) thereby._
_No, the author is not a revolutionist, but he is acquainted with plenty
of good fellows who are. “He has eaten their bread and salt; he has
drunk their water and wine.” He has taken pot-luck with them, witnessed
their privations, and listened to the telling of their dreams. He thinks
he comprehends them, he knows he loves them, and he would present them
as he has found them to the world._
_This attitude will be understood by all who really believe in fair
play, in giving every man his innings and the devil his due; who can
admit merits equally in Christians and Pagans, Jesuits and Agnostics,
Classicists and Romanticists, Greeks and Goths; who admire a beau geste
alike in missionary and filibuster, condottiere and crusader, martyr and
toreador, pirate and king,—in a Jeanne d’Arc and a Ravaillac, a
Kitchener and a Joubert, a Sheridan and a Mosby, a Dewey and an
Aguinaldo, a Hobson and a Cervera, a Makaroff and a Uryu, a Napoleon and
a Musolino, a Richard Cœur de Lion and a Robin Hood, a Nelson and a
Cambronne. It will be understood by all those who appreciate a joke,
even when it turns against themselves; who recognise the nobility of
straight thinking and bold speaking, the sublimity of high passion, the
regenerating force of righteous resentment and stubborn resistance, and
the holiness of self-sacrifice for an ideal; who have a faculty for
putting themselves in other men’s places or have learned the hard lesson
of calling no thing “common or unclean”; who love men because they are
men, serve women because they are women, compassionate suffering because
it is suffering, reverence him who hath much struggled to no apparent
purpose, and pardon much, like the Christ, to him who hath much loved._
_That these persons are the few does not seriously matter. It is a great
thing to be understood by a few._
ALVAN F. SANBORN.
PARIS, JANUARY, 1905.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. What the Anarchist Wants 5
_Suggestions of the beginnings of anarchistic philosophy and
of the history of the development of anarchy—The contemporary
French Encyclopedists, Pierre Kropotkine, Elisée Reclus, and
Jean Grave—The introductory chapter of Jean Grave’s_
L’Anarchie: son But, ses Moyens, _selected as the best
exposition of the French anarchistic doctrine—Current
misconceptions of anarchy—The rational bases of anarchy—The
reasons for its opposition to laws and to governments—The
anarchistic ideal_ “l’individu libre dans l’humanité
libre.”—_Development of the physical, intellectual, and moral
nature of the individual necessary to attain this
ideal—Freedom to satisfy all physical, intellectual, and moral
needs a necessity—The freedom of the soil the first
prerequisite, after that the freedom of the domain of
knowledge and art—Anarchy frankly international—Its demands
for absolute liberty in the domain of thought as in that of
deeds—Its utopianism denied._
II. The Oral Propaganda of Anarchy 25
_The simplest, most natural form of propaganda, telling
one’s faith to one’s neighbours—The group the unit of
public oral propaganda—Characteristics of the group, its
meetings, its statistics, its autonomy—Federations and
congresses—Communication between groups—Union meetings
of groups—Anarchist mass-meetings_—Punchs-conférences
and soupes-conférences—Ballades de propagande—Déjeuners
végétariens—_Amateur theatricals—The_ Maison du Peuple—Soirée
familiale—_The_ trimardeur—_The_ chanson _as a means of
propaganda, with examples of revolutionary chansons._
III. The Written Propaganda of Anarchy 61
_The anarchist press,_ Le Journal du Peuple, Les Plébéiennes,
Le Libertaire—_Jean Grave and_ Les Temps Nouveaux—_The press
as a means of intercommunication between the_ camarades, _the_
trimardeurs, _and the groups_—L’Education Libertaire—_Amateur
papers—Ephemeral character of the anarchist press_—Le Père
Peinard _and its editors—Anarchist almanacks—Financial
difficulties of the anarchist press and methods of raising
funds—Difficulties encountered in publication and
circulation_—“Les Lois Scélérates”—_Placards and fliers—Paul
Robin and his system of_ éducation intégrale—Le Collège
Libertaire—_The study of the masters and of their forerunners
and disciples—Popular editions of great writers who tend
towards anarchy—Violent brochures._
IV. The Propaganda of Anarchy by Example 91
_Thoreau and Garrison as precursors of the anarchistic
attitude—Tolstoy on the propaganda by example—Its
importance—Practicable and impracticable acts of this
form of propaganda—Octave Mirbeau on depopulation—Pierre
Lavroff on propaganda by example—Anarchist
experiment stations and reasons for their failure—The
attitude of anarchists towards trade-unionism_—La grève
universelle—_The attitude of anarchists towards
co-operation_—La pan-coopération.
V. The Propaganda of Anarchy _par le Fait_ 105
_Lack of unanimity among French anarchists regarding this
method of propaganda—The emergence into public prominence of
the insurrectional idea—César de Paepe’s speech at the Geneva
Peace Congress of 1867—Declaration of the_ Fédération
Italienne—_Insurrections at Letino and San Galo,
Italy—Utterances at the Congresses of Fribourg and of the_
Fédération Jurasienne—_Distinction between the individual
overt act when directed against an official of the state and
when directed against an individual member of the_
bourgeoisie—_The latter acts disapproved by the majority of
anarchists—Elisée Reclus on this subject—The attitude of_ Les
Temps Nouveaux—_Zo d’Axa on the overt acts of
Ravachol—Statistics of the victims of anarchists—Reasons for
the alarm excited by the propaganda_ par le fait—_Some humorous
features of the panic during the period of “The Terror”—Theft
as a form of propaganda par_ le fait—_Charles Malato and Jean
Grave on this subject—Cases of Clément Duval and Pini—Extent
of anarchist thefts—Counterfeiting—Case of L’Abruti._
VI. The Causes of Propaganda _par le Fait_ 131
_Desire for vengeance the cause of the greater part of the
overt acts of anarchists—The death of Watrin—Such acts proceed
mainly from those who have suffered injustice either in their
own person or in that of those near to them—The cases of
Duval, Pini, Dardare, Decamp, Léveillé, Rulliers, Pedduzi,
Ravachol, Lorion, Vaillant, Etievant, Salsou—Zo d’Axa on the
police_ rafle _of April, 1892—Recent questionable repressive
measures—Collusion of state officials and police to turn
revolutionary disturbances to selfish ends—Legality often
strained by the government in its repressive measures—Overt
acts almost never the result of conspiracy—Belief in his
“mission” of the propagandist_ par le fait—_The_ stigmata _of this
vocation—Testimony of Björnson, Zola, and other
writers—Stimulating effect of the executions of anarchists
upon anarchist fanaticism—Sympathy of many who are not
anarchists excited by overstraining of legal forms and undue
severity in repressive measures—The apotheosis of
Vaillant—Anarchist anniversaries—Why so many violent
anarchists are Italians—England’s immunity from overt
anarchist acts—The futility of repressing the free expression
of violent ideas—The case of Laurent Tailhade._
VII. The Character of the Propagandist par le Fait 155
_The salient traits of the anarchist character—The average
psychic type of the anarchist as indicated by A.
Hamon—Personal character of Ravachol, Pini, Duval,
Faugoux, Salsou—The anarchist’s abhorrence of cruelty
to animals—The propagandist_ par le fait _rarely a worthless
fellow—Frugality and domestic virtues of prominent
anarchist criminals—Personal courage of this type, with
notable examples._
VIII. Socialists and Other Revolutionists 167
_Revolutionary and evolutionary socialists—Radical differences
between theoretic socialism and anarchism—Practical aims
common to both—Similarity in methods of propaganda—Union of
anarchists and socialists against common enemies in troubled
periods—Similarity in attitude of both towards trade-unionism
and co-operation—Revolutionary tendencies of royalists,
imperialists, anti-Semites, and nationalists—Déroulède’s
proclamation to his electors—Anarchist approval of Jules
Guérin’s defence of “Fort Chabrol.”_
IX. The Revolutionary Traditions of the Latin Quarter 177
_The Sorbonne as a centre of epoch-making
thought—Abélard—Richness of the Latin Quarter in souvenirs of
intellectual and political revolution—Latin Quarter martyrs of
revolutionary thinking—Periods of cringing on the part of the
university the exception—The lawless student life of the
Middle Ages—The students in the time of Louis XIV.—The cafés
and cabarets as revolutionary agents—The conflict between
Romanticists and Classicists at the beginning of the
nineteenth century—The part played by the students in the
revolutions of_ 1830 _and_ 1848—_The student protest against the_
coup d’état _of the third Napoleon—The students as a
revolutionary force under the Second Empire—Vallès, Gambetta,
Vermesch, Blanqui, Rochefort—The students and the Commune—The
relation of the Latin Quarter cafés and cabarets to the
Commune—Love of laughter, love of liberty, and love of love
the three characteristic traits of the spirit of the Latin
Quarter._
X. The Revolutionary Spirit in the Latin Quarter of To-day 189
_The alleged decadence of the spirit of the Latin Quarter—The
truth and the falsity of the charge—Differences in the
present-day manifestation of the three characteristic traits
of the spirit of the Quarter—The dress and manners of students
of to-day—The contemporary_ grisette—_The anniversary of
Mürger—The real student cafés and cabarets—The student
publications—The_ cénacles _of the Quarter—The present hour
primarily a period of transition, the student of to-day
seeking his way—Revolutionary thought well represented in the
university faculties—Student outbreaks during the last thirty
years._
XI. Bohemians of the Latin Quarter 207
_Bohemians by choice—Those not attached to the university who
inhabit the Latin Quarter for the sake of its advantages, from
affection, or from force of habit—A typical example—Henri
Pille, Maurice Bouchor, Jean Richepin, Paul Bourget_—“Les
Vivants”—_Bohemians from necessity—Renegades from the
Bohemianism of the Quarter—Clovis Hugues on the sacrifice of
long hair—Two types of_ “moutons”—_Ways and means of the
Bohemians—Their hardships—The arrival of prosperity too late._
XII. Those who Starve 221
_Mürger’s_ Biographie d’un Inconnu—_A brief recital of its
story—The hero of the novel a permanent type_—Saint Joseph
de la Dèche—La misère en habit noir—_The case of
Dr. Laporte—The verdict of the judge._
XIII. Those who Kill Themselves 231
“La littérature qui tue”—_Picturesque suicide of a young
Latin Quarter poet as narrated by Emile Goudeau—Suicide
of René Leclerc—Other cases of suicide—Greater proportion
of suicide among victims_ of la misère en habit noir.
XIV. Freaks and Fumistes 239
_The_ chevaliers d’industrie _of the Quarter—Their detestation
of the_ bourgeoisie—_More comedy than tragedy in their lives—The
types of Vallès’_ Réfractaires—_Fontan-Crusoe, Poupelin, and
M. Chaque—Other vagabond types—Eugène Cochet, Amédée Cloux,
Bibi-la-Purée, La Mère Casimir, Le Marquis de Soudin, the
artist bard of Père Lunette’s, Achille Leroy, Gaillepand, La
Mère Souris, Victor Sainbault, Coulet—Professional humourists
and deliberate farceurs—Sapeck, Karl, Zo d’Axa—A novel
candidate—Relation of starvation, suicide, freakishness, and_
fumisterie _to the revolutionary spirit._
XV. Montmartre and _La Vache Enragée_ 257
_The cavalcades of_ La Vache Enragée _in 1896 and 1897—Origin
of the phrase—Literary, artistic, and musical celebrities who
have eaten of the_ Vache Enragée—_The manner of living of the
typical_ Montmartrois—_His resourcefulness—His poses and
so-called affectations often devices for cheap living—The
restaurants, cafés, crèmeries, and cabarets of
Montmartre—Their traditions and their esprit de corps—The
Montmartre of the tourist—The real Montmartre—Its relation to
Paris—Cost of living at Montmartre—Spring-time in Montmartre._
XVI. Literary and Artistic Cabarets of Montmartre 281
_The history of Montmartre—The exodus of the_ “Hydropathies”
_and the_ “Hirsutes” _from the Latin Quarter—The_ Grand’
Pinte—_Rodolphe Salis—The origin, career, and influence of
the_ Chat Noir—_Its successors and imitators—Closest existing
counterparts of the_ Chat Noir—Le Conservatoire, Le Cabaret
des Quat’z’ Arts, Le Cabaret des Arts, La Veine, La Boîte à
Fursy, and Le Tréteau de Tabarin—_Bohemian conclaves which
have superseded the cabarets—The chanson as a moulder of
public opinion—Revolutionary chansons in Montmartre
cabarets—Jules Jouy, Maxime Lisbonne, Marcel Legay, Gaston
Couté, Xavier Privas_—Cabarets brutaux—_Bruant’s_ Mirliton,
_Alexandre’s_ Cabaret Bruyant—_Three poets of talent imbued
with a revolutionary spirit, Bruant, Jehan Rictus, Maurice
Boukay—The revolutionary traditions of Montmartre—Bourgeois
fear of Montmartre_—“Montmartre va descendre”—_The relations
between the workingmen, the littérateurs, and the artists at
Montmartre—Their revolutionary spirit._
XVII. The Revolutionary Spirit in Prose Literature and
the Drama 313
_The revolutionary attitude of Tolstoy, Ibsen, and
Zola—Revolutionary influence of Anatole France and Octave
Mirbeau—Lucien Descaves—Victor Barrucand and his campaign for
free bread—Other novelists whose works have a revolutionary
trend—Revolutionary psychology—Rosny’s_ Le Bilatéral—_Other
fiction writers who understand the gravity of the issue—The
influence of “les auteurs gais”—Essayists, critics, and
philosophers who are more or less militant iconoclasts or
révoltés—The origin and influence of_ L’Endehors—_The
subsequent activity of the_ Endehors group—_The group of_
L’Idée Nouvelle—Revues des jeunes—_Other_ revues _hospitable
to revolutionary writings—Octave Mirbeau, Lucien Descaves,
Maurice Donnay—Other playwrights whose pieces are frankly
revolutionary—Playwrights whose works are revolutionary by
implication—The_ Théâtre Libre _and its successors—Variety
theatres and concert halls—The trend of literature from
socialism to anarchism—The testimony of Clovis Hugues and
Fierens-Gevaert—The relation of the French_ libertaire _literary
movement to that in other European countries._
XVIII. The Revolutionary Spirit in Poetry, Music, and Art 361
_The anarchistic spirit more or less natural to the
poet—Revolutionary singers in France at the beginning of the
nineteenth century—Hégésippe Moreau, Victor Hugo, Eugène
Vermesch—Living poets of revolt—Laurent Tailhade, Jean
Richepin—Tailhade’s imprisonment—The socialist poets Clovis
Hugues and Maurice Bouchor—The relations between freedom of
expression and freedom of thought in poetry—More
revolutionists among artists than in any other class engaged
in liberal pursuits—Courbet, Cazin, Carrière—Impressionism and
the revolutionary spirit—Luce and Signac_—The Salon des
Indépendants _as a refuge for revolutionists—The import of the
work of Rodin and Meunier—Jules Dalou—Painters who picture the
Christ in a modern setting—The revolutionary leanings of the_
dessinateurs—_Léandre, Forain, Hermann-Paul, Willette,
Steinlen_—L’Assiette au Beurre—_The revolutionary attitude of
the great body of contemporary French caricaturists towards
the institutions of society—Bernard Shaw’s comment on the
music of Wagner—Wagner as a revolutionist—The revolutionary
spirit in the new school of French music—Alfred Bruneau and
Gustave Charpentier_—Louise—_The evident connection between
the anarchistic philosophy and polyphonic orchestration, vers
libre, and impressionism in art._
XIX. To What End? 391
_The advice of Gamaliel, the Pharisee, on innovators in
religion and the words of Montaigne concerning the strange
and the incredible—The proper province of philosophic
doubt_—“La folie d’hier est la sagesse de demain”—_The
difficulty with which human nature realises the truth of
the maxim—The attitude of public opinion to Barrucand’s
scheme for free bread—Pertinent questions regarding
the alleged unreasonableness of revolutionary theories—The
theories of anarchism and socialism in comparison
with the history of social evolution—The natural result of
education of the masses—A successful social revolution no
guarantee of a millennium—The essentials of happiness
found in the eternal realities of life._
ILLUSTRATIONS
Sellers of _Chansons_ Frontispiece
The Anarchist’s Dream Vignette Title-page
Place Clichy (_Vignette Section Title_) Page 1
Jean Grave in his Workshop facing ” 10
La France Libre (_Tailpiece_) ” 22
Mauled to Death for shouting _“Vive l’Armée”_ ” 35
A Contrast in Dances:—
I. A Ball at the _Maison du Peuple_ facing ” 38
II. Dancing at the _Moulin Rouge_
A _Trimardeur_ disputing with Socialists ” 40
Evening in a _Cabaret_ facing ” 42
_A la Renommée des Pommes-de-terres Frites_ ” 52
“_Enlevez l’homme tonneau_” (_Tailpiece_) ” 57
Dormer-window of Jean Grave’s Workshop
(_Office of “Les Temps Nouveaux”_) facing ” 62
Pierre Joseph Proudhon ” 74
Little Anarchists ” 75
A Revolutionary Poster (_Tailpiece_) ” 87
Charles Malato ” 112
A Raid by the Police (_Tailpiece_) ” 127
Salsou ” 135
A Street Riot (_Place de la Concorde_) facing ” 148
The Guillotine in Moonlight (_Tailpiece_) ” 152
Louise Michel ” 158
Anniversary Decorations, _Mur des Fédérés_ (_Tailpiece_) ” 163
A Socialist Bookshelf ” 167
M. Vaillant ” 168
Léandre’s Caricature of Paul Déroulède facing ” 168
M. Brousse ” 169
M. Jaurès ” 170
M. Guesde ” 171
M. Allemane ” 171
Jules Guérin ” 172
“_Montmartre va descendre_” (_Vignette Section Title_) ” 173
Mégotiers of the Place Maubert ” 179
Notre Dame from Pont d’Austerlitz (_Tailpiece_) ” 185
A Caveau of the Latin Quarter ” 189
A Latin Quarter Type (_Félix Gras’ Son_) facing ” 198
The Panthéon (_Tailpiece_) ” 203
Jean Richepin ” 212
Taverne du Panthéon on Mardigras facing ” 216
The Institute (_Tailpiece_) ” 218
The Louvre (_Tailpiece_) ” 227
A Suicide of the Latin Quarter ” 233
The Pont du Carrousel (_Tailpiece_) ” 236
Site of the Château Rouge (_rue Galande_) facing ” 246
Zo d’Axa’s Novel Candidate ” 248
Second-hand Book Mart of the Latin Quarter (_Tailpiece_) ” 253
Grün’s Design for Float in Cavalcade of _La Vache Enragée_ ” 258
The Real Montmartre (I. _La rue Mont-Cénis_) facing ” 262
Montmartre Types ” 268
The Real Montmartre (II. _La rue St. Vincent_) facing ” 268
The Real Montmartre (III. _La rue Mont-Cénis_) ” 273
A Montmartre Carrousel (_Tailpiece_) ” 278
The Real Montmartre (IV. _Cabaret du Lapin Agile_) ” 281
At Aristide Bruant’s
(_Cabaret du Boulevard Rochechouart_) facing ” 284
“Buffalo” ” 290
Alexandre ” 294
At Alexandre’s (_Cabaret de la rue Pigalle_) facing ” 296
Maurice Boukay ” 297
_Maquereaux_ ” 300
Jehan Rictus (_with fac-simile of manuscript_) facing ” 300
“_Les Corbeaux_” (_Tailpiece_) ” 310
Emile Zola facing ” 314
Anatole France ” 317
A Pair of Army Officers ” 321
Octave Mirbeau ” 326
Xavier Privas delivering his Lecture “_L’Argent
contre l’Humanité_” facing ” 342
La Comédie Française (_Tailpiece_) ” 358
Laurent Tailhade facing ” 368
Clovis Hugues ” 369
Paris from Montmartre (_Tailpiece_) ” 388
A Contrast in Funerals facing ” 394
The Eternal Realities (_Endpiece_) ” 399
[Illustration: Place Clichy]
PART I
THE PEOPLE
“_I think I hear a little bird who sings
The people by and by will be the stronger:
The veriest jade will wince whose harness wrings
So much into the raw as quite to wrong her
Beyond the rules of posting,—and the mob
At last fall sick of imitating Job._”
LORD BYRON.
CHAPTER I
WHAT THE ANARCHIST WANTS
“_Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
Remould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!_”
Rubáiyát of OMAR KHÁYYÁM.
“Le moins de gouvernement possible.”
VICTOR HUGO (Programme Politique).
_“The state is the curse of the individual.”_—IBSEN.
“_Manual labour, far from being an occasion for shame, honours
man. What is shameful is to use man as a vile instrument of
lucre, to esteem him only in proportion to the vigour of his
arms._”—Encyclical of LEO XIII.
“_Enough of these ambiguous formulas, such as ‘the right to
work’ or ‘to each the integral product of his labour.’ What we
proclaim is the right to a competency, to a competency for
all._”—KROPOTKINE.
“_And the savants will be troubled in their knowledge, and this
knowledge will appear to them like a little black point when the
sun of the intelligences shall rise._”—LAMENNAIS.
“There is nothing new under the sun,” and anarchism is no exception to
the truth of this maxim. But the beginnings of anarchistic philosophy
and the development of anarchism, however suggestive they may be, do not
fall within the province of this volume. Therefore it is not necessary
to expound the tenets or to trace the influence of the anarchist or
semi-anarchist devotees through the ages: the Taoists of China (whose
founder, Lao-Tse (600 B.C.), was a contemporary of Pythagoras and
Confucius), the social prophets of Islam from Mazdak in the sixth
century to the wonderful Bab in the first half of the nineteenth
century, Saint Anthony of Padua and Jean Vicenza in the thirteenth
century, Savonarola at the end of the fifteenth, the Anabaptists under
Thomas Munzer, Mathiesen, and Jean de Leyde in the sixteenth, Razine the
Cossack and the Scottish Covenanters in the seventeenth, Mandrin the
brigand in the eighteenth, and the Jesuits of Paraguay in the last half
of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. I do not
pretend to determine whether the Guelph-Ghibelline feud, which rent
Europe for more than two hundred years, was or was not a struggle
between despotism and religious democracy, or whether Gregory VII.,
Alexander III., Gregory IX., Innocent IV., and Boniface VIII. were or
were not revolutionary popes endeavouring to realise the social dreams
of the Franciscans and Dominicans. I do not try to discover what there
is of truth in the astonishing claims of certain exalted students of
occultism, mysticism, and comparative religions, that anarchism found
expression in the worship of the Indian Siva, the Persian Mithras, the
Chaldean Baal-Moloch, and the Greek Bacchus; in the conspiracy of the
Bacchanals (described by Livy) in the first half of the second century
before Christ; in the colossal extravagances of the Cæsars; in the
_bizarreries_ of the Nicolaites, the Cainites, the Carpocratians, the
Ophites, and other Gnostics of Egypt during the first five centuries of
the Christian era; in the _Consortia_ under Constantine; and in the
fanaticisms of the Inquisitors, the Lollards, Flagellants, Bégards,
Patarins, Templars, and Devil-worshippers during the Middle Ages. I do
not dwell upon nor so much as collate the anarchistic tendencies and
sanctions which anarchist scholars discern in the writings or sayings of
Job and the Old Testament prophets, of Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Saint
Francis of Assisi, Plato, Jesus, Rabelais, Bourdaloue, and Bossuet, and
the pre-Revolutionary Encyclopedists (especially Diderot and Rousseau).
I even pass by the far more pertinent teachings, systems, personalities,
and careers of the admitted precursors of modern anarchism; of Max
Stirner and Fourier, of Proudhon, the father of modern anarchist
doctrine, and of “the mysterious Russian,” Bakounine, the father of the
modern anarchist party. I also pass by the agrarian revolt of Gracchus
Babœuf (guillotined by Barras in 1797); the emergence of the learned
Russian Kropotkine, and of the Italians Cafiero and Malatesta; the
relations between French anarchism and Russian nihilism; the struggle
for Italian liberation; the founding of the _Internationale_ and of the
_Fédération Jurasienne_; the epic struggle for the control of the
_Internationale_ between Karl Marx, representing authoritative
centralisation, and Bakounine, representing anti-authoritative
federalism. I neglect, in a word, the more than interesting history of
the slow evolution of modern anarchism, and coming directly, without
further ado, to the France of to-day, attack the questions,—What is
anarchy? What does the anarchist want? And how does he hope to get it?
Of the contemporary French Encyclopedists who are preparing, or think
they are preparing, the revolution of the twentieth century, three are
eminently fitted by their learning, by their capacity for straight
thinking and utterance, by their sense of historical perspective, their
power of keen analysis and bold synthesis, by their breadth, their
tolerance, their humanity, their integrity, and their consecration, to
answer these questions. They are Pierre Kropotkine, Elisée Reclus, and
Jean Grave. But Kropotkine, while the author of such epoch-making works
as _La Conquête du Pain, L’Anarchie: son Idéal_, and _Les Paroles d’un
Révolté_, is a Russian, not a Frenchman, by birth and breeding, and has
been little in Paris of late; and Reclus[1] (one of the most learned
geographers of his time), though never far away from the anarchist
movement, is, by reason of his devotion to his specialty, rarely in the
thick of it. Besides, he has made his home in Belgium for many years.
It is to Jean Grave, therefore, the youngest of the three, the present
editor of the journal _Les Temps Nouveaux_ and author of _La Société
Mourante_, _La Société Future_, _La Société au Lendemain de la
Révolution_, _L’Individu et la Société_, and _L’Anarchie: son But, ses
Moyens_, that it seems best to confide the delicate task of presenting
the French anarchistic idea and ideal; and, because I cannot trust
myself to summarise without bias the _credo_ of a sect to which I do not
belong, I quote in full the comprehensive first chapter of his important
doctrinal volume, _L’Anarchie: son But, ses Moyens_:—
“In spite of the fact that the idea of anarchy has emerged
from the obscurity in which men have attempted to stifle it,
in spite of the fact that to-day (thanks to persecution,
thanks to laws of exception such as are made in the worst
monarchies) the words ‘anarchy’ and ‘anarchist’ are unfamiliar
to none, there are not many who know exactly what anarchy is.
“The intervention of the anarchists in the Dreyfus affair,
where they were much in evidence, had the effect of bringing
them into contact with bourgeois politicians, who knew
absolutely nothing about them; but anarchy did not come out
into a clearer light from this association.
“Anarchy, in the eyes of some, is robbery, assassination,
bombs, a return to savagery; anarchists are only
house-breakers, loafers, who would divide all wealth in order
to be able to amuse themselves with doing nothing.
“In the eyes of others, anarchy is a sort of Utopia, of
golden-age dream which they readily grant to be very
beautiful, but a dream good at best to illustrate books of
ethics or fantastic social schemes with. The most kindly
disposed regard anarchy as a vague aspiration which they do
not hesitate to recognise as desirable for humanity to attain,
but as so completely inaccessible that there is no reason for
making any decided effort to realise it, and consider the
anarchist as a species of lunatic whom it is prudent to avoid,
a pitiful _illuminé_ who strays from the practicable paths to
lose himself in the vagueness of Utopia.
“They are very few who know that anarchy is a theory resting
on rational bases, that anarchists are men who, having
collated the complaints of those who suffer from the actual
social order, and having saturated themselves with human
aspirations, have undertaken a critique of the institutions
which control us, analysing them, weighing their worth, and
estimating what they are capable of producing, and who, from
the sum total of their observations, deduce logical natural
laws for the organisation of a better society.
“Of course, the anarchists do not pretend to have invented the
critique of the social order. Others had done that before
them. As soon as power began to exist, there were malcontents
who made no bones of railing at its acts; and, if we possessed
the legends which men handed down from generation to
generation before writing was known, we should probably find
therein satires against the chiefs. It is quite possible to
criticise the existing order of things without being an
anarchist, and there are those who have done this in a
successful fashion which the anarchists will never surpass.
“But what anarchists believe they have done more than the
other critics, more than the existing socialistic schools or
the socialistic schools which preceded them, is to have gotten
their bearings in the midst of the confused mass of errors
which spring from the complexity of social relations, to have
remounted to the causes of misery, of exploitation, and
finally to have laid bare the political error which made men
place hope in good governments, good governors, good
legislation, good dispensers of justice, as efficacious
remedies for the ills from which humanity suffers.
“Anarchy, studying man in his nature, in his evolution,
demonstrates that there cannot be good laws or good
governments or faithful appliers of the laws.
“Every human law is necessarily arbitrary; for, however just
it may be, and whatever may be the breadth of view of those
who make it, it represents only a part of human development,
only an infinitesimal fragment of the aspirations of all.
Every law formulated by a parliament, far from being the
product of a great conception, is, on the contrary, only the
mean of public opinion, since parliament itself, by its very
manner of recruitment, represents only a very mediocre mean.
“Applied to all in the same fashion, the law becomes thus, by
the very force of things, arbitrary and unjust for those who
are on this side or on that side of the mean.
“A law, then, not being able to represent the aspirations of
all, can be made effective on those who would infringe it only
by fear of punishment. Its application involves the existence
of a judicial and repressive apparatus, and it becomes thus
the more odious as its coercive force is the more sure.
“The law unjust to start with, because, conception of minority
or majority, it wishes to impose itself on the whole, becomes
still more unjust because applied by men who, having the
defects and the passions, the prejudices and the personal
errors, of appreciation of men, cannot act, whatever be their
probity, except under the influence of these prejudices and
errors.
“There can be no good laws, nor good judges, nor,
consequently, good government, since the existence of these
implies a single rule of conduct for all, while it is
diversity which characterises individuals.”
“No society based on human laws, then,—and this is the case of
all societies past and present,—can fully satisfy the ideal of
every one.
“The minority of idlers alone who, by ruse and by force, have
managed to seize the power, and who use, to their own profit,
the forces of the collectivity,—this minority alone, I say,
can find their account in this order of things and interest
themselves in its prolongation. But they can only make it last
with the help of the ignorance of individuals regarding their
own personalities, their possibilities, and their capacities.
“But however great the ignorance of the people may be, when
the pressure is too strong, they revolt. This is why our
society is so unstable, why the laws are repeatedly violated
by those who make them or by those who are charged to apply
them, when their interest points that way; for, power being
based on force, it is to force that all those resort who are
in power and wish to maintain themselves there, as well as all
those who are in pursuit of power.
“Made to be applied to all and to content everybody, the laws
derange more or less every individual, who wishes, while he is
under them, to abolish or relax them, but who wishes them more
vigorous when it is his turn to apply them.
“Nevertheless, new aspirations do arise; and, when the
antagonism becomes too great between these aspirations and the
political laws, the door opens wide to disorders and to
revolution.
“And it will always be the same so long as no other way is
found to repair the harm done by a law recognised as bad than
the application of a new law. This ignorance on the part of
men makes human institutions, once established, resist
changes. The names vary, but the things remain.
“Men, not having yet been able to arrive at a social
conception other than that of authority, are condemned to turn
in the same circle, and will be condemned to turn in the same
circle so long as they shall not have altered their
conception. Royalty, empire, dictatorship, republic,
centralisation, federalism, communalism,—these are all at
bottom so many phases of authority. Whether in the name of a
single person or in the deceitful name of the majority, always
the will of some is imposed on all.
[Illustration: JEAN GRAVE IN HIS WORKSHOP
“_There is no more intimate or
engaging business interior in Paris._”]
“Furthermore, if the individual increases his knowledge in a
continuous fashion, it is only in a very slow fashion. Still
he has arrived to-day at the point where, to develop himself
in his integrity, it is necessary that his autonomy be
complete, that his aspirations express themselves freely, that
he be permitted to cultivate them in all their breadth, that
nothing fetter his free initiative and his evolution.
“And so it is that now, at last, anarchists draw from their
study of the existing social organisation this important
lesson: that human laws ought to disappear, carrying with them
the legislative, executive, judicial, and repressive systems
which impede human evolution by causing murderous crises in
which many thousands of human beings perish, by delaying all
humanity in its forward march, and, sometimes, even by
dragging it backward.”
“While the politicians have not got beyond this formula, which
they believe the _ne plus ultra_ of liberty,—‘_l’individu
libre dans la commune, la commune libre dans l’état_,’—we know
that these political forms are incompatible with liberty,
since they tend always to submit a number of men to the same
rule; and we formulate our device, ‘_l’individu libre dans
l’humanité libre_,’—the individual, left free to attach
himself according to his tendencies, his affinities, free to
seek out those with whom his liberty and his aptitudes can
accord, unfettered by the political organisations which are
determined by geographical or territorial considerations.
“For man to develop himself freely in his physical,
intellectual, and moral nature, for him to reveal all his
capacities, it is necessary that each individual be able to
satisfy all his physical, intellectual, and moral needs. And
this satisfaction can only be assured to all if the soil,
which is the creation of no one, is placed at the free
disposition of whoever is capable of tilling it, and if the
existing equipment, product of the labour of preceding
generations, ceases to belong to a minority of parasites who
exact a large tithe upon the resultant of its activity and
the activity of those who work it.
“The earth too much cut up, on the one hand, to permit the
small land-holders to employ the powerful machinery which
would effectively second their efforts, appropriated in
immense lots, on the other hand, by a class of idlers who
secure, without work, an income from the production of those
to whom they consent to rent,[2]—the earth nourishes its
existing population with difficulty. And I have not counted
the ignorance which is fostered by a defective education and
which causes the greater part of the cultivators to cling to
the traditional processes of cultivation,—processes which
demand far too much work and effort for the results.
“Yet, in spite of these sources of waste, the earth would
still manage to nourish, after a fashion, every living being
if the middlemen were not there to warehouse the products and
to speculate and gamble upon them, in such a way that the
majority of persons are never in a condition to buy what they
need. The fault, then, if all have not enough to eat, lies
with the defective social organisation, and is not due to lack
of production. A better distribution of products would alone
be sufficient to give every one enough to eat, while a better
management of the soil and a better use of the instruments of
production would bring about abundance for all.
“A clearer comprehension of things will bring the peasant to
understand that his interest, properly understood, is to unite
his parcel of land with the parcels of his neighbours, to
associate his efforts with their efforts, in order to diminish
his toil and increase his production.
“And as no one has the right to sterilise, for his sole
pleasure, the slightest parcel of land, so long as there is a
single being who has not plenty to eat, the coming revolution
will have for one of its objects to put the soil into the
hands of those who shall wish to cultivate it and the farm
machines into the hands of those who shall wish to operate
them.
“All this, anarchy seeks to demonstrate to the peasant,
explaining to him that the masters who impose upon him exploit
likewise the workman of the towns, trying to make him
comprehend that, far from considering the town workman as an
enemy, he should stretch out his hand to him, to the end that
they may aid each other in the struggle for life, and arrive
thus at disembarrassing themselves of their common parasites.
“To the workman, anarchy demonstrates that he must not expect
his enfranchisement to come from providential saviours, nor
from the palliatives with which the puppets of politics, who
wish to control his vote and so dominate him, try to dazzle
him; that the emancipation of the individual can be brought
about only by the individual’s own action, can result only
from his own energy and his own efforts when, knowing how to
act, he shall use his liberty in place of demanding it.”
“It is not alone to those who are dying of want that anarchy
addresses itself. To satisfy one’s hunger is a primordial
right which takes precedence over all other rights and stands
at the head of the claims of a human being. But anarchy
embraces all the aspirations and neglects no need. The list of
its demands includes all the demands of humanity.
“Mirbeau, in his _Mauvais Bergers_, makes one of the
characters proclaim to workmen on a strike their right to
beauty. And, indeed, every being has a right not only to what
sustains life, but also to whatever renders it easy, enlivens
it, and embellishes it. They are rare, alas! in our social
state, who can live their lives amply.
“Some there are whose physical needs are satisfied, but who
are retarded in their evolution by a social organisation which
is conditioned by the narrowness of conception of the average
intellect,—artists, littérateurs, savants, all who think,
suffer morally, if not physically, from the present order of
things.
“Daily they are wounded by the pettinesses of current
existence, and disheartened by the mediocrity of the public to
whom they address themselves, and whom they must consider if
they wish to sell their works,—a situation which conducts
those who would not die of hunger to compromise, to vulgar and
mediocre art.
“Their education has led many of them to believe that they are
of an essence superior to the peasant, to the manual worker,
from whom, for the matter of that, they are for the most part
descended. They have been persuaded that it is necessary, if
their ‘talent’ is to develop and their imagination is to have
full swing, that the ‘vile multitude’ take upon its shoulders
the heavy tasks, devote itself to serving them, and wear
itself out in making, by its labour, life easy for them; that
they must have, if their genius is to attain its complete
fruition, the same atmosphere of luxury and of idleness as the
aristocratic classes.
“A healthy conception of things teaches that a human being, to
be complete, must exercise his limbs as well as his brain,
that labour is degrading only because it has been made a sign
of servitude, and that a man truly worthy of the name does not
need to impose the cares of his existence on others.
“One man is as good as another: that there are degrees of
development is due to causes of which we are ignorant, but
such or such an illiterate may have moral qualities superior
to the moral qualities of those who are more learned than he.
In any case, intelligence, if it blesses him who possesses it,
does not confer on him the right to exploit or govern others.
These differences of development merely imply differences of
desires, of aspirations, of ideals; and it is for the
individual himself who is so favoured to realise what responds
best to his conception of happiness.
“Besides, these differences of development only appear to us
as great as they do because education, ill understood and ill
distributed, perpetuates prejudices and errors. Imagination,
invention, observation, judgment, if they vary somewhat in
intensity in different individuals, do not differ in essence.
They are simple faculties of our brain which do not lose their
quality for being employed to construct a machine or a house,
solder a kettle, or make a shirt, rather than to write a
romance or a treatise on anatomy.
“Greedy of hierarchy, we humans have divided into high and low
occupations the diverse employment of our forces. The
parasites who have made themselves our masters, all in
proclaiming themselves superior, have established that there
is nothing truly noble but idleness, that there is nothing
truly beautiful but force exerted to destroy; that force
expended to produce, to draw out of the earth and out of
industry whatever is necessary to sustain life, is of a vile,
inferior quality, and that its use should be reserved to the
servile classes.
“On this basis we continue to declare certain occupations low,
forgetting that they are such only because one class is forced
to pursue them in the service of another class, to submit to
its orders and caprices, to abdicate its liberty; but there
can be nothing base in no matter what work which consists in
ministering to our own needs.
“The artist and the littérateur belong to the masses. They
cannot isolate themselves, and inevitably feel the effects of
the surrounding mediocrity. It is vain for them to intrench
themselves behind the privileges of the ruling classes, to
attempt to withdraw into their ‘_tour d’ivoire_’: if there is
debasement for him who is reduced to performing the vilest
tasks to satisfy his hunger, the morality of those who condemn
him to it is not superior to his own; if obedience degrades,
command, far from exalting character, degrades it also.
“To live their dream, realise their aspirations, they, too,
must work—for the moral and intellectual elevation of the
masses. They, too, must understand that their own development
is made up of the intellectuality of all; that, whatever the
heights they believe they have attained, they belong to the
multitude. If they strain to rise above the multitude, a
thousand bonds hold them to it, fetter their action and their
thought, preventing them forever from reaching the summits
they have glimpsed. A society normally constituted does not
admit slaves, but a mutual exchange of services between
equals.”
“The very savant, who considers dealing with knowledge the
noblest employ of the human faculties, must learn that
knowledge is not a private domain reserved for a few adepts
uttering oracles before a public of ignoramuses, who take them
at their word; and that in science, as in art and in
literature, the faculties of judgment, of observation, and of
comparison, do not differ from the faculties employed in
occupations which we consider more vulgar.
“In spite of the intellectual compression which has held
humanity down for so many centuries, science has been able to
progress and develop, thanks to the critical spirit of
individuals refractory to official teaching and ready-made
conceptions. It ought, then, to be put within the reach of
all, to become accessible to all aptitudes, in order that this
spirit of criticism which has saved it from obscurantism may
contribute to hasten its full efflorescence.
“Knowledge is divided into so many diverse branches that it is
impossible for the same individual to know them all in their
entirety, the duration of a human life being far from
sufficient for a man to acquire enough ideas to be able to
investigate them in their minutest details.
“To study them,—that is, if he expects to be able to criticise
them,—he is forced to have recourse to the labours of his
predecessors and also of his contemporaries.
“It is from all human knowledge that the general synthesis
must proceed. What we know to-day is only a means for
acquiring the knowledge of to-morrow. And an individual
obtains reliable knowledge only in accepting the help of all.
The observations of the humblest persons are not always to be
disdained. Let the savants also, then, cease to believe
themselves a caste apart, let them understand once for all
that knowledge does not demand special aptitudes, and that it
must be accessible to all, in order that all, in developing
themselves, may contribute thus to the general development.”
“What is true for individuals is true for nations. Just as an
individual cannot live without the support of all, a people
cannot exist without the co-operation of the other peoples. A
nation which should shut itself up within its frontiers,
ceasing all relations with the rest of the world, would not be
slow to retrograde and perish. It is then absurd and criminal
to foment, under colour of patriotism, hatreds nominally
national, but which are in reality only pretexts for the
governing classes to legitimise the scourge, militarism, of
which they have need to assure their power.
“Every nation has need of the other nations. There is not a
region which, for one product or another, is not the customer
of another region. And it is no reason for you to hate your
neighbours because they speak a different language, because a
hundred years ago they invaded and ravaged regions which are
indifferent to you to-day; and it is no reason for you to feel
yourselves outraged by this ancient invasion because, once
upon a time, the inhabitants of the invaded regions suffered
under the yoke which now galls you.
“There is not a single nation which cannot reproach its
neighbours with some crime of this sort; not a single nation
which at the present moment does not hold within its borders
some province incorporated against the desire of its
inhabitants. And, if those who performed these acts of
brigandage were highly detestable, in what respect are their
descendants responsible therefor? Should we also be held
responsible for the acts of brigandage which our histories
teach us to admire as glorious achievements?
“Who among those who aspire to live solely by their own work
can take delight in seeing one nation rush upon another
nation? It is only those who have made themselves the masters
of nations, and who find it for their interest to augment the
numbers of those whom they exploit, who feel the need of
supplying aliment to the troops they train for the work of
slaughter. These understand perfectly that a menace of war
with a neighbour serves to justify the existence of the armies
which are their main prop.
“The despots who have exalted patriotism into a new religion
know very well how to ignore frontiers when the defence of
their privileges or the extension of their exploitation is at
stake. If it is a question of hunting down subversive ideas,
the French, German, Italian, Swiss, Russian, and other
bourgeois are ready enough to lend to each other their
diplomats and their police.
“Is it a question of putting down a strike? The exploiters are
not slow to engage foreign workmen, so that they consent to
work at the lowest wage; and governments would not hesitate,
if there were need, to lend each other their armies.
“And do not all the international understandings which have
been established for finance, the postal service, commerce,
navigation, railroads, prove that it is the _entente
pacifique_, after all, which is the supreme law?
“The anarchists would bring the workers to see a brother in
every workingman, on whichever side of the frontier he chances
to have been born.
“Brothers in misery, suffering from the same ills, bowed
beneath the same yoke, they have the same interests to defend,
the same ideal to pursue. Their veritable enemies are those
who exploit them, who enslave them and prevent their
development. It is against their masters that they should arm
themselves.”
“Anarchy pays little attention to the shady combinations of
politics. It professes the most profound disdain for
politicians. The promises of the place-seekers interest it
only as they disclose all the inanity of politics, and only as
they can be made use of to demonstrate that the social
organisation will not be transformed until the day when a
resolute attack shall be made against its economic defects.
“If the politicians believe the lies they retail, they are
simple ignoramuses or imbeciles; for the slightest reasoning
should suffice to make them understand that, when a disease is
to be cured and its return prevented, its causes must be
attacked. If they lie purposely, they are rascals; and, in the
one case as in the other, they deceive those whose confidence
they win by their babble and their intrigue.
“Those who exploit the actual economic organisation will
always seek to direct to their own profit all the attempts at
amelioration that are suggested, and there will always be
people who are dismayed by brusque changes and who prefer to
rely on middle terms which seem to them to conciliate all
interests.
“It will always be for the advantage of the masters to deceive
the oppressed regarding the veritable means of
enfranchisement, and there will always be enough cormorants
greedy of power to assist them in their work of muddling
questions.
“Anarchy demonstrates the inanity of every attempt at
amelioration which attacks only the effect while letting
subsist the cause.
“So long as the wealth of society shall be the appanage of a
minority of loafers, this minority will employ it in living at
the expense of those whom it exploits. And, as it is the
possession of capital which makes strength and gives the
mastery of the social organisation, they are always in a
position to turn to their own profit every amelioration which
is undertaken.
“For an amelioration to benefit all, privileges must be
destroyed. It is to re-enter into the possession of that of
which they have been despoiled that the efforts of those who
possess nothing ought to tend. To break the power which
crushes them, to prevent its reconstitution, to take
possession of the means of production, to create a social
organisation in which social wealth can no more be
concentrated in the hands of a few,—this is what the
anarchists dream.
“If the exploitation of man is to be prevented, the bases of
the economic order must be changed: the soil and all that
which is the product of anterior generations must rest at the
free disposition of those who can work them, must not be
monopolised for the gain of any party whatsoever,—individual,
group, corporation, commune, or nation.
“This is what the partisans of partial reforms do not
comprehend, and yet this is what conscientious study of
economic facts demonstrates. Nothing good can come from the
activity of the charlatans of politics. Human emancipation
cannot be the work of any legislation, of any concession of
liberty on the part of those who rule. It can only be the work
of the _fait accompli_, of the individual will affirming
itself in acts.”
“Basing itself upon the evolutionist doctrine, rejecting all
preconceived will in the phenomena by which the evolution of
worlds and beings is manifested, recognising that this
evolution is solely the work of the forces of matter in
contact, simply the result of the transformations which this
matter undergoes in the course of its own evolution, anarchy
is frankly atheistic, and repels every idea of any creating or
directing entity whatsoever.
“But, as it is absolute liberty, if it combats religious
error, it is primarily from the point of view of truth, and,
specifically, because the priesthoods which have sprung up
about the different religious dogmas pretend to use the force
which their authority and capital lend them to impose their
beliefs and to make even those who reject all religions help
pay for them.
“As to whatever concerns the intimate thought of each,
anarchists understand that an individual cannot think
otherwise than his own mentality permits. They would see no
objection to people gathering together in special buildings
for the purpose of addressing prayers and praises to a
hypothetical being if they did not attempt to impose their
beliefs on others.
“Anarchists look for the triumph of reason from, and only
from, the culture of minds; and they know from themselves that
force and oppression cannot stifle ideas.
“They demand absolute liberty in the domain of thought as in
that of deeds, in the family as in society.
“Like all the forms of human activity, the association of the
sexes has not to brook the control or solicit the sanction of
any person whatsoever. It is absurd to wish to set limits to,
raise barriers against, or impose restraints on the affections
of individuals. Love, friendship, hatred, do not come at call:
we feel them or endure them without being able to help
ourselves, without even, more often than not, being able to
explain them and unravel their motives.
“Marriage, then, can be trammelled by no rule, by no law other
than that of mutual good faith and sincerity. It can have no
duration beyond the reciprocal affection of the two beings
associated, and should be dissoluble at the will of the party
for whom it becomes a burden.
“True, there will always remain some problems which cannot be
solved without friction and pain, such as the disposition of
the children, the suffering of the party in whom love
survives, and other matters of sentiment. But these
difficulties cannot be resolved any better by pre-established
rules: on the contrary, constraint only envenoms the
difficulties. It will be the duty of the interested parties to
find the solution of the difficulties which estrange them.
“The best that can be hoped for is that the moral level of
humanity will be so far elevated that goodness and tolerance
will increase and bestow their healing balm on the human
passions, which by their very nature elude regulation and
control.
“The great objection behind which the adversaries of anarchy
intrench themselves when driven into their last redoubts is
this, that the anarchist ideal is beautiful, certainly, but
much too beautiful ever to be realised, since humanity will
never be well-behaved enough to attain it.
“This objection is specious. No one can say what humanity will
be to-morrow; and there is no phase of its past development
which, if it had been foreseen and announced to the
generations preceding, would not have been held (with reasons
galore) quite as unrealisable as the anarchist ideal is held
by those who cannot abstract themselves from the present,—a
mental state not hard to understand, since the average brain
has not yet accomplished the evolution which will smooth the
way for the new order of things.
“As long as individuals stagnate in servitude, waiting for
providential men or events to put an end to their abjectness,
as long as they shall be contented to hope without acting, so
long the ideal that is the most beautiful, the ideal that is
the simplest, will rest, necessarily, in a state of pure
reverie, of vague Utopia.
“Where, except in the fable, has Fortune been seen to descend
to the threshold of the sleeper, and wait patiently till it
pleases his indolence to take her?
“When individuals shall have reconquered their self-esteem,
when they shall be convinced of their own force, when, tired
of bending the back, they shall have found once more their
dignity, and shall know how to make it respected, then they
will have learned that the will can accomplish everything when
it is at the service of a trained intellect.
“They have only to _will_ to be free, to _be_ free.”
[Illustration: La France Libre]
CHAPTER II
THE ORAL PROPAGANDA OF ANARCHY
_“Woe is me if I preach not the gospel!”_—SAINT PAUL.
_“The orthodox believers went to hear Him, but understood
nothing.”_
TOLSTOY.
_“For He taught them as one having authority, and not as the
scribes.”_
SAINT MATTHEW.
_“The_ chanson, _like the bayonet, is a French weapon.”_—JULES
CLARETIE.
_“We must arm the camarades, we must never rest from arming the
camarades, with stronger and stronger arguments. We must enrich
their memories and imaginations with fresh facts which prove
more clearly the necessity of the social revolution.”_—PIERRE
LAVROFF.
Anarchist propaganda is of four sorts, viz.: I. Oral. II. Written. III.
By example (_propagande par l’exemple_). IV. By the overt act of
violence (_propagande par le fait_).
With the anarchistic as with other creeds the simplest, most natural
form of oral propaganda is, of course, that which consists in telling
one’s faith to one’s neighbour.
The proselyting zeal that prompts a man to take his gospel with him
wherever he goes,—to his workshop, to his café, to his restaurant, to
the street corner, to “the butcher, the baker, the candlestick
maker,”—and to couple with exhortation the
“_Little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love_”
that make up neighbourly service, is a force not the less real and
potent because its operations are unseen and the measure of them cannot
be taken. It is a factor to be reckoned with, the
“_presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense_”;
but it is essentially an affair of the soul not to be declared save by
the novelist or poet, and it is of the same substance in all cases of
genuine conviction, whatever the basis of the conviction may be.
The unit of the only oral propaganda of which the public can take
cognisance is the “group” (_le groupe_).
The anarchist group is unique—among organisations, one would say if one
might. Whether it consist of three persons or thirty, or some number
between these limits,—in point of fact it is oftener three than thirty,
with an average of perhaps a dozen,—it has neither constitution nor
by-laws, neither president, vice-president, nor executive board. It is
as exempt from human guidance as a Quaker meeting, to which, for the
matter of that, it bears more than this one superficial resemblance, and
as guiltless as an old-fashioned ladies’ committee meeting of
parliamentary law. Now the _camarades_ do not always conduct themselves
with exemplary decorum, and it sometimes happens that two or three of
them are on their feet together and talking at once; but, at the most,
this predicament does not arise more frequently than in more rule-bound
bodies, and it cannot, on the whole, be said that the groups are any
more disorderly, distrait, dilly-dallying, and ineffective than the
boresome assemblies in which, often, conceited lack-brains make
parliamentary tactics an end, not a means, by perpetually “rising to
points of order” and “appealing from the decisions of the chair.”
The group meets sometimes at a café or wine-shop and sometimes at the
lodging of a member. It is oftenest born of a mutual desire for
fellowship on the part of the anarchists of a street or quarter; but it
may result, quite independently of propinquity, from a common enthusiasm
for a special phase of the doctrine, a common wish to pursue the same
line of study, or from a common interest in some concrete enterprise,
such as coming to the rescue of strikers, raising funds for the families
of the victims of police persecution, founding libraries and lecture
courses, or the circulation of tracts. In any case there are no formal
conditions of membership, a group never being at a loss to rid itself,
without appeal to written law or precedent, of an intruder who makes
himself obnoxious.
The programmes of group meetings vary infinitely with the tempers and
caprices of the members, as well as with the objects of the groups; but
they may be said, in general, to consist of the reading of original
essays and poems, reports on the progress of the cause at home and
abroad, a consideration of the bearing on the cause of the latest events
in the world at large, an exchange of journals and brochures accompanied
by expositions and discussions of their contents, a volunteering of
service for the tasks in hand, and that untrammelled exchange of ideas
in which the lines between speech-making and conversation, wrangle and
discussion, are not too rigidly drawn.
The group is highly ephemeral. Everything about it being guided by the
exigencies of the moment, it rarely survives the accomplishment of the
special object for which it is formed. It dies, as it is born, easily;
or, rather, yielding to the charm of the untried, it takes to itself a
new body when the old body grows cramping or monotonous. Such deaths do
not signify complete exhaustion of vitality or even a diminution of
strength. By a sort of transmigration of souls the vital force is
redistributed, that is all.
This remarkable fluidity makes it practically impossible to get any
group statistics that are worth the paper they are written on. An
estimate made a few years back by a person who seemed as well situated
as any one to know, put the number of groups at about one hundred in
Paris and between four hundred and five hundred in the rest of France.
The same authority would probably give rather higher figures now. But
such figures, even if accurate, are of very slight importance, since the
number of groups is no criterion whatever of the number of anarchists.
The most militant anarchists hold aloof from the groups in order to have
complete freedom of action and escape police surveillance; many are in
commercial or administrative situations which counsel reticence; and
many labourers are constrained to a similar reticence by the danger of
losing their jobs. Furthermore, many anarchists call themselves
socialists in order to benefit by the greater tolerance accorded to the
socialists, especially since the Combes ministry came into power. In a
word, the anarchist has every reason to conceal his identity from the
prying statistician, and usually succeeds in doing so. Mark Twain,
commenting once on the inadequate census returns of the Jews in America,
affirmed that he himself was personally acquainted with several million.
The meagre numbers ordinarily assigned to the anarchists in France tempt
one strongly to imitate Mark’s facetious audacity. At least, if French
anarchists are really so few, one may affirm with safety that he is
personally acquainted with them all.
Group names are of no great moment when group identity is so evanescent;
but some of the names are picturesque or suggestive enough to bear
recording:—
_Les Enfants de la Nature_, _La Panthère de Batignolles_, _Les Gonzes
Poilus du Point-du-Jour_, _La Jeunesse Anti-Patriotique de Belleville_,
_Le Drapeau Noir_, _Les Quand Même_, _La Révolte des Travailleurs_, _Le
Cercle Internationale_, _La Torpille_, _Le Groupe Libertaire_, _Les
Forçats_, _Le Réveil_, _Les Résolus_, _L’Emancipation_, _Les
Anti-Travailleurs_, _Les Indomptables_, _Les Sans-Patrie_, _Les Amis de
Ravachol_, _Les Cœurs de Chêne_, _La Dynamite_, _Terre et Indépendance_,
_Les Indignés_, _La Vipère_, _L’Affamé_, _Le Glaive_, _Les Parias de
Charonne._
As each individual of a group is a law unto himself, recognising no
authority in the group as a whole, so each group is a law unto itself,
independent of every other group and recognising no higher authority
whatsoever. In France, formerly, as is still the case in several
countries, groups of the same region formed a federation; but the only
present tangible proofs of the existence of an anarchist movement on a
large scale are district, national, and international congresses to
which whoever wishes[3] may be a delegate. These congresses have no
legislative, administrative, or coercive power over their component
parts; their functions are purely advisory like those of the district
conferences of the Congregational churches in America.
A newly formed group usually gets itself into touch, by correspondence,
with its senior groups somewhat after the manner of a Chautauqua
Literary and Scientific Circle or the local branch of a “correspondence
university.” Thus: “The group _Les Vengeurs_ would like to put itself
into communication with the existing groups. Those who have not received
a personal letter, but who wish to correspond, are requested to direct
their letters to the following address,” etc.
Union meetings of several groups are not infrequent. Thus: “_L’Avenir
Social_ of St. Ouen invites the _camarades_ of the groups of St. Denis,
Stains, Argenteuil, Puteaux, and Aubervilliers to a grand meeting which
will be held Sunday, February 17, at 8.30 o’clock.” But these union
meetings can no more bind by their action the individual groups
participating than the “union temperance meetings” of the churches of
New England towns can bind the action of the individual churches
participating.
Anarchist mass meetings are relatively rare. If landlords are found
willing to let their halls to anarchists,—and such landlords are not
plentiful,—the police interpose at the last moment. Besides, money to
pay for a hall is not always forthcoming, and the hesitancy of even the
warmest sympathisers to compromise themselves by appearing publicly in
the company of the _camarades_ has to be reckoned with. But the
anarchist has ways of holding a mass meeting—without holding it—that
are worth two of holding it in the stereotyped fashion, and that speak
volumes for his resourcefulness.
One of his favourite devices is to get himself named in due form a
candidate for the Chamber, which gives him the right to cover the walls
of the government buildings with unstamped posters[4] and the free use
of the public-school property for meetings. “Several _camarades_ are
astonished” (I quote from a number of _Le Libertaire_) “to see Libertad
a candidate. Reassure yourselves. With his customary enthusiastic and
communicative eloquence he exposes in his meetings the imbecility and
the infamy of the parliamentary system. Paraf-Javal seconds him with his
marvellous talent as a logician. Between them they are doing an
excellent and useful work. At the last meeting an auditor—to carry out
the farce of the campaign rally—proposed a resolution which was not
voted, but which was gayly read by Libertad in the midst of general
approbation. You will perceive by this resolution that our _camarade_ is
not on the point of occupying a seat in the _Palais-Bourbon_:—
“‘The electors assembled in the school building of the
Boulevard de Belleville, after having listened to the bogus
candidate Libertad and the _camarade_ Paraf-Javal, conclude
(agreeing thus at every point with the candidate himself) that
voting is too stupid to be thought of, and that liberty of
opinion, like every other liberty, is not to be asked for, but
to be taken, whatever the obstacles. They are determined to
send packing all the genuine candidates in whom they see only
imbeciles or knaves.’”
The anarchist’s sense of humour, you see, is much more highly developed
than is ordinarily supposed. Nothing tickles this sense of humour more
than to pack the meetings of his antagonists, the bourgeois politicians,
divert these meetings from their primitive object by virtue of numbers,
address, strength of lung, hardness of fist, or all of these combined,
and so carry on his propaganda at the expense of the very persons it is
directed against.
He effects this peacefully, as a rule, if his numbers are overwhelmingly
superior. In this case it is very much an affair of bravado and
lungs. He simply elects a _bureau_[5] to his mind—for so good
an end he is more than willing to stifle his scruples against
parliamentarianism—and, having installed a number of the _camarades_
upon the platform, carries on the meeting with his own orators and as
nearly in his own fashion as circumstances permit; of course, not
without more or less noise and abusive protest, if the adherents of the
original cause remain in the audience.
If, however, the numbers are more evenly matched, the interlopers,
without attempting to capture the organisation of the meeting, make a
dash for the front at a preconcerted signal, scale the platform as
though it were a rampart, throw down every member of the _bureau_ into
the body of the house, and send the speaking-desk with its pitcher and
glass of _eau sucrée_, the secretary’s table, and all the rest of the
platform paraphernalia flying after them. Then, if resistance is offered
on the floor of the hall, a pitched battle ensues, and the possession of
the platform (except as it gives the advantage of position and an
admirable chance to strut, game-cock fashion) counts for little, in the
utter impossibility of getting heard, even if it is maintained, which it
is not always, there being instances on record of the platform being
taken and retaken, quite as if it were a strategic redoubt, several
times in a single evening. Supposing, however, that the interlopers
follow up the platform victory by another victory in the body of the
hall, and succeed in ejecting the rightful occupants completely; the
dispossessed, if they are not able to call up re-enforcements for a
re-entry and renewal of the conflict, have no other redress than to
persuade the proprietor of the hall to vacate it by cutting off the gas
supply or by summoning the police. Either way, they gain nothing but the
emptiest sort of dog-in-the-manger vengeance, since they cannot hope to
resume their own interrupted meeting.
During the days succeeding the Dreyfus affair, when excitement was
running high over the struggle between the nationalists and the
socialists for the control of the Paris municipal council, a great
nationalist mass meeting (“_une grande réunion patriotique_”), to be
presided over by a nationalist deputy and addressed by other celebrities
of the party, was announced for half-past eight of a certain Friday
evening, in the assembly room of the Tivoli-Vauxhall, close by the Place
de la République. On the morning of the night set for the meeting all
the nationalist organs printed the following item:—
“We are informed at the last moment that the anarchists are
coming in force to-night to our patriotic meeting at
Tivoli-Vauxhall in order to prevent its being held and to
transform it into a demonstration of _sans-patrie._ They
propose to wave the red and the black flag. We are obliged,
therefore, much to our regret, to take measures to prevent the
entrance of our adversaries, and must limit the entries
strictly to those who are provided with invitations.
Invitations may be had by applying at,” etc., etc.
On the other hand, the revolutionary organs of the same morning printed
the following:—
“The _Comité d’Action Révolutionnaire_ invites all
republicans, all socialists, and all _libertaires_
[_libertaire_ is a euphonious name for anarchist] to assist at
the public meeting organised by the nationalists for this
evening, Friday, at 8.30, Tivoli-Vauxhall, rue de la Douane in
the Château d’Eau Quarter. All the _camarades_ and _citoyens_
are urged to wear the red eglantine.”
To one familiar with Parisian ways these antithetic notices promised a
beautiful scrimmage. There _was_ a beautiful scrimmage.
The doors opened at eight, and during half an hour or more the persons
duly provided with invitations straggled into the hall; while, on the
sidewalk opposite, a hostile crowd of socialists and anarchists, which
the police had the greatest difficulty in restraining, asserted angrily
their right to enter.
Just as the president of the evening, a phenomenally fat politician,
arose to speak, the police lines gave way under the strain put upon
them; there was a terrific stampede across the street, and before the
public had time to pull themselves together again and before the
ticket-takers could oppose the slightest resistance or really knew what
was happening, more than two thousand persons without invitations had
invaded the hall.
“_Vive la Sociale!_ _Vive l’Anarchie!_ _A bas l’Armée!_”
bellowed the invaders.
“_Vive le Drapeau!_ _Vive Rochefort!_ _Vive l’Armée!_”
screamed the invaded.
And, presto! pandemonium reigned.
In vain the elephantine president brandished his bell and pounded on the
table. In vain he made a speaking trumpet with his hands and roared
through it for order. The antagonistic yells mounted, collided, cracked,
and exploded in mid air.
“_A bas la Calotte!_”—“_Vive l’Armée!_”
“_Mort aux Juifs!_”—“_A bas Drumont!_”
“_A bas Zola!_”—“_Vive Loubet!_”
“_Vive l’Internationale!_”—“_Vive le Drapeau!_”
In the rear of the hall, to the air of _Les Lampions_, a surging band
chanted,—
_“Déroulède à Charenton,[6]
Déroulède à Charenton,
Ton taine,
Déroulède à Charenton,
Déroulède à Charenton,
Ton ton.”_
And in the front of the hall another surging band retorted, to the same
air,—
_“Conspuez Loubet!
Conspuez Loubet!
Conspuez!”_
“_Enlevez l’homme tonneau!_” (Away with the hogshead-man!) a shrill and
mocking voice in one corner piped.
“ENLEVEZ L’HOMME TONNEAU!!”
a hundred, five hundred, a thousand voices caught up the derisive cry.
“ENLEVEZ L’HOMME TONNEAU!!!”
the whole two thousand interlopers bawled.
And, bawling thus, they seethed on to the platform like a wave, lifted
the frantically gesticulating “_homme-tonneau_” and his two hundred of
avoirdupois clean off his feet, and, receding with multitudinous
laughter, swept him down the aisle and out through the door as if he
were a chip, and all his satellites and followers in the wake of him.
The new broom of the proverb never swept one-half so clean. Not a
nationalist, at least not a nationalist who dared to raise a nationalist
cry, was left in the hall. The socialists and anarchists were in
complete possession; but the real scrimmage of the evening was yet to
come.
A _bureau_ was chosen in which the two parties were about equally
represented, and a resolution was passed branding the nationalists as
tools of the bourgeois and as royalist reactionaries more dangerous than
the royalists themselves. Then a socialist, in an excess of zeal, made
the blunder of introducing a resolution committing the meeting to the
support of a certain socialist candidate for the municipal council. The
anarchists, holding to their cardinal principle of non-participation in
elections, vigorously dissented. Hot words followed; the crucial
differences between the doctrines were evoked and emphasised; old
injuries were recalled; old disputes were raked up; old sores were
probed and laid open. Plainly, the hall was much too small for both.
From furious debate the meeting went to still more furious shouts and
counter-shouts. _Vive l’Anarchie_, which had so lately locked arms with
_Vive la Sociale_, now confronted it and hissed threatenings and curses
in its teeth. And from shouts (there being no “_homme-tonneau_” to
kindle saving laughter) the meeting went to blows. Fists, canes,
umbrellas, chairs, and benches cleaved the air; shoes battered shins and
heads concaved stomachs; clothes were torn, hats crushed in and trampled
under foot; furniture was dismembered, and mirrors, windows, and gas
globes were shattered. The field days of the French Chamber were left
far in the rear, so was even the legendary South Boston Democratic
caucus. The pushing, pulling, pounding, kicking, scratching, biting, and
butting, the oaths and calls for help, the howls, growls, and yelps of
baffled rage and pain, would need the pen of a French Fielding to
describe and transcribe.
Finally, the socialists passed out by the same door as the nationalists,
and in very much the same fashion. But the anarchists had barely time to
catch their breath and to pronounce the socialists “the tools of the
bourgeois and the most dangerous of reactionaries, because the most
disguised,” when the police arrived, and with their fateful “_Messieurs,
la réunion est dissoute_,” backed up by the extinction of the gas,
evacuated the hall.
Once in the street, the anarchists were _solidaire_ again with the
socialists against their common bourgeois enemies, the nationalists.
What is more, all three were _solidaire_ against their common enemy, the
police; and the latter were forced to call on their reserves and a body
of the _Garde Républicaine_ to disperse the rioters.
[Illustration: MAULED TO DEATH FOR SHOUTING, “VIVE L’ARMÉE!”]
The joint debates (_assemblées contradictoires_) which are held, now and
then, during the political campaigns, are very apt to degenerate into
similar scrimmages. As a rule, such encounters—there must be a special
providence for scrimmages as there is for lovers—work no great harm
beyond bruises to those engaged in them; but fatal results are not
unknown. Not long ago, at an anti-militarist meeting in the hall of the
“_Mille Colonnes_,” a man who had the bad taste or the misplaced courage
to cry, “_Vive l’Armée!_” was quickly mauled to death by the infuriate
audience. This was not an “_assemblée contradictoire_,” it is true; but,
if it had been, the outcome would probably have been the same.
It is only fair to say, however, that the anarchists, on such occasions,
are not more intolerant than others. There is no certainty that a man
would have fared better who, alone, in a patriotic assembly at that time
had raised the cry, “_A bas l’Armée!_”
The anarchist, with all his haughty insistence on directness and
sincerity, is not totally averse to taking or administering the
sugar-coated pill. He has _punchs-conférences_ (punch-talks) and
_soupes-conférences_ (soup-talks), the former for himself, the latter
for others. At the _punch-conférence_ he washes down the word with the
beverage of his choice,—more often wine, coffee, or beer than the punch
which gives the name. At the _soupe-conférence_ he dispenses to hungry
vagabonds the soup that sustains life and the doctrines that, to his
mind, explain it and make it worth while; precisely as the city
missionaries and the “Salvation lassies” dispense food and gospel to
“hoboes” at the “mission breakfasts” and “hallelujah lunches” of English
and American cities and large towns.
In the summer he has “_ballades de propagande_,”—picnic trips into the
country, which are given a serious turn by doctrinal speeches, in the
open air, after lunch.
He has also—at least he had for a season—his weekly _déjeuners
végétariens_, at which the somewhat attenuated coating of sugar which a
vegetarian lunch gives to the lecture pill is overlaid with the more
substantial sweetness of frolic, song, and badinage.
He has his theatre (that is to say, he has his amateur theatricals)
about which a glamour of mystery and adventure is shed by the fact the
greater part of the répertoire is under the ban of the censorship.
Entrance to the performances is by invitation only and free. It is thus
the law is evaded, a fixed and obligatory cloak-room charge replacing
the fee of admission.
The _Maison du Peuple_ of the rue Ramey, which calls itself socialistic
from motives of prudence, has a permanent band of actors (_le Théâtre
Social_) on the border line between professionals and amateurs, who give
evening and matinée performances nearly every Sunday throughout the
winter and spring, and who occasionally go upon the road.
A single announcement will suffice to explain the operations of this and
all similar troupes:—
“THÉÂTRE SOCIAL.
_Maison du Peuple de Paris_, 47 _rue Ramey_ (4, _impasse
Pers_).
“_Camarades_,
“Before its departure for Belgium, where it is going to give a
series of representations of its great success, _L’Exemple_,
the _Théâtre Social_ has decided to give two other
representations (evening and matinée) of the piece of
Chéri-Vinet, at the _Maison du Peuple_, in order to
accommodate the _camarades_ of the suburban districts.
“We invite you, then, _camarades_, to assist at the third and
fourth representations (_strictly private_) of _L’Exemple_,
interdicted by the Censorship, the unpublished revolutionary
drama in 4 acts and 5 tableaux, which will be given Sunday,
the 31st of March, at two o’clock and at half-past eight
sharp.
“_L’Exemple_ will be preceded by _En Famille_, a piece by
Méténier in one act.
“Obligatory cloak-room fee, ten sous.
“Invitations may be procured at the _Maison du Peuple_, 47 rue
Ramey, at the offices of _L’Aurore_, _La Petite République_,
and _Le Petit Sou_, and at the house of the _citoyen_ A——,
number —, rue Championnet.”
As at the _Théâtre d’Application_ (formerly _la Bodinière_), the various
independent theatres, and the “Thursdays” of the _Odéon_, the
performance of the revolutionary troupe is usually preceded by an
explanatory or relevant talk either by its author or some well-known
thinker or littérateur. Thus, when Charles Malato’s _Barbapoux_,
announced as an “_Œuvre Aristophanesque, Symbolico-fantaisiste_,” was
performed at the _Maison du Peuple_, Malato himself provided an
introductory lecture, entitled “_Le Cléricalisme et le Nationalisme._”
Above all, the anarchist has his _soirée familiale_. For example:—
“The anarchist group, _Les Résolus_, announce for _Mardi Gras_
a grand _soirée familiale et privée_, to begin at nine.
Concert by amateurs, preceded by a lecture by L. Réville,
subject ‘_Le Socialisme et l’Anarchie_,’ and followed by a
ball and a _tombola_ [lottery]. Entrance free. Obligatory
cloak-room fee, six sous.”
In a big, barn-like, crudely lighted, smoke-begrimed, rafter-ceilinged
hall, whose walls are adorned with the painted texts which are anarchy’s
great watchwords,
NOTRE ENNEMI C’EST NOTRE MAÎTRE
LA FONTAINE
LA PROPRIÉTÉ C’EST LE VOL
PROUDHON
LA NATURE N’A FAIT NI SERVITEUR NI MAÎTRE
JE NE VEUX NI DONNER NI RECEVOIR DES LOIS
DIDEROT
LE CLÉRICALISME C’EST L’ENNEMI
GAMBETTA
NI DIEU NI MAÎTRE
BLANQUI
to the laboured sounds of a patient, plethoric orchestra, the _Résolus_
couples, some commonplace, some grotesque, and some graceful, dance with
honest zest; but with a restraint and modesty in striking contrast with
the reckless _abandon_ of such resorts as the _Moulin Rouge_, maintained
mainly for the prudent depravity of touring English and American men and
(alas!) women, who flock there to fan jaded or hitherto unawakened
senses into flame, under the flimsy pretext or the fond illusion that
they are studying French life.
[Illustration: A BALL AT THE MAISON DU PEUPLE
_To the laboured sounds of a patient, plethoric
orchestra, the couples dance with honest
zest; but with a restraint and modesty_]
[Illustration: DANCING AT THE MOULIN ROUGE
_in striking contrast with the reckless abandon
of such resorts as the Moulin Rouge, maintained
mainly for the prudent depravity of tourists_.]
In connection with the _soirée familiale_, it is highly diverting to
note the same advertising dodges on the part of the managers; the same
meaningless compliments to performers on the part of those who introduce
them; the same ill-concealed impatience on the part of the audience
during the serious part of the exercises for the dancing to begin; the
same fluttering preoccupation with ribbons, robes, coiffures, and
aigrettes, and the same jealousies of superior beauty, superior style,
and more numerous or assiduous adorers on the part of the young women;
and the same fussy solicitude on the part of doting mammas to have their
daughters dance with the young men that are “likely” as in assemblies
that do not occupy themselves with lofty ideas and ideals; also the same
tiptoeing excitement over the drawing of the _tombola_ as in the
_soirées_ of the working people, who do not profess a contempt for gain.
But he would be a precipitate reasoner, not to say a sorry churl, who
should pounce on these little charming inconsequences as refutations of
the anarchist theory, or should even call attention to them as other
than reassuring evidence that the anarchist is a very human and likable
being, not unaffected with amiable vices, and that he is not the abject
slave of that angular consistency which, if it be a virtue at all, is
the most unlovely of all the virtues. Your sound anarchist will probably
tell you that he is sincerely ashamed of these failings, that they are
deplorable relics of the old spirit of over-reaching which cannot, in
the nature of the case, be entirely expelled so long as the old social
régime continues. But this apology is so familiar, so threadbare even,
it has been proffered so many, many times by so many very different
sorts of people, that you prefer to ignore it, and attribute the
anarchist’s dainty peccadilloes to the good old human nature which has
always made men so much more companionable—let us guard ourselves
against saying so much better—than their creeds.
In all the anarchist assemblies—the group meetings, the congresses, the
mass meetings, and the various social and semi-social evenings—the
_trimardeur_ is a noteworthy figure. The _trimardeur_[7] (literally,
pilgrim of the great road) is a _camarade_ who devotes himself to
winning converts while making his tour of France. He has a certain
kinship with the ancient bard, the mediæval troubadour and itinerant
friar, and the German apprentice on his _Wanderjahre_.
[Illustration: A TRIMARDEUR DISPUTING WITH SOCIALISTS]
But he is chiefly interesting as being the nearest modern approach to
the early Christian apostle and the most perfect embodiment of the
missionary spirit in existence. Figure him as the contemporary
missionary or missionary agent minus a salary and a domicile,—if you
can imagine such an anachronistic phenomenon!
He is usually a skilful and reliable workman who has lost his job from
his irresistible propensity to spread radical ideas among his
fellow-workmen or for his active connection with a strike. He sets out
on his proselyting tour “with neither purse nor scrip nor shoes,”
“neither bread, neither money” almost literally; and, literally, without
“two coats.” In the country he mingles with the peasants and farm
labourers, sleeping under their roofs, “eating and drinking such things
as they give,” and converting as many as he may, sure of a welcome, for
that matter, wherever there is a lodge—and where is there not?—of that
most fraternal of all freemasonries,—discontent. In the cities he works
during his sojourn, if work is to be had; and, when he “goes out of a
city,” he blesses that city if it has “received” him, and “he shakes off
the very dust from his feet as a testimony against it” if it has
“received him not.”
The origin, methods, and manners of the _trimardeur_ have been well
described by one Flor O’Squarr. I take up his description at the point
where the incipient _trimardeur_ has been turned away by his employer.
“He offers his labour to the factory opposite, to the foundry adjacent.
Vain proceeding! Unfavourable reports immediately follow him or have
preceded him there. The employers also combine. He will be received
nowhere except by mistake and for a short time. At the beginning this
conspiracy of the world against him surprises and disturbs him. He
exclaims: ‘What have I done to them, then? Why do they drive me away
thus, as they would a mangy or vicious cur? I have defended my interests
and those of my fellows. It was my right, after all.’
“Later he discerns injustice in this persistent
hostility,—bourgeois injustice, _parbleu!_ This discovery
provokes in him the idea of revolt, as a draught of alcohol
inflames the blood. Persecution has begun then. Well, let it
be so! He will accept it, not without pride. The theory of
anarchy sinks a little deeper into his brain, after the manner
of a spike on which the employers have tried their sledges.
Then he buckles his belt, turns up his pantaloons, tightens
his shoe-lacing, and gains the _trimard_ with a few sous in
his pocket, _en route_ for the nearest large town, where he
hopes to find employment and an unworked field for his
neophytic zeal.
“If he sets out from Angers, from Trélazé, for instance, he
tramps as far as Nantes, where he improvises himself porter or
stevedore along the quays of the Loire, undertaking with the
rashest indifference any occupation for which only muscle is
required....
“Signalled anew, ... our man rebuckles his belt, turns up
again his pantaloons, retightens his shoe-lacing, and gains
the _trimard_ with a few sous in his pocket, headed towards
St. Nazaire or Brest, towards Rennes or towards Cherbourg,
towards any city whatsoever in which he can hope to earn his
bread and convert men. Along the road he manages to get
shelter on the farms, and he carries on his propaganda among
the peasantry.
“This tireless fanaticism will carry him through Normandy
towards the regions of the north. He will be expelled from the
spinning-mills of Rouen, the glass-works of Douai, the mines
of Anzin, the forges of Fives. From there he will pass into
Belgium, always ‘on the hoof’ (_à pattes_) and on the
_trimard_: he will visit Brussels, where the marvellous
workingmen’s organisations of Brasseur and Jean Volders will
make him shrug his shoulders,—‘Fudge, all that! authoritative
socialism, that’; Antwerp, which will detain him a week, a bit
disconcerted by the machine; Liège and Scraing, which will
keep him a month; le Borinage, which he will contemplate as a
promised land. Perhaps he will go into Germany, the vast
Germany so inclement to anarchy,—that is, if he does not
descend into the east by the Luxembourg, and gain the Jura by
the Vosges.
“In two or three years he will have seen many districts and
many countries, and will have scattered behind him everywhere,
indifferently, seeds of revolt without troubling himself about
the nature of the ground. His information will be considerably
augmented. He will have made good by experience the defects of
his education. He will know various languages and _patois_,
having spoken Breton at Vannes, Normand at Caen, Walloon at
Namur, Flemish at Gand, Marollien at Brussels, German in the
east or in Switzerland; and, like the cosmopolitan Bohemian
who had learned to borrow five francs in all the tongues of
the world, he will have become capable of preaching anarchy in
all the ‘_argots_.’...
[Illustration: EVENING IN A CABARET
“_The little wine-shop concerts at
which every person present is
expected to do his turn._”]
“If during his travels the _trimardeur_ has not acquired fine
manners, at least he has acquired some very extended notions
on customs and industries. He will know, without referring to
a note, by a simple habit of memory, the distribution of the
revolutionary contingents, here, there, and everywhere, in
labour unions or socialist or anarchist groups, and the
efficacy of each; what can be attempted at Montpellier, what
is possible at Calais, how the iron is extracted at
Mont-Canigan, and how it is worked at St. Chamond; why the
fitters of the Seine are better paid than those of Nevers or
Creuzot; where one stands a chance of being welcomed if one
has been driven from the workshops of la Ciotat; by what
artifice one may travel gratuitously in the baggage-cars of
the company of the Midi, etc., etc. This miscellaneous
information is not a bad substitute for science, and forms in
fact a sort of fund of practical science very useful in the
every-day life.”
“_Nous partons tous faire le tour du monde
Quand nous manquons de travail et de pain;
Et cependant notre terre féconde
Produit assez pour tout le genre humain,
Nos exploiteurs veulent jouir sans cesse:
Dans tous nos maux ils trouvent un plaisir.
Nous travaillons pour créer la richesse,
Et de misère il nous faudrait mourir?_”
REFRAIN.
“_Allons, debout! les Trimardeurs,
Tous les hommes, enfin, veulent l’indépendance;
Supprimons donc nos exploiteurs,
Afin d’avoir le droit de vivre dans l’aisance._”
So runs the first stanza of the _Chant des Trimardeurs_; and this
_chanson_, though execrable poetry, is, nevertheless, amply suggestive
of the spirit of the _trimardeur_, and at the same time fairly
illustrative of the popular revolutionary _chanson_ (_chanson populaire
révolutionnaire_).
“Of all the peoples of Europe,” said Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
“the French people is the one whose temperament is the most
inclined to the _chanson_.
“The _chanson_ is the Frenchman’s ægis against ennui.... He
uses it sometimes as a kind of consolation for the losses and
reverses he sustains. He sings his defeats, his poverty, and
his ills as readily as his prosperity and his victories.
Beating or beaten, in abundance or in need, happy or unhappy,
gay or sad, he sings always. One would say that the _chanson_
is the natural expression of all his sentiments.”
France’s _chanson populaire_ has always been one of the most important
breeders and disseminators of social and political discontent. It has
always kept pace with and frequently forerun revolutions. It is not
surprising, therefore, that it is looked on by the anarchists as one of
the most efficacious means of propaganda. The circulation among the
masses of songs of revolt (_chansons de propagande_) is vigorously
carried on by a number of revolutionary publishing concerns, which
retail them at two sous each[8] and wholesale them at fr. 4.50 a
hundred, and which also distribute them gratuitously as often as a
_camarade_ or sympathiser will provide a fund for the purpose.
In these _chansons_, logic is deliberately ignored, and metaphysics and
ethics are very little meddled with. All the subtleties and refinements
of the doctrine, all the gentleness and sweet reasonableness of the
accredited expounders of the doctrine, are crowded out by the necessity
for the simple, downright, direct appeal to the passion which is the
_chanson’s_ peculiar province.
The very titles of these _chansons de propagande_ show that their
purpose is inflammation rather than persuasion. Notice a few of them:—
“_Ouvrier, prends la Machine!_” “_Crevez-moi la Sacoche_” (money-bag)!
“_Fusille les Voleurs_,” _Les Briseurs d’Images_, _Le Drapeau Rouge_,
_Le Réveil_, “_Vivement, Brav’ Ouvrier!_” _La Chanson du Linceul_.
When proselytism is not sufficiently pronounced in the _chansons_
themselves, caustic foot-notes make up the deficiency. Thus this
definition of the word _députés_: “Deputies are persons who make rules
for others and exceptions for themselves.”
These _chansons_, besides being sung in the various anarchist functions,
appear, along with ballads, amorous ditties, and the topical songs of
the day, on the programmes of the little wine-shop concerts of the
faubourgs, at which each and every person present is expected to “do his
turn” and all are counted on to help out with the choruses. These
diminutive faubourg concert halls are the lineal descendants of the
famous historic workingmen’s _goguettes_ and _guinguettes_ into which
the great Déjazet was happy to escape and from which the thought and the
spirit of revolt were never far distant. “Behind their closed doors,”
says Jules Claretie, “the government was roundly berated, the couplets
of the _chansonniers_ there becoming for it more redoubtable than the
fiercest articles of the press.”
The _chansons de propagande_—the more catchy, least compromising of
them, that is—are sung in the public squares and on the street corners
of the working districts by the itinerant musicians, who are at all
seasons, but especially at fête times, a picturesque feature of Paris
streets, and who conduct so many open-air singing schools, as it were,
in that they teach their motley audiences to sing the songs they have
the wit to sell them.
Only a few of the anarchist _chansons_ ever see the types. The majority
either circulate in handwriting among the groups or, without having been
taken down, are transmitted orally, like the mediæval folk-songs or the
Homeric lays, suffering, like those, all sorts of modifications and
corruptions of text in the transmission.
Of the _chansons populaires révolutionnaires_ which have come down to
the present from the Great Revolution, the _Marseillaise_, a true
_chanson de propagande_ in its time, well called by Lamartine “the
fire-water of the Revolution,” is not in favour with the orthodox
anarchists, because it is essentially patriotic and uses the offensive
word _citoyen_. The “_Ça Ira_” is still sung by the anarchists, but not
always to its original words. The _Père Duchêne_, a part of which dates
from the Directoire, is sung mainly by the coal-miners of the region of
the Loire. The _Carmagnole_ alone—the saucy, rollicking, explosive,
diabolic _Carmagnole!_—has held its own against all new-comers,
changing, but losing nothing of its sauciness, its explosiveness, and
its diabolism as it has passed from the versions of 1792-93 through its
seven clearly defined texts to the version of the memorable strike of
Montceau-les-Mines in 1883.
After the execution of Ravachol[9] the airs of the “_Ça Ira_” and the
_Carmagnole_ were combined into a chanson called _La Ravachole_, which,
in spite of this hybrid origin, may fairly be classed as the latest and
by far the most vindictive version of the _Carmagnole_.
LA RAVACHOLE
I
_Dans la grande ville de Paris (bis)
Il y a des bourgeois bien nourris, (bis)
Il y a les miséreux
Qui ont le ventre creux.
Ceux-là ont les dents longues,
Vive le son, vive le son,
Ceux-là ont les dents longues,
Vive le son
D’ l’explosion._
REFRAIN
_Dansons la Ravachole,
Vive le son, vive le son,
Dansons la Ravachole,
Vive le son
D’ l’explosion.
Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Tous les bourgeois goût’ront d’ la bombe,
Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Tous les bourgeois on les saut’ra,
On les saut’ra._
II
_Il y a les magistrats vendus, (bis)
Il y a les financiers ventrus, (bis)
Il y a les argosins;
Mais pour tous ces coquins
Il y a d’ la dynamite,
Vive le son, vive le son,
Il y a d’ la dynamite,
Vive le son
D’ l’explosion!_
_Dansons, etc._
III
_Il y a les sénateurs gâteux, (bis)
Il y a les députés véreux, (bis)
Il y a les généraux,
Assassins et bourreaux,
Bouchers en uniforme,
Vive le son, vive le son,
Bouchers en uniforme,
Vive le son
D’ l’explosion._
_Dansons, etc._
IV
_Il y a les hôtels des richards (bis)
Tandis que les pauvres déchards (bis)
A demi-morts de froid
Et souffrant dans leurs doigts.
Refilent la comète,
Vive le son, vive le son,
Refilent la comète,
Vive le son
D’ l’explosion._
_Dansons, etc._
V
_Ah, nom de dieu, faut en finir! (bis)
Assez longtemps geindre et souffrir! (bis)
Pas de guerre à moitié!
Plus de lâche pitié!
Mort à la bourgeoisie,
Vive le son, vive le son,
Mort à la bourgeoisie,
Vive le son
D’ l’explosion!_
_Dansons, etc._
The revolutions of 1830, 1848, and 1871, as well as the Great
Revolution, left to the people generous heritages of bourgeois-baiting
_chansons_. The barricades of those agitated periods rang with lyric
improvisations born of the ferment and frenzy of the hour. The authors
were oftener clerks or day labourers than they were poets or
professional _chansonniers_, and their songs, many of the best of which
have survived, were genuine songs of the people. But the one supremely
great _chanson populaire révolutionnaire_ of the last half of the
century just closed, a song as striking in its way as the _Carmagnole_,
the “_Ça Ira_,” the _Père Duchêne_, or the _Marseillaise_, is the
_Internationale_. Wherever there is revolt or faith in revolt,
brotherhood or yearning after brotherhood, this stupendous hymn of the
religion of humanity (for it is much more a hymn than a _chanson_) is
fervidly and reverently sung. The _Internationale_ has something of the
profundity and awfulness of Martin Luther’s “_Ein’ Feste Burg_.” Like
that marvellous psalm, it is at once uplifting and crushing. In concept
it is probably the biggest song of liberty that has ever been written.
It is surely the biggest in this respect of all the French revolutionary
_chansons_. As the _Marseillaise_, with its fierce, defiant staccatos
and fiery, resistless appeal, is the perfect lyric expression of the
fury of onset (_furia francese_) in the field, and as the _Carmagnole_,
with its madly reeling, rolling, booming rhythms and its terrible,
mocking, blasphemous mirth, is the perfect lyric expression of the
drunkenness and dare-devilness of mobs and barricades, so the
_Internationale_, with its slow, solemn, stately measure and its
universal reach of feeling and of thought, is the perfect lyric
expression of the eternal might and majesty of humanity. Hearing it, it
is as if one heard the cadenced beat of the million-millioned tread of
the advancing race, sweeping all barriers of pride and prejudice before
it.
In the meetings, the numerous stanzas of the _Carmagnole_ and the
_Internationale_ are generally delivered as a solo from the platform by
a _camarade_ who is blessed with a good memory and exceptional lung
power, the audiences leaping into the choruses. The effect is invariably
inspiriting, whatever the personality of the soloist or the quality of
his voice, and whatever the composition and the voices of the audience.
Indeed, these two _chansons_ seem to belong to that rare sort of music
which cannot be spoiled by bad, if it be not half-hearted, execution. So
that there is conviction behind it, it carries,—the music in which
sincerity and fervour atone for all defects of pitch, key, and voice.
In the open air, the more familiar stanzas are sung in unison just as is
the _Marseillaise_, just as are the songs of the students, and just as
are, for that matter, all the songs of the people in France,—a method
by which a great deal more is gained in lilt and concentration (where
only the primal emotions are concerned) than is lost in charm. And I
defy any one who has a drop of red blood in him to be at the centre of
several thousand excited people who are shouting the _Marseillaise_, the
_Internationale_, or the _Carmagnole_, and not join in, even though his
every instinct and belief be anti-revolutionary and he has neither voice
nor ear. He who has not shared the surging and chanting of an angry
Paris mob has only half experienced the popular thrill, and can have
only half an idea what solidarity of emotion means.
The _Internationale_ is as much the rallying cry of the opening of the
twentieth century as the _Marseillaise_ was of the opening of the
eighteenth; and it would not be surprising if its author, Eugène
Pottier, who is already called by the faithful “the Tyrtæus of the
Social Revolution,” should win ultimately the same sort of an apotheosis
as Rouget de Lisle won by the _Marseillaise_.
Poor Pottier, who died in 1887 at seventy-one years of age, saw only the
beginning of the phenomenal vogue of his masterpiece as a revolutionary
slogan.
Pottier was one of the few who dared to speak his mind freely during the
Second Empire, and was a prominent figure on the barricades of both 1848
and 1871. He was proscribed for his participation in the Commune, but
escaped to America, where he remained till amnesty was declared. Unable
to work steadily at his trade after his return, because his natural
employers resented the part he had taken in the organisation of his
craft, as well as his share in the Commune, and systematically neglected
as a poet and song-writer by the bourgeois press, his poverty was
terrible at times,—so terrible that it is no hyperbole to say that many
of his best pieces were written with his heart’s blood. They were real
cries of real anguish. His boundless love and pity for the poor and his
incessant struggle for the emancipation of the oppressed turned his
life—like that of the noble Communard, Blanqui, to whom he dedicated a
marvellous sonnet—into an uninterrupted series of self-sacrifices; and
he stands side by side with Blanqui among the finest modern
revolutionist types. Many of his _chansons_ besides the _Internationale_
have survived him. He left also a quantity of far from despicable poems.
They are legion, the men of the people whom anarchy has inspired of late
years to sing; but the majority of them are unknown to the general
public and even to other anarchistic groups than their own. A few,
however, have a Parisian reputation for their abilities or
eccentricities.
Paul Paillette, a quaint, picturesque personality, inhabits a
correspondingly quaint and picturesque lodging, which he calls his
“_grenier de philosophe_” (philosopher’s garret) on the summit of
Montmartre. He was originally a jeweller; but of late years he has
supported himself by rendering his own productions and those of Bruant
and Xanrof in the salons of the bourgeois, who gladly pay him for
ridiculing and abusing them. He is also a favourite feature of the union
meetings and _soirées familiales_ in several quarters of the city.
Paul Paillette can be bitter, caustic, and violent when he chooses; but
his dominant note is gentle, hopeful, idyllic, and ideal, as the
following _chanson_ from his principal volume, _Les Tablettes d’un
Lézard_, testifies:—
HEUREUX TEMPS
Air: _Le Temps des Cerises._
I
_Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Les humains joyeux auront un gros cœur
Et légère panse.
Heureux, on saura, sainte récompense,
Dans l’amour d’autrui doubler son bonheur!
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Les humains joyeux auront un gros cœur._
II
_Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
On ne verra plus d’êtres ayant faim
Auprès d’autres ivres:
Sobres nous serons et riches en vivres;
Des maux engendrés ce sera la fin.
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Tous satisferont sainement leur faim._
III
_Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Le travail sera récréation
Au lieu d’être peine.
Le corps sera libre, et l’âme sereine,
En paix, fera son évolution.
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Le travail sera récréation._
IV
_Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Les petits bébés auront au berceau
Les baisers des mères.
Tous seront choyés, tous égaux, tous frères;
Ainsi grandira ce monde nouveau.
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Les bébés auront un même berceau._
V
_Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Les vieillards aimés, poètes-pasteurs,
Bénissant la terre,
S’éteindront, béats, sous le ciel mystère,
Ayant bien vécu, loin de ces hauteurs.
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Les vieillards seront de bien doux pasteurs._
[Illustration: A LA RENOMMÉE DES POMMES-DE-TERRE FRITES
_Fried potatoes sold at
one sou the package_]
VI
_Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Nature sera paradis d’amour;
Femme souveraine,
Esclave aujourd’hui, demain notre reine,
Nous rechercherons tes ordres du jour!
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Nature sera paradis d’amour._
VII
_Il semble encore loin, ce temps d’anarchie;
Mais, si loin soit-il, nous le pressentons;
Une foi profonde
Nous fait entrevoir ce bienheureux monde
Qu’hélas! notre esprit dessine à tâtons.
Il semble encore loin, ce temps d’anarchie;
Mais, si loin soit-il, nous le pressentons!_
Brunel, a café garçon by profession, author of _Le Chant des
Peinards_, has been associated with Paul Paillette in organising
_soupes-conférences_ and _déjeuners végétariens_.
Achille Leroy calls himself “author, publisher, and international
book-seller,” and his invariable response to the simple salutation,
“_Comment ça va?_” (How goes it?) is:—“_L’idée marche_” (The idea
moves). He earns his living by selling his own and other iconoclastic
works at the doors of revolutionary gatherings,[10]—anarchist
gatherings preferred,—scrupulously devoting to the cause whatever he
may gain beyond the bare necessities. Though an honest, harmless body,
if ever there was one, he is so addicted to the spots where trouble is
going on or brewing that he has been arrested many times; for instance,
on the day of the 1899 _Grand Prix_ for having cried, “_A bas les
Sergots!_” Achille wrote a letter of self-defence at that time which was
printed in certain of the newspapers and in the _Almanach de la Question
Sociale_. He was also defended in the _Journal du Peuple_ by M. Lucien
Perrin, as follows:—
“Among the condemnations which evoked violent murmurs from the
listeners was that of our worthy _camarade_, Achille Leroy,
the revolutionary publisher. He had bravely cried, ‘_Vive la
Liberté!_’ when he was seized by the police and maltreated, as
only these brutes know how. As he was unarmed, and had
committed no violence, the police officers accused him of
having cried, ‘_A bas les Sergots!_’ (what a crime!) The ruse
succeeded, and our friend was condemned to a month of prison
without reprieve.”
Auguste Valette, a roving vagabond character, sometimes attached to a
Paris _caveau_ (concert-cellar) or _café-concert_ and sometimes to a
strolling show, gained some little notoriety at the time of the trial of
Salsou for his attempt against the Shah of Persia, and came near being
indicted with Salsou as an accomplice because two violent anarchist
poems by him, dedicated to Salsou, were found among the latter’s papers.
Other singers of anarchy are Olivier Souêtre, author of _Marianne_ and
_La Crosse en l’Air_, two _chansons_ that enjoy and deserve high favour;
H. Luss, author of _La Défense du Chiffonnier_ and _La Grève de Cholet_;
Félix Pagaud, author of _Les Tueurs_; Daubré, to whom is attributed the
last stanza of _Père Duchêne_; Hippolyte Raullot, Jacques Gueux,
Martinet de Troyes, Pierre Niton, and Jean la Plèbs, who style
themselves “_poètes plébéiens_”; Théodore Jean, Luc, Marquisat,
Doublier, etc. It is useless to go on naming them, as their names mean
nothing outside of the revolutionary circles of Paris.
They are all most striking individualities, however, ranging all the way
from freaks to heroes; and it is the individuality which they lavish on
the rendering of their _chansons_ that constitutes their drawing power.
You must hear a Brunel, a Valette, a Paul Paillette, sing his own
_chansons_ to comprehend the influence they exert, since, in simple
print, the most of these productions seem decidedly flat.
Père La Purge, the jovial-faced cobbler of the narrow, dark, and
tortuous rue de la Parcheminerie in the Latin Quarter, calls for a
special word here, because he perpetuates worthily the revolutionary
tradition of the cobbler.
Père La Purge is a perfect modern counterpart of the cobblers who
secreted intended victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew under the
refuse of their shops; who, under Richelieu, managed to get letters to
prisoners in the Bastille by sewing them between the soles of the
prisoners’ shoes; who were among the first shop-keepers to set the
tricolor cockade over their shops, and made themselves otherwise
remarked for their zeal in the Revolution; and who, under the
Restoration, played an important revolutionary rôle by placarding the
walls of their shops with caricatures and _Pasquinades_ (Pasquino, it
should not be forgotten, was a cobbler) and by secretly circulating
seditious pamphlets and _chansons_.
The invasion of machinery to do heeling and soling “while you wait”
(_ressemelage Américain_) is driving out of Paris the old-time cobblers
who made their shops rendezvous of the opposition and nurseries of
revolt. But a few of these cobblers still persist; and of these Père La
Purge is the best known, if not the most talented or most dangerous,
example. His _Chansons du Gars_, which are issued with a superb cover
design by Ibels, display a great deal of shrewdness and aptness of
phrase,—
“_I ‘a d’ la malice!
Oui, foi d’ Bap’tiss!_”
but his most popular work is the lurid and penny-dreadful _Chanson du
Père La Purge_, which has given him his name.
LA CHANSON DU PÈRE LA PURGE
I
_Je suis le vieux Père La Purge,
Pharmacien de l’humanité,
Contre sa bile je m’insurge
Avec ma fille, Egalité._
REFRAIN
_J’ai ce qu’il faut dans ma boutique,
Sans le tonnerre et les éclairs,
Pour watriner toute la clique
Des affameurs de l’Univers._
II
_Pendant que le peuple s’étiole
Sur le pavé, sans boulotter,
Bourgeoisie, assez de la fiole!
Avec ma purge il faut compter._
_J’ai ce qu’il faut, etc._
III
_J’ai des poignards, des faulx, des piques,
Des revolvers et des lingots,
Pour attaquer les flancs uniques
Des Gallifets et des sergots._
_J’ai ce qu’il faut, etc._
IV
_J’ai du pétrole et de l’essence
Pour badigeonner les châteaux;
Des torches pour la circonstance,
A porter au lieu de flambeaux._
_J’ai ce qu’il faut, etc._
V
_J’ai du picrate de potasse,
Du nitro de chlore à foison,
Pour enlever toute la crasse
Du palais et de la prison._
_J’ai ce qu’il faut, etc._
VI
_J’ai des pavés, j’ai de la poudre,
De la dynamite, oh! crénom!
Qui rivalise avec la foudre
Pour vous enlever le ballon._
_J’ai ce qu’il faut, etc._
VII
_Le gaz est aussi de la fête!
Si vous résistez, mes agneaux,
Au beau milieu de la tempête
Je fais éclater ses boyaux._
_J’ai ce qu’il faut, etc._
VIII
_Ma boutique est toute la France,
Mes succursales sont partout.
Où la faim pousse à la vengeance,
Prends la bouteille et verse tout!_
_J’ai ce qu’il faut dans ma boutique,
Sans le tonnerre et les éclairs,
Pour watriner toute la clique
Des affameurs de l’Univers._
[Illustration: “ENLEVEZ L’HOMME TONNEAU!”]
“_For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals
For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders._”
WALT WHITMAN.
CHAPTER III
THE WRITTEN PROPAGANDA OF ANARCHY
“_The wonder is that he didn’t take a pair of tongs to hand me
my paper. He held it towards me with the tips of his fingers
in a horrified fashion, full of bourgeois indignation at the
idea that the_ Père Trimard _came to one of his
lodgers._”—Journal d’un Anarchiste (AUGUSTIN LÉGER).
“_You are not guilty because you are ignorant, but you are
guilty when you resign yourselves to ignorance._”—MAZZINI.
“_What we should try to do is to sow ideas, to force
reflection, leaving to time the care of making the ideas which
it shall have received blossom into consciousness and
deeds._”—JEAN GRAVE.
In 1898-99 Sébastien Faure took advantage of the exceptional chance for
agitation offered by the Dreyfus matter to found an anarcho-Dreyfusard
daily, _Le Journal du Peuple_. All other attempts to establish a daily
anarchist organ seem to have failed completely,[11] and the _Journal du
Peuple_ lived—if its feeble panting for existence can rightly be called
living—only a few months. After its demise, M. Faure, as if to conceal
his defeat, started an anarchist weekly, _Les Plébéiennes_, the good
will of which he was not slow and, apparently, not too reluctant to turn
over to another anarchist weekly, _Le Libertaire_ (eight pages, price
two sous a copy), which had been printed intermittently at Montmartre
for a considerable period, and which M. Faure himself had been
instrumental in founding. The public proclamation of the consummation of
the fusion between _Les Plébéiennes_ and _Le Libertaire_, which, being
the fusion of two miseries, was at the farthest possible remove from the
up-to-date fusion that goes to the forming of a trust, is of interest
because it throws a great deal of light on the make-up of an anarchist
paper, and on the anomalous and difficult position in the newspaper
world of the anarchist press:—
“Because of material difficulties—want of money, to speak
frankly—the _Libertaire_ was obliged to suspend publication.
It reappears to-day after a very short eclipse, and we have
every reason to hope that the regularity of its appearance
will be exposed to no fresh interruptions....
“We have profited by this short, obligatory vacation to
attempt to group about the _Libertaire_ new forces and more
numerous signatures; in a word, to take all the measures
necessary to insure it a vigorous life.... You will see
elsewhere that our friend Sébastien Faure has interrupted the
publication of his excellent _Plébéiennes_ in order to rally
as many readers as possible about the _Libertaire_. It is in
the _Libertaire_, then, that Sébastien Faure will hereafter
express his thoughts as often as he shall feel inclined to do
so.
“Furthermore, precious and assiduous collaborators have
formally promised us regular contributions; namely, Laurent
Tailhade, who with his incisive and scholarly pen will treat
especially of the vulgarities of Christianity; Paul Ary Cine,
who will expose barrack life; Raphaël Dunois, who will
chronicle and interpret the labor movement; Georges Pioch,
dramatic and literary criticism; J. G. Prodhomme, musical
criticism; A. R. Vertpré, art criticism; Alfred Griot, review
of the reviews; Fred-Pol, review of the week; Alfred Bloch,
scientific _chronique_; A. Harrent, anti-clerical
_chronique_....
“In a word, we are doing what we can. Let our readers on their
side do what they can in making known the _Libertaire_, in
seeking new purchasers for it, in sending us financial aid
sometimes, and in establishing in favour of their organ a
serious and persevering propaganda.
“In this manner we can be certain that we and ours will have a
journal to voice our opinions, our angers, and our hopes, and
one which we can depend on to lead the people in the way that
is frankly ‘_libertaire_’ on the fast-approaching day when it
is going to be necessary to ‘fight it out,’ when all the
political parties are going to fall on each other in order to
retain power or usurp it. We are on the eve of important
events. It is the moment for all of us to show ourselves, to
shake off, some of us, our apathy, others of us our egoism, to
silence all our dissensions, to combine with force will,
abnegation, and audacity.”—_Le Libertaire._
[Illustration: DORMER-WINDOW OF JEAN GRAVE’S WORKSHOP
_Office of “Les Temps Nouveaux,”
in the rue Mouffetard_]
Older, solider, more temperate, more dignified, and—if the word in such
a strange connection is permissible—more conservative, indeed so solid,
temperate, dignified, and conservative that it has been more than
once referred to as the _Temps_ of the anarchist press, is _Les Temps
Nouveaux_, an eight-page weekly, sold, like _Le Libertaire_, at two sous
a copy. _Les Temps Nouveaux_ (formerly _La Révolte_, and before that _Le
Révolté_), which was founded at Geneva, Switzerland, by Elisée Reclus
and Pierre Kropotkine more than a quarter of a century ago, has appeared
regularly ever since with only slight interruptions and the few changes
of title that commemorate its encounters with the law. It came to Paris
soon after its foundation, being forced to emigrate from Switzerland on
account of the anarchist attempt against the _Palais-Fédéral_ at Berne.
Its most distinguished, and at the same time most distinctive, feature
is a literary supplement made up in considerable part of selections from
the French and foreign classics and from the writings of contemporary
scientists and littérateurs, not avowed revolutionists, which arraign
the evils of society or support any one of the articles of the anarchist
creed. It also reproduces in full addresses by non-anarchist celebrities
in which concessions are made to revolutionary ideals or ideas.
“You may seize our journals, our brochures,” says the editor,
Jean Grave, “you will not prevent the _camarades_ from reading
what the bourgeois authors have written on the rottenness and
abjectness of the present hour. This alone is more terrible
than all the revendications and threats we can accumulate.”
From time to time this supplement serves to make public the addresses
prepared for prohibited anarchist congresses, as in the year of the last
Exposition, when it printed the papers which would have been read at the
International Anarchist Congress (euphoniously named _Le Congrès Ouvrier
Révolutionnaire Internationale_) if a frightened or over-prudent
ministry had not forbidden the sitting of the congress.
The contents of all the literary supplements thus far issued have been
classified under the heads of War, Militarism, Property, Family,
Religion, Law, Justice, The Magistracy, Poverty, Wage-earning, etc., and
they have been reproduced (with added selections, illustrations, and
complete bibliographies) in as many volumes as there are heads.[12]
Thanks, perhaps, to the clever handling of its literary supplement;
thanks, perhaps, to the thoughtfulness and relative tolerance of the
body of the paper, the _Temps Nouveaux_ has an appreciable circulation
among artists, littérateurs, savants, economists, bibliophiles, and
various other sorts of cultured people quite outside of anarchist
circles.
The present editor, Jean Grave, is one of the most winning personalities
in the anarchist or any other contemporary movement for reform. A
_Lyonnais_ by origin, a shoemaker and later a printer by trade, Jean
Grave came to Paris in his early manhood. He took part in the Commune,
and was one of the banished after its downfall, passing most of his
exile in Switzerland, where he was intimately associated with Kropotkine
and Reclus.
As editor, despite his comparative moderation, he has not been immune
from persecution. Like Kropotkine, his predecessor in the editorial
chair, Jean Grave has a fair experimental knowledge of the inside of
prison walls. A thorough man of the people, and proud of the fact,—he
has always retained his printer’s blouse,—his person and his writings
alike are nevertheless instinct with the most perfect urbanity.
There is no more picturesque corner in Paris than that on which, for
many years now, the _Temps Nouveaux_ has had its office in the top of an
aged and mellow six-story building whose ground floor is a wine-shop and
whose wrinkled roof and plant-bedecked dormer-window overlook the
sixteenth-century church of St. Médard,—no more intimate and engaging
business interior than the paper, book, and brochure bestrewn,
flower-and-print-decorated, slanting-walled loft in which Jean Grave
(veritable “attic philosopher”) and his assistant make up and administer
their sheet. Nothing could be more open and kind than the welcome you
get when, having felt your way up a winding stair as damp and dark as a
mediæval donjon-keep, you turn the latch-key, hospitably left in the
outside of the door, and with a premonitory knock enter the loft; always
providing your entry is courteous and your coming well motived. Indeed,
I know in all Paris nothing morally finer than the example Jean Grave’s
gentle, unassuming life offers of consecration to the ideal.
There is something peculiarly significant in the fact that the office of
this anarchist organ (whose mission is to be, like the university
settlement, a picket of civilisation carrying light into dark places) is
located on the line where the university and the industrial districts
overlap each other, at the very point where the _Quartier Latin_ ceases
and the Faubourgs Coulebarbe and Salpêtrière begin; at the junction of
such typical highways as the rue Claude Bernard, passing the _Ecole
Normale_, the rue Monge, in which many students lodge, the broad Avenue
des Gobelins, with its evening and Sunday animation as a labourers’
promenade, and the steeply ascending rue Mouffetard, with its motley
street market for the poor.[13]
The _Temps Nouveaux_, the _Libertaire_, and the anarchist weeklies of
the provinces serve to keep the individual _camarades_, the “groups,”
and the _trimardeurs_ in close touch with each other and with the whole
anarchist body, as well as to narrate events, establish the real
significance of the casualty columns of the bourgeois press, and expound
the doctrine of anarchy. They also lend themselves to mutual relief
work,—raising subscriptions for the _camarades_ in distress from lack
of employment, and securing comforts for the _camarades_ in prison and
for their families. They likewise signal _mouchards_ (police spies), and
predict their movements, rehabilitate _camarades_ unjustly accused of
espionage, denounce the crookedness of employers, arrange for lectures,
and, especially, utilise for the best interests of the movement the
varied information gleaned here, there, and everywhere by _trimardeurs_,
who are for them so many unsalaried correspondents.
An anarchist monthly, _L’Education Libertaire_, has lately been founded
by the _Bibliothèque d’Education Libertaire_ of the Faubourg St.
Antoine, which is not only the organ of the various _Bibliothèques
Libertaires_[14] of Paris and the provinces, but also a review of real
solidity and distinction.
Its nature and scope may be judged by a brief excerpt from its first
prospectus:—
“_L’Education Libertaire_ will contain:—
“I. One or two articles by the writers of note who have
accorded us their literary collaboration. [Follows a list of a
score or more collaborators, of whom Pierre Quillard, A. F.
Hérold, Urbain Gohier, Charles Malato, Henri Rainaldy, and
Laurent Tailhade have a Parisian or more than Parisian
reputation.]
“II. Certain of the lectures delivered in the _Bibliothèques
Libertaires_. These lectures will also be printed as
brochures, which, the type being already set, will cost
nothing but the paper and printing. We shall get thus the
brochure at one sou.
“III. Articles upon the different theories of education and
the attempts at ‘_libertaire_’ education, a large subject,
which will give rise to interesting discussions.
“IV. Communications or articles from the _Bibliothèques
Libertaires_.
“V. A concise summary of the month’s happenings, social,
economic, foreign, scientific, etc.
“VI. Criticisms of the books of which we shall receive two
copies,—one for the library of the review, the other to
circulate among the libraries which have given in their
adherence to the review.”
The number of _camarades_ who are afflicted with the _cacoethes
scribendi_ being almost as great as those who are afflicted with the
_cacoethes loquendi_, many of the groups have little amateur papers of
their own. These amateur papers sometimes remain in manuscript, and are
read aloud in the meetings (very much as in the old-fashioned American
lyceums); are sometimes mimeographed for distribution among the members;
and sometimes are printed, to be sold, by a _camarade_ who has a
hand-press at his disposition,—rarely by a professional printer. When a
group which is ambitious for a paper does not feel sufficient unto
itself in literary talent, it solicits outside assistance, thus:—
“The group _Les Résolus_ is going to print a journal in the
form of a brochure. The ‘_copains_’ call upon the _camarades_
who are willing to collaborate to communicate with the
_camarade_ Rodor.”
The number of anarchist papers in existence is as nothing to the number
that has disappeared. _Le Riflard_, _L’Attaque_, _La Lutte_, _Le “Ça
Ira,” Le Forçat_, _L’Insurgé_, _Le Droit Social_, _L’Etendard
Révolutionnaire_, _Le Défi_, _Le Drapeau Noir_, _L’Affamé_, _Terre et
Liberté_, _L’Audace_, _L’Hydre Anarchiste_, _L’Idée Ouvrière_, _L’Homme
Libre_, _La Révolution Sociale_, _L’Emeute_, _La Liberté Sociale_, _Le
Droit Anarchique_, _La Misère_, _Le Deschard_, _Le Falot_, _L’Idée
Libre_, _Le Père Jean Chiffonier de Paris_, _Le Père Peinard_, and
scores of others have lived and died in Paris and the provinces within
the last thirty years. Of them all, the most famous, not because the
most violent, but because the most violent with talent and wit (indeed,
the most famous incendiary sheet in France since the _Père Duchêne_ of
Eugène Vermesch), was the _Père Peinard_. While its circulation was
never enormous (8,000-15,000 copies), it came to the knowledge of the
bourgeois, and gave them such a turn that it seems likely to remain in
the public consciousness for at least a generation.
With no display of philosophy (which is not saying it had no
philosophy), it played openly upon the appetites, prejudices, and
rancours of the proletariat. Without reserve or disguise, it incited to
theft, counterfeiting, repudiation of taxes and rents, killing, and
arson. It counselled the immediate assassination of deputies, senators,
judges, priests, and army officers. It advised unemployed workingmen to
take food for themselves and their families wherever it was to be found,
to help themselves to shoes at the shoe-dealers’ when the spring rains
wet their feet and to overcoats at the clothiers’ when winter winds
nipped them. It urged employed workingmen to put their tyrannical
employers out of the way, and to appropriate their manufacturing
plants; farm labourers and vintagers to take possession of the farms and
vineyards, and turn the landlords and vine-owners into fertilizing
phosphates; miners to seize the mines and to offer picks to the
stockholders, in case they showed a willingness to work like their
brother men, otherwise to dump them into the disused shafts; conscripts
to emigrate rather than perform their military service; and soldiers to
desert or shoot down their officers. It glorified poachers and other
deliberate breakers of the law. It recounted the exploits of the
olden-time brigands and outlaws, and exhorted moderns to follow their
example.
Citations from the _Père Peinard_ are impossible, less because of a
constantly recurring broadness that is more than broadness (since this
might easily be dodged in extracts) than because it was written in the
picturesque slang of the faubourg, which can no more be rendered into
English than _Chimmie Fadden_, for instance, could be rendered into
French. The very titles of the articles are untranslatable.
Whatever exception to its morals one may take, one is forced to admit
that the _Père Peinard_ was a remarkable production in its way. For
blended drollery and diabolism, _camaraderie_ and cynicism, _gaminerie_
and gruesomeness, it would be hard in contemporary writing to find its
counterpart. Like the unmatched narrative of the shipwreck in the second
canto of _Don Juan_, it was at once rollicking and horrible, flippant
and terrible, ribald and sublime. In it there was no distinguishing
between the antics, grimaces, and piquant impudence of the buffoon and
the imprecations of the tragedian or the anathemas of the prophet; and,
while there were times when the sight of this grinning fury was merely
grotesque, there were others (seconds, at least) when it was
magnificent.
The _Père Peinard_ was even more a one man’s paper than is Drumont’s _La
Libre Parole_ or Rochefort’s _L’Intransigeant_. Apart from the
illustrations, which were the work of obscure caricaturists now thrice
famous,—a fact which gives the file a high value with collectors,—it
was practically all written by its editor, Emile Pouget. Pouget is by
general consent one of the “best fellows in the world.” Nevertheless, he
is no dilettante revolutionist. His grievances against society are very
real ones. He was forced out of his original occupation as a dry-goods
clerk because he tried to organise his fellow-employees; and he was
condemned (along with Louise Michel) on disgracefully insufficient
evidence for a misdemeanour in connection with a meeting of the
unemployed, of which he was not guilty. The following account of the
affair is so fully substantiated by the official record of the trial
that it may be accepted as practically authentic:—
“The organisers of this meeting of the unemployed simply had
in view to bring together on the Esplanade des Invalides the
greatest number possible of hungry persons. They intended it
to be less a revolt than a demonstration. They had no thought
whatever of marching on the Elysée or on the Ministry of the
Interior. They merely wished to say to the _bourgeoisie_:
‘Look at us. We are 20,000 without means of existence.’ And
the Esplanade des Invalides had been chosen in order that they
might not be accused of impeding circulation. The police,
disturbed at the idea of so large a number of men assembling
in one place, took every precaution to prevent it. They closed
the Esplanade, and forced those who came to the meeting into
the streets adjacent, where disorders naturally arose. Certain
individuals, who really had eaten nothing since the night
before, invaded three bake-shops. The bake-shops were cleaned
out in five minutes as if by enchantment.
“Pouget had pillaged nothing, planned nothing, directed
nothing. He was simply overheard to say of these poor devils
during the pillage: ‘They take bread because they are hungry.
They are right.’ He repeated it spiritedly in the assize
court, and he was condemned to eight years of prison for
‘incitation to pillage.’ It would have been more precise to
condemn him for _approbation_ of pillage, since, in point of
fact, he had not committed any other crime.”
During its entire existence the _Père Peinard_ carried on an extensive
traffic in brochures, _chansons_, etc., of the same violent nature as
itself. It also published an _Almanack_ for 1894, which is now rare and
much prized in book-collecting quarters.
The first anarchist _Almanack_ was issued in 1892 by Sébastien Faure,
who made the laughable and, from the point of view of sale, disastrous
blunder of basing it on the anarchist-hated Gregorian calendar.
Pouget’s _Almanack_, forewarned, avoided this rock of offence. It was a
rehash of his paper, supplemented by a lengthy philosophico-historical
disquisition on the calendar, appreciations of all the months,
allegorical observations on tides and eclipses, an anarchist chronology,
and a bundle of fantastic predictions,—all in the paper’s highly
coloured _faubourien_ slang.
“If ever,” says Jean Grave somewhere, “the history of this
movement is written, if ever it is revealed how the anarchist
publications have lived, how they have amassed sou by sou the
sums necessary to their appearance, the world will be
astounded at the proofs of solidarity and devotion which will
thus be brought to light. It will appreciate what a force
conviction is, especially among the most disinherited.”
There is something pathetic as well as diverting about the forced
preoccupation of the anarchist organs with the question of the money
which they consider it a part of their mission to depreciate, something
well-nigh cruel in the ironical destiny that compels them to be
perpetually harping on the thing which it is one of their pet dreams to
abolish,—to plead on their last pages for the same thing their first
pages abuse.
This inconsequence between the thought and the deed is not, however, to
be confounded with hypocrisy. It is accepted because unavoidable, but
accepted sorrowfully and bitterly; and it does not profit individuals.
In choosing to depend for their sinews of war on the contributions of
the _camarades_ rather than on the advertising which would contaminate
and enslave them, the anarchist journals have certainly chosen the
lesser moral evil. There is even a certain Quixotic heroism in this
choice, which is the more apparent since it is at the price of this
inestimable, if incomplete, moral independence that the socialists are
able to carry on a propaganda of a wider range. By way of compensation
for their sacrifice in refusing bourgeois advertising, it sometimes
happens that the anarchist journals are supported, without running the
slightest moral danger, by bourgeois funds. So it was that in the
Faubourg St. Antoine several years ago the anarchist cabinet-makers
preached the annihilation of their employers during several months. The
cabinet-makers founded an organ entitled _Le Pot-à-colle_ (_The
Glue-pot_), in the first number of which they chanced to give one of the
manufacturers a terrible castigation. The relatively small edition
printed was sold so fast that the _camarades_ most interested barely
managed to get copies. A watch was set on the news-stands of the
faubourg, and it was discovered that it was the business rivals of the
attacked manufacturers who had snapped up the papers. The discovery was
utilised to such good purpose that the phenomenal popularity of the
_Glue-pot_ continued just as long as there was a manufacturer left in
the district to “roast.”
The following statement of the review _L’Education Libertaire_ to its
subscribers gives a better idea than pages of explanation by an outsider
could give of the poverty to which anarchist publications are subject
and of their uphill struggle to get the wherewithal to live:—
“TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS
“Those of our readers who have followed our attempt month by
month know by what a slow progression we have arrived at the
bringing out of this Review.
“We shall continue, as in the past, to publish in each number
the accounts of the preceding number. This will enable the
readers to appreciate the pecuniary effort that must be made
if the publication is to be continued.
“We have received a hundred francs for this number and forty
for subsequent numbers. We have lumped the money all together
to pay in part for this number. We shall not appear again
until we have in the treasury the necessary sum. It is for our
readers, if they approve of our attempt, to interest their
friends in the Review, and engage them to subscribe.
“We have accepted subscriptions of three months, six months,
and one year. By that we mean subscriptions for three numbers,
six numbers, and twelve numbers. If the state of our treasury
does not permit us to appear every month, our subscribers
will, none the less, receive as many numbers as they have
subscribed for at the rate of ten sous per number. WE FORMALLY
BIND OURSELVES, having received subscriptions for one year, TO
PRINT THE REVIEW TWELVE TIMES. As to dates, we guarantee
nothing. The _camarades_ who are the administrators of this
journal are workingmen, able to dispense very little money;
and it would take them long months of self-assessment to get
together the 200 francs necessary for the publication of each
number.
“To facilitate the diffusion of our Review and the search for
new subscribers, we have prepared special propagandist
numbers, which we will send, postpaid, for five sous each to
readers who are already subscribers. These special numbers
have printed on every page in red ink, ‘_Read and Circulate_.’
They may secure subscribers for us if each of us pass one or
two about in his own circle.
“As to the next number, we urge the _camarades_ who have
subscribed for only three months or six months to make their
subscriptions annual, in which case we shall be able to appear
again early in December.”
The accounts referred to in the second paragraph of the above are
exceedingly suggestive reading. They recorded one subscription of twenty
francs. The remainder of the subscriptions ranged from two sous to two
francs. The total receipts were fr. 57.10. The expenses of printing and
mailing the number were fr. 73.60, and the incidental expenses were fr.
11.55. The deficit for this number was, therefore, fr. 28.05; but, the
deficit on the two preceding numbers having amounted to fr. 32.80, the
review at the end of its third number showed a deficit of fr. 60.85.
Very trifling seems this deficit to those of us who are accustomed to
read the balance sheets of large journals, but very real and very
embarrassing are the difficulties which it presents to the publishers of
an anarchist periodical. The financial statement is followed by this
notice:—
“To cover this deficit and reimburse the _camarades_ who
advanced us money, we offer for sale at ten sous, postpaid,
the one hundred and thirty copies of the Preparatory Series
which we still have left (3 numbers with covers, 18 pages
each).”
The acknowledgment of subscriptions and contributions through the
columns of the papers is theoretically for the sake of saving the labour
and expense of correspondence and postage; and, when the names of the
contributors are given by initials only, as is sometimes done, the
device may stand for what it claims to be. But when, as too frequently
happens, the names are printed in full, it is impossible not to suspect
the editors of catering to precisely the same sort of vanity as that
which lies back of bourgeois subscription lists.
These account columns are further utilised by the _camarades_—but here
at least the taint is scarcely a bourgeois one—for the launching of
pleasantries (more or less astute) and for the expression of sentiments,
the affirmation of brotherhood, the declaration of principles, and the
utterance of prophecies or threats.
In a recent subscription list of _Le Libertaire_ these signatures
appeared: _Nemesis_, fr. 0.50; _L’Alouette_, 0.50; _Ni Dieu ni Maître_,
0.50; _Un Evadé du Bagne Schneider_, 0.50; _Trois Mètres de Corde pour
le Roussin D——_, 0.50; _Un Va-nu-pied_, 0.25; _Un Coopérateur
Communiste-anarchiste_, 0.30; _Trois Semeurs à Lille_, 0.25; _Après la
Conférence de Sébastien Faure_, 2 fr.; _Trois Coopérateurs_, 0.30; _Un
Miséreux_, 0.10; _Un Garçon de Café Ennemi de la Tyrannie_, 0.30; _Deux
Trimardeurs_, 2 fr.; _Un Camarade Dévoué_, 1 fr.; _A Bas la Lâcheté
Humaine_, 1 fr.; _Vive l’Energie Individuelle!_ 1 fr.; _Trois Copains
Rochefortais_, 4 fr.; _Le Breton du Jardin des Plantes_, 0.30.
[Illustration: PIERRE JOSEPH PROUDHON[15]]
A recent device for raising funds, which is at the same time an
additional means of propaganda, is the sale of anarchist pictures. Up to
1886 a portrait of Louise Michel was the only picture published under
anarchist auspices. In that year _La Révolte_ (now _Les Temps
Nouveaux_), having become convinced of the proselyting value of
pictures, attempted to buy for reproduction such of the plates of the
illustrated weekly _L’Illustration_ as had or could be given a
revolutionary meaning. This attempt failing, it set about producing a
series of pictures of its own called _Images de Propagande_, to be sold
at prices ranging from ten to twenty-five sous. These _Images de
Propagande_ are all genuine works of art by artists of renown, and the
complete collection is much sought by amateurs. The _Temps Nouveaux_ has
also turned to the advantage of the propaganda the illustrated postal
card fever, and has prepared a series of anarchist pictures especially
for children.
The pictorial propaganda has gained even the provinces. The following is
an excerpt from an anarchist periodical:—
“The _camarades_ of Roubaix will soon enter into possession of
their little press. For a long while they have ardently
desired a press, but some efforts still remain to be made. If
we make a pecuniary appeal to the _camarades_, it is that we
may get together more quickly the sum necessary for the
purchase.... To hasten matters, if possible, a _Roubaisien
camarade_ has had the idea of photographing on a plaque of
good size (18 by 24 centimetres) the engraving representing
the Chicago martyrdom and a drawing with the portraits of
Emile Henry,[16] Caserio,[17] and Angiolillo on a plaque of 9
by 12 centimetres. Price, Martyrs of Chicago, fr. 1.40,
postpaid; Henri, Caserio, Angiolillo, 85 centimes, postpaid.
Send orders to,” etc.
There is probably no greater obstacle to the progress of the written
propaganda than the perpetual petty annoyances that arise from an
inadequacy of funds. It is by no means the only one. The anarchist who
has already in hand the means to pay for having his journal printed is
often unable to find a printer who will undertake the work. “The
_copains_ of Grenoble,”—the item is from a _trimardeur’s_ report,—“after
having done everything in their power to launch their paper, rebuffed by
all the printers (downright refusal, exorbitant charge, etc.), have
decided to buy a mimeograph and to autograph manifests, which they will
sow broadcast.”
Supposing his journal printed, however, the anarchist editor is still
far from the end of his troubles. He has to get it properly distributed;
and in this undertaking, likewise, he encounters numerous difficulties.
[Illustration: LITTLE ANARCHISTS]
It is so compromising in every way to be known as a reader of an
anarchist publication that few even of the sympathetically inclined,
unless they have a pronounced taste for martyrdom, care to lower
themselves in the eyes of their postman, their _concièrge_, and their
neighbours, and to run the risk of being black listed in all quarters
by receiving an anarchist paper regularly through the post. Besides,
they have a perfectly natural reluctance to pay in advance the
subscription price of three months, six months, or a year, for a paper
that may not be able to keep alive two months. They prefer to buy the
numbers at the news-stands as they come out,—a procedure which not only
considerably diminishes the publisher’s net returns, but keeps him in a
highly inconvenient uncertainty with regard to his budget. In some years
the news-stand sale of the _Temps Nouveaux_, for instance, has been
nine-tenths of the whole circulation.
This very news-stand sale is lessened by the indifference or positive
ill-will of the newsdealers, who either decline to handle anarchist
papers at all; or, if they do handle them, contrive to keep them well
out of view. Furthermore, the railway and post-office authorities take a
mischievous or malignant delight in delaying the delivery of anarchist
printed matter when they cannot find pretexts for holding it up
altogether.
“We receive frequent complaints, which we know are justified
for the most part,” says _Le Libertaire_, “on account of
tardiness in the arrival of our paper. We assure our dealers
and subscribers that the journal is sent out regularly every
Thursday, barring the weeks when money is lacking.
Consequently, it is to the malice of the railroads and the
post-office that the delay must be ascribed.”
To counteract these and other hindrances to the sale of their wares,
anarchist editors have to resort to numerous devices. These devices may
be in the form of stereotyped requests to readers to secure other
readers, and to force the hands of the dealers, of which the following
are good examples:—
“_Friends and Readers_,
“If you would be useful to the _Journal du Peuple_, and serve
the ideas which it defends, buy several copies and distribute
them to the persons whom you judge capable of buying it later
for themselves.”
“We urge our friends in Paris to keep demanding our paper of
the newsdealers in order to compel them to handle it. A bit of
determination on the part of each, and _ça ira_.”
Often the advertisement appears as a more presuming and exacting appeal
to loyalty, as, for example:—
“Our liquidation of the end of the year permits us to spare a
quantity of back numbers. We beg those of our friends who are
willing to take upon themselves their distribution, either in
the meetings or at the doors of the factories, to let us know
how many copies to send them.”
At other times, resort is taken to such original and audacious schemes
as the following:—
“JOURNALS FOR ALL
“The reactionary press penetrates into the rural districts,
while many of the _libertaire_ journals are unknown there. We
remind our readers that the enterprise ‘JOURNALS FOR ALL,’ 17
rue Cujas, holds itself at their disposition to give them the
addresses of poor provincials who would be delighted to
receive their papers once they have been read. It will cost
them a stamp of two centimes each day and the trouble of
wrapping and addressing. In thus sending away their papers,
our readers will be doing a work highly advantageous to the
propaganda. Write the secretary for fuller particulars.”
“Here is a means of circulating our paper which, employed upon
a certain scale, would be highly efficacious: All the
_camarades_ who can make the sacrifice of a certain number of
copies should roll them into a more or less tempting small
package, wrap them well to protect them, and then throw them
into the doorways of houses, slip them into the baskets of
women on their way to or from market, or give them to the
children in the street to take home to their parents.”
Finally, the wily stratagems of a determined and not over-scrupulous
secret police and the special rigour of a body of more or less biased
judges in applying Draconian laws of exception must be reckoned with. In
no department of their work do the former display more cunning or the
latter more severity. Nevertheless, they have never been able, combined,
to prevail over the intensity of the anarchist proselyting spirit far
enough to prevent for any length of time the spread of the written word.
Trick has been matched by trick and audacity by audacity. The defiance
with which the authorities are met is well typified by the following
manifesto:—
“READERS AND SUBSCRIBERS OF _L’Insurgé_, TAKE NOTICE!
“We announce to our readers that we shall not be able to
appear this week; but, in spite of all the rascalities of the
government, we intend to appear in the breach again very soon.
_Vive l’homme libre dans l’humanité libre! Vive l’Anarchie!_
“SANTAVILLE
“[Managing Editor of _L’Insurgé_].”
Previous to 1881 the press law was such that a condemned journal was
forced to change its name, if it wished to reappear; and the tradition
survives of an anarchist sheet at Lyons which suffered eighteen
successive condemnations (involving for the managing editors
imprisonment for terms varying from six months to two years), and which,
therefore, bore successively eighteen different names.
After 1881 until the passage of the special anarchist restrictive acts
popularly known as the _Lois Scélérates_, a journal could pass through
any number of condemnations without losing its identity; the guilt of
the responsible editor being held as purely personal. It was during this
golden age of relative liberty that the _Père Peinard_ saw ten of its
managing editors condemned within three years—as a cavalry officer
leading a charge may see horses shot out from under him—without having
its advance materially impeded.
“Once the condemned editor was out of the way,” says a writer
familiar with the administration of this curious journal, “it
was as if no condemnation had intervened. There was somewhere
on the _trimard_ in France or abroad an anarchist who owed to
the state two years of Ste. Pélagie and a 3,000-franc
fine,[18] but the journal was not touched. _Le Père Peinard_
remained unassailable....
“From the number and the gravity of the sentences imposed it
would seem that the _Père Peinard_ must have experienced great
difficulty in the recruitment of its editors or that it must
have paid them enormous salaries. Quite the reverse. The
fanaticism of the anarchists was such that they vied with each
other in imploring of Pouget the favour of a chance to be
condemned. At any given moment several were impatiently
awaiting their turn. Never did the _Père Peinard_ pay one of
its editors. Never did it even allow him a free subscription.
The editor of the _Père Peinard_ was a special type, a
volunteer of the assize court, who went to the prison as water
goes to the river, and who pushed his disinterestedness to the
point of buying his own paper—two sous out of his pocket—every
Sunday.”
Under the present laws it would be more difficult for so saucy and
reckless a sheet as the _Père Peinard_ to keep up its laughter over the
discomfiture of the authorities; that is, if it were printed in France.
To-day a paper of this sort, to appear here with anything like an
approach to regularity, would have to be printed in some foreign town
that is tolerant towards anarchists, and smuggled through the mails
inside of other journals or in covers with unsuspicious titles. This
propaganda at long range is too expensive to be carried on in a
wholesale fashion. It has its periods of favour, however, and is never
totally neglected. Apropos of unsuspicious cover titles, it is on record
that the journal _L’Internationale_, which used to be printed in the
French colony of London, regaled the prying eyes of the French
post-office employees and the police with such more than reputable
inscriptions as these: _Mandement de S. E. le Cardinal Manning_, _Petit
Traité de Géographie_, _Rapport sur la Question du Tunnel Sous-Marin_,
_Contes Traduits de Dickens_, _Lettres d’un Pasteur sur la Sainte
Bible_.
Once, at least,—more than once, it is probable,—anarchist doctrines
have been preached in a journal founded and supported by the prefecture
of police,—an ideal arrangement, it would seem, since both parties
thereto find their account therein, the anarchists in having a chance to
say their say without grubbing for funds, and the police in having large
occasion for self-felicitation over their shrewdness in keeping the
anarchists under strict surveillance.
The practical impossibility of carrying on a journal successfully
without a permanent and known office, subscription lists, and the
assistance of the newsdealers, has made the anarchist resort to the
secret issue by unknown presses of placards and hand-bills whenever he
has anything very special or very incendiary to say,—particularly at
election time, when he is exceedingly active in preaching abstention
from the polls, and during the enrolment and departure of the
conscripts. The police will tear down the placards, of course, but
rarely before they have been read; and they may arrest the distributors
of the fliers, but this does not recall the fliers which have been put
forth. More than this they cannot do, since either there is no printer’s
mark to guide them or, if one appears, it is false or fantastic, such as
“117 _rue de la Liberté_, _ville de la Fraternité_, _Etats-Unis de
l’Humanité_, _Département de l’Egalité_.”
The tantalising documents float into the streets quietly and gently like
snowflakes, before the very eyes of the police, and are irresponsible as
snowflakes, having nothing more than these about them to indicate their
itinerary or origin.
Here is an election placard which may serve as a sample:—
“A BAS LA CHAMBRE!
“People, retake your liberty, your initiative, and keep them.
The Government is the valet of Capital. Down with the
Government! Down with the king, Loubet! To the sewer with the
Senate! To the river with the Chamber! To the dunghill with
all this ancient social rottenness! Away with the Chamber!
Away with the Senate! Away with the Presidency! Away with
Capital!
“_Vive la Révolution Sociale! Vive l’Anarchie!_
“(Signed) AN ANARCHIST GROUP.”
In the view of the larger-minded anarchists—the Reclus, the
Kropotkines, the Graves—the betterment of society must be preceded by
the betterment of the individuals that make up society. Education is the
corner-stone of the structure their hope has builded. They realise that
they have undertaken a moral and intellectual labour of long reach,
calling for infinite energy and patience, for years and perhaps
generations of scattered, seemingly bootless initiative, exhortation,
and example. So far as these leaders are concerned, no charge could well
be falser than the one that is daily being brought against them of
ignoring the calendar in all their calculations, juggling with an
abstract social man,—very much as the elder economists juggled with
their “economic man,”—and expecting with childlike _naïveté_ to make
human nature and the world over in a twinkling.
“For the establishment of the anarchist society,” says Jean
Grave, “it is necessary that each individual taken separately
be able to govern himself, that he knows how to make his
autonomy respected while respecting the autonomy of others,
and that he succeeds in liberating his volition from the
tyranny of surrounding influences....
... “Now for individuals to dispense with authority, for each
one to be able to exercise his autonomy without coming into
conflict with his fellows, it is essential that we all
acquire a mentality appropriate to this state of things.”
The thoughtful anarchist is well aware that, for the production of this
appropriate mentality, his placards, posters, and hand-bills, his
pictures and _chansons_, his weeklies, monthlies, and annuals, are
ludicrously inadequate and inapt. He is far from despising these
agencies. He recognises their value as popularisers and as ferment; but
he is struggling towards a propaganda of a deeper, more compelling
nature as rapidly as he is able. He would (like the devout Catholic)
assume complete control of the mental training of his children, taking
them out of the public schools, which impose respect for his two
bugbears—authority and property—along with other bourgeois
commonplaces and superstitions, in order to give, in schools of his own,
the complete, well-rounded education which he calls _l’éducation
intégrale_.
M. Paul Robin, who made a passably successful experiment with this
_éducation intégrale_ at the Prévost Orphanage, Cempuis,[19] during the
years 1880 to 1894, has expounded the meaning of the phrase in an
article which it would be a real pleasure to quote entire. A few
paragraphs will suffice, however, to reveal the loftiness, the
sweetness, and the eminent sanity of his ideas:—
“The word _intégrale_, applied to education, includes the
three epithets, physical, intellectual, and moral, and
indicates further the continuous relations between these three
divisions.
“_L’éducation intégrale_ is not the forced accumulation of an
infinite number of notions upon all things: it is the culture,
the harmonious development, of all the faculties of the human
being,—health, vigour, beauty, intelligence, goodness....
“_L’éducation physique_ embraces muscular and cerebral
development. It satisfies the need of exercise of all our
organs, passive as well as active,—a need given the authority
of law by physiology. To note this development and to learn to
direct it with prudence, anthropometric observations should
be made and anthropometric statistics continuously kept.
“The exercise of the senses, the calculations necessary in
sports and in physical exertion of every sort,—races, workshop
labour, etc.,—have their influence on the intellect, and
render attractive certain tasks often considered repulsive
because of the awkward manner in which they have been
approached.
“_L’éducation intellectuelle_ has to do with two totally
distinct matters,—matters of opinion, variable, debatable, the
cause of quarrels, antagonisms, rivalries; and matters of
fact, of observation, of experience, whose solutions are
identical for all beings. The old teaching occupied itself
almost entirely with the first matters to the neglect of the
second. The new teaching, on the contrary, should diminish as
much as possible the number and prominence of the first in
favour of the second. In whatever of the first is of necessity
retained, notably the acquisition of languages, it should
limit itself to the purely practical side, and reserve the
study of the complicated, illogical evolution of language for
a small, selected group of adults who are well grounded in the
sciences....
... “On the other hand, the study of nature, of industry (by
its practice in workshops), of the sciences (in laboratories
and observatories), gives to the brain a harmonious
development, makes it well balanced, and imparts a great
justness of judgment. Theoretical study in books should only
come after the excitation given by real practice, to
supplement and co-ordinate the elements which the practice has
furnished. From this concordance in the knowledge and
appreciation of real facts results inevitably a tendency to
concord upon all other matters; that is to say, veritable
social peace....
“It should not be forgotten that the _éducation intégrale_,
_physique_, and _intellectuelle_, must combine knowledge and
art, the knowing and the doing.
“A genuine _intégral_ is at once theorician and practician. He
unites the two qualities systematically separated by the
official routine, which maintains, on the one side, primary
and professional instruction, and, on the other, secondary
and higher instruction. His is the brain that directs and the
hand that executes. He is at one and the same time artisan and
savant.
“There is no need of detailing at length a programme of moral
education. Morality, like reason, is a resultant: it depends
on the ensemble. The part of teaching in it is slight. The
child assimilates in the measure of his intellectual
development ideas of social reciprocity and of goodness; but
moral education is especially a work of influence, the
consequence of a normal existence in a normal environment. The
physiological régime and the general direction given to the
thoughts by the teaching as a whole are its principal
elements.
“Great care should be taken to exclude false, demoralising
ideas, narrowing prejudices, dismaying impressions, everything
that can throw the imagination out of the true into trouble
and disorder, morbid suggestions and excitation to vanity; to
suppress occasions of rivalry and jealousy; to assure the
continual view of calm, ordered, and natural things; to
organise a simple, occupied, animated, varied life, divided
between play and work. The progressive usage of liberty and of
responsibility should be developed, preaching should be done
mainly by example, and, above all, an effort should be put
forth to make happiness prevail....
“As to the inferior, backward, degenerate children,—sad
consequences of a succession of hereditary blights, aggravated
by deplorable, haphazard births and a heels-over-head
education,—these are moral invalids, for whom it is necessary
to care with compassion and of whom almost nothing should be
demanded. It is necessary, doubtless, to take, with all
possible humanity, precautions to prevent their injuring or
contaminating the others; but one must guard one’s self well
against believing that he has the right to punish them because
of a nature for which they are not responsible.”
Apart from this one notable experiment, little or nothing has as yet
been done in Paris or elsewhere in France towards the systematic
application of _l’éducation intégrale_. The anarchist school, rather
pretentiously called a college (_le Collège Libertaire_), opened in 1901
on the edge of the university quarter of Paris, has only succeeded so
far in establishing a few evening courses for adults, the lack of funds
that handicaps every anarchistic enterprise being supplemented in this
case by the difficulty of securing proper teachers, because of the
danger, amounting almost to a certainty, of loss of position, if
regularly employed teachers lend themselves to a revolutionary
enterprise. The recent foundation by the anarchists of a child’s paper,
_Jean-Pierre_, is an interesting experiment along this educational line.
While waiting for the _éducation intégrale_ to win its way, the more
intellectual anarchists are making a strong effort to increase the study
of the masters and of the forerunners and disciples of the masters. To
this end the principal anarchist organs, especially the _Temps
Nouveaux_, keep on sale and persistently recommend the reading of the
works of the principal dead and living authors, native and foreign, who
have expounded anarchy or who tend—or are claimed to tend—towards
anarchy: Proudhon, Stirner, and Bakounine; Darwin, Büchner, Herzen,
Godwin, and Herbert Spencer; Ibsen, Björnson, Tolstoy, Leopardi, and
Nietzsche; Louise Michel, Elisée Reclus, Jean Grave, and Kropotkine; the
anti-militarists Richet, Dubois-Dessaule, Vallier, and Urbain Gohier;
the sociologists Charles-Albert and Jules Huret; the philosophers Guy
and Letourneau; Lefèvre, the student of comparative religions; Guyau,
the moralist; the novelists and dramatists Marsolleau, Darien, Descaves,
Chèze, Raganasse, Lami, Lumet, and Ajalbert; the Italian Malato, the
German Eltzbacher, the Hollander Nieuwenhuis, the American Tucker, and
the Spaniard Tarrida del Marmol.
Furthermore, selected portions from nearly all these writers and from
Hamon, Saurin, Malatesta, Tcherkesoff, Janvion, Chaughi, Darnaud,
Sébastien Faure, Lavroff, Paul Delasalle, and Cafiero, are published, as
brochures in editions running as high as sixty thousand and at prices
ranging from one sou to fifteen sous (usually two sous) each, so that
for a total outlay of two or three francs those who have not the means
to buy or the application to read the fr. 3.50 volumes may familiarise
themselves with anarchist thought in all its most important bearings.
The real nature of the contents of some of the brochures is disguised by
the use of innocuous titles. Thus a certain appeal to desertion from the
army bears on its cover this inscription: “_Pour la Défense des Intérêts
Typographiques_.”
Unlike the placards, posters, and hand-bills, most of the brochures are
restrained in tone. Now and then, however, an anonymous brochure is
issued from nobody knows what printing establishment that startles the
public and puts the policy on its mettle. The most famous of these
(worth its weight in gold now to bibliophiles for its rarity) is the
_Indicateur Anarchiste: Manuel du Parfait Dynamiteur_ (40 pages,
published 1887).
The _Indicateur Anarchiste_ was practically a reprint of a
series of articles that had appeared in the London journal,
_L’Internationale_,[20] under the rubric “_Un Cours de Chimie
Pratique_,” which articles were in their turn practically a reprint of a
series that appeared in _La Lutte_ of Lyons under the rubric “_Produits
Anti-Bourgeois_.” They included minute directions for the fabrication
and use of several explosives and of Greek fire, the common and
scientific names and the prices of their ingredients, and a detailed
description of the tools and vessels best adapted to the various
necessary processes. The announcement of the original series in _La
Lutte_ was as follows:—
“PRODUITS ANTI-BOURGEOIS
“Under this heading we shall put before our friends the
inflammable and explosive materials which are the best known,
the easiest to handle and prepare,—in a word, the most useful.
These preparations are not classical. If we point them out to
the _camarades_ notwithstanding, it is because we have
discovered that they are superior to others and offer less
danger.
“We shall mention only the most indispensable products, and
yet these are unknown to many of the _camarades_. In the
approaching conflict each one must be a bit of a chemist. This
is why it is high time to take matters into our own hands, and
demonstrate to the bourgeois that what we want we want in
earnest.”
The excitement aroused by the publication and general circulation of
this ominous brochure proved to be well-nigh gratuitous. Experience has
demonstrated that in France, where the most scholarly anarchists are
little inclined to participate in the _propagande par le fait_,[21] the
majority of dynamiters are forced (like Salvat in Zola’s _Paris_), to
steal their explosives. They are not capable of putting the precepts of
this so-called popular manual, rudimentary as they appear, into
practice; the required manipulations, even when reduced to their
simplest terms, being too dangerous and delicate for any but laboratory
trained hands to execute.
[Illustration: A Revolutionary Poster]
* * * * *
“_The battles of the heroes of the future will be
individualistic, not against the armed force of governments
but against the apathetic routine and inertia of the human
masses._”—EDWARD CARPENTER.
* * * * *
CHAPTER IV
THE PROPAGANDA OF ANARCHY BY EXAMPLE
“_As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not
his mouth._”
ISAIAH.
“_Resist not evil.”
“Swear not at all.”
“Judge not that ye be not judged.”
“If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast and give
to the poor.”
“Ye shall know them by their fruits._”—JESUS CHRIST.
“_And when He was accused of the chief priests and elders, He
answered nothing._”—SAINT MATTHEW.
“_The most dangerous foe to truth and freedom among us is the
solid majority.... The majority has might,—unhappily,—but
right it has not. I, and the few, the individuals, are
right._”
Dr. Stockman, in IBSEN’S An Enemy of the People.
“_Should you say to him, ‘But you injure your brother men by
accepting a remuneration below the value of your labour, and
you sin against God and your own soul by obeying laws which
are unjust,’ he will answer you with the fixed gaze of one who
understands you not.... Human laws are only good and valid in
so far as they conform to, explain, and apply the law of God.
They are evil whensoever they contrast with or oppose it; and
it is then not only your right, but your duty, to disobey and
abolish them._”—MAZZINI.
“_To profit by all the circumstances of life, to make one’s
acts accord with one’s ideas, is to carry on a_ propagande
par le fait _of a slow but continuous action which must
produce its results._”—JEAN GRAVE.
When that great and original child of nature, Thoreau, the Hermit of
Walden, protested against the collection of taxes in Concord town, he
little suspected, probably, that he was prefiguring a revolutionary
movement which, before the century was over, was to alarm the sleek and
the smug of the Old World and the New; and yet, whether Thoreau realised
it or not, his attitude was the anarchistic attitude and his act an act
of the _propagande par l’exemple_.
The attitude of the American anti-slavery champion, William Lloyd
Garrison, was also essentially anarchistic.
“Garrison,” says Tolstoy, “as a man enlightened by
Christianity, starting out with a practical aim,—the struggle
against slavery,—understood very soon that the cause of
slavery was not a casual, temporary seizure of several
millions of negroes by the Southerners, but an old and
universal anti-Christian recognition of the right of violence
of some people over others. The means towards the recognition
of this right was always the evil, which people considered
possible to outroot or to lessen by rude force; that is, again
by evil. And, realising this, Garrison pointed out against
slavery, not the sufferings of the slaves, not the cruelty of
the slave-owners, not the equal rights of citizens, but the
eternal Christian law of non-resistance. Garrison understood
that which the most forward champions against slavery failed
to understand,—that the sole irresistible means against
slavery was the denial of the right of one man over the
liberty of another under any circumstances whatever.
“The Abolitionists attempted to prove that slavery was
illegal, unprofitable, cruel, degrading, and so forth; but the
pro-slavery champions, in their turn, proved the untimeliness,
the danger, and the harmful consequences which would arise
from the abolition of slavery. And neither could convince the
other. But Garrison, understanding that the slavery of the
negroes was but a private case of general violence, put forth
the general principle with which it was impossible to
disagree,—that no one, under any pretext, has the right of
ruling; that is, of using force over his equals. Garrison did
not insist so much on the right of slaves to be free as he
denied the right of any man whatever, or of any company of
men, to compel another man to do anything by force. For the
battle with slavery he put forth the principle of the battle
with all the evil of the world.”
The refusal of the citizens of the little French commune of Counozouls
to pay their taxes between 1902 and 1904 because they were deprived of
their hereditary right to supply themselves with wood from an adjacent
forest, and the “passive resistance” of the nonconformists in England to
the enforcement of the new education act, and of the French Catholics to
the expulsion of the monastic orders, are recent instances of probably
unconscious _propagande par l’exemple_.
Tolstoy has made a clear and full statement of the purport of the
_propagande par l’exemple_.
“Taxes,” he says, “were never instituted by common consent,
... but are taken by those who have the power of taking
them.... A man should not voluntarily pay taxes to governments
either directly or indirectly; nor should he accept money
collected by taxes either as salary or as pension or as a
reward; nor should he make use of governmental institutions
supported by taxes, since they are collected by violence from
the people.”
He holds military service in similar abhorrence:—
“Every honest man ought to understand that the payment of
taxes which are employed to maintain and arm soldiers, and,
still more, serving in the army, are not indifferent acts, but
wicked and shameful acts, since he who commits them not only
permits assassination, but participates in it.”
In an apologue, “Too Dear,” he demonstrates that law courts, prisons,
and armies are alike useless to a sound civilisation. In short, Tolstoy
renounces the state, and prays for its extinction, root and branch:—
“The doctrine of humility, pardon, and love, is incompatible
with the state, with its arrogance, its deeds of violence, its
executions, its wars. Real Christianity not only excludes the
possibility of acknowledging the state, but also destroys its
foundation.... The sum of all the evil possible to the people,
if left to themselves, could not equal the sum of the evil
actually accomplished by the tyranny of church and state.”
What could a militant anarchist say more? And there is no limit to the
extent to which these anarchistic utterances of Tolstoy might be
multiplied.
Most French anarchists believe that the privileged will never surrender
their privileges without a desperate resistance. Only a little handful
of them are Tolstoyans in maintaining that simple non-resistance
faithfully adhered to will alone suffice to regenerate the world. But
they nearly all hold that cumulative non-resistance is, under certain
conditions, the most effective resistance (”_faire le vide autour des
institutions sociales est le meilleur moyen de les démolir_”); and a
majority of them, probably,—certainly a majority of their more
intellectual element,—esteem it by far the most important propaganda
for the present hour.
The average French anarchist is forced to recognise at the outset the
unpalatable truth that a good half of his customary doings are based on
the government and property he opposes. He rejects the theory of money,
but he must buy and sell. He abhors the state, but serves it, and uses
its tax-supported institutions; and he is constantly finding himself in
situations where he must do violence to his inmost convictions, or get
out of life altogether by the portals of suicide or want. There are some
unorthodox doings, however, which can be avoided without incurring a
martyrdom out of all decent proportion to the seriousness of the
occasion.
“If the force of power crushes you to-day, if, in spite of
everything, authority fetters you in your evolution, there is
always a certain margin for resistance. Fill this margin
without being afraid of overstepping it,” advises one of the
moderate advocates of the _propagande par l’exemple_.
The two forms of non-resistance oftenest enjoined by Tolstoy (namely,
non-payment of taxes and refusal to serve in the army) are so disastrous
in their consequences—as Tolstoy himself would have seen, had he not
been born into a high estate and had he not attained a ripe age and an
assured position before his revolutionary ideas completely matured—that
they can hardly be said to come within this margin. And they are
inculcated in France less with a view to inciting isolated individuals
to put them into practice immediately than in the hope that a day may
arrive when they will be suddenly put into practice simultaneously by so
large a number of persons that coercion will be out of the question.
Similarly, refusal to handle money, to pay interest, to pay rent, to
take oath, to testify in court, and to do jury duty, call down such
speedy retribution that these, too, must be interpreted as lying in the
generality of cases outside the margin mentioned above.
On the other hand, protest against parliamentarianism by abstention from
voting (_la propagande abstentionniste_) is a thoroughly feasible kind
of non-resistance, and is practised almost universally by the anarchists
of France.
“If we seek,” says Jean Grave, “to _faire le vide_ around the
political machine, it is to the end of not forfeiting our
right to act by and for ourselves. It is to preserve our
liberty of action that we reject every compromise with the
actual political order of things. It is to habituate ourselves
to this liberty which is the _summum_ of our aspirations that
we attempt to exercise it in our struggle against the present
social state. To the individuals whom they wish to enlist
under their banner, the advocates of authority say, ‘Send us
to the Chamber to make laws in your favour!’
“To those whom they wish to make think, the anarchists, after
having exposed the facts, explain that they have no favours to
expect from anybody; and that, when a thing seems to them bad,
the best way to destroy it is to ‘_faire le vide_’ about it;
... that they never await from the good pleasure of their
masters the authorisation to conform their acts to their
thoughts; and that they commission nobody to legislate as to
what they should do.”
Abstention from marriage (which, as ordinarily practised, the anarchist
considers legalised prostitution, and the theoretical indissolubility of
which he regards as nothing short of blasphemy) is another thoroughly
feasible kind of non-resistance. And it is rare to find an anarchist,
whose marital status was not fixed before he gave in his adherence to
anarchism, who deigns to consult the pleasure or implore the blessing of
any authority whatsoever in a matter which, to his thinking, concerns no
one but himself and the person of his choice.[22]
Malthusianism, also,—in spite of a reverence for the procreative
instinct, on the part of anarchists, which Zola’s _Fécondité_ does not
surpass,—is in high favour in anarchistic circles. The motives for the
anarchist’s refusal to bring offspring into the world are set forth in
Octave Mirbeau’s ejaculation of disgust called out by a project of law
for checking depopulation introduced by one M. Piot into the Senate:—
“I dispute that depopulation is an evil. In a social state
like ours, in a social state which fosters preciously,
scientifically, in special cultures, poverty and its
derivative, crime; in a social state which, in spite of new
investigations and in spite of new philosophies, relies solely
on the prehistoric forces,—murder and massacre,—what matters
to the people—the only class, for that matter, which still
produces children—this much-discussed question of
depopulation? If the people were clairvoyant, logical with
their wretchedness and their servitude, they would desire, not
the cessation of depopulation, but its redoubling. We are
constantly being told that depopulation is the gravest danger
which threatens the future of the country. In what, pray, dear
Monsieur Piot, and you, also, excellent legislators, who lull
us ceaselessly with your twaddle? In this, you say, that there
will come inevitably a time when we shall no more have enough
men to send out to be killed in the Soudan, in Madagascar, in
China, in the _bagnes_, and in the barracks. You are dreaming
of repeopling now, then, only for the sake of depeopling later
on? Ah, no, thank you. If we must die, we like better to die
at once and by a death of our own choosing.”
Besides discountenancing elections and marriage, the zealous
propagandist _par l’exemple_ flouts “those whose sole power lies in the
obedience of cringers”; defies “those whose character he despises”;
refuses to go to law or to accept interest for loans; abstains from the
luxuries which the bourgeois deems indispensable; protests against
insolence on the part of government functionaries, brutality,
high-handed invasion of domiciles, and insults to women on the part of
the police, cruelty on the part of landlords, and bulldozing on the part
of foremen and employers. He violates deliberately the deep-seated
social usages which, equally with the political, judicial, and economic
usages, twist and warp existence; and strives to keep himself in his
labour, his friendships, and his domestic relations “saturated with
aversion for the bourgeois, and for whatever in existence savours of
capitalism and the _bourgeoisie_, and with a sentiment of solidarity
towards all who are struggling for sincere living.”
“There is a view [of culture],” says Matthew Arnold in his
immortal essay _Sweetness and Light_, “in which all the love
of our neighbour, the impulses towards action, help, and
beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing
human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble
aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found
it,—motives eminently such as are called social,—come in as
part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent
part. Culture is, then, properly described, not as having its
origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of
perfection: it is _a study of perfection_. It moves by the
force not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for
pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for
doing good.”
Something of the same noble and refined philosophy underlies this
insistence, by the greater anarchist teachers, on the proselyting value
of truth of intercourse and of downright living and on the consequent
necessity of the training and purifying of the individual as the surest
means of changing a social _milieu_. In the individual refusal to live
the “conventional lies” which Max Nordau (who has long trembled on the
verge of anarchism) anathematised is a real disintegrating force. “We
must begin with ourselves,” says Jean Grave, “in our efforts at
transformation.” And it is sure that the saintliness of Louise Michel,
the fine simplicity and modesty of Elisée Reclus, the voluntary poverty
of the gentle Jean Grave, and the unobtrusive virtues of their obscure
disciples are factors of tremendous importance to the anarchist
movement. Dialectics are powerless before the blameless living of such
real apostles of “sweetness and light.” They may not have the whole
truth,—they would be the last to claim that they have,—but there must
be some shred of truth in a belief that is thus witnessed by beautiful
character.
In pinning so much of their faith to the gradual modification of daily
habits of thinking and acting, these anarchists reveal themselves no
mean psychologists and no ordinary students of human nature; and it is
regarding this relatively prosaic _propagande par l’exemple_ that the
choicest anarchist spirits have spoken their most sagacious and most
winning words.
Thus, the late Pierre Lavroff wrote: “There exists another form of
propaganda accessible to all temperaments, provided the conviction be
sincere; and many times this form, though wanting the _éclat_ which
accompanies the burning word or the heroic act, proves to be the most
efficacious in the life of every day.
... “The conditions of the actual social régime oppose
themselves at every instant to a life in conformity with
conviction more than the juridical conditions retard the
extension of advanced ideas and more than the police
surveillance prevents the revolutionary agitation.
“It has often been remarked that the most considerable
transformations in the ideas of society have occurred, not
because the arguments which were advanced against existing
forms and beliefs had acquired more force, but in consequence
of an insensible modification in mental habits. During entire
centuries the same arguments were repeated; but the habits of
thought acted as a cuirass, and repulsed for a long time all
the attacks made against error. Then, at a given moment, this
cuirass yielded, all at once, without any apparent cause.
Religious doubt, political liberalism, the propaganda of
socialism, are more or less prominent examples. The heroic
acts which strike the imagination merely prepare a soil which
befits these changes. The great majority lets itself—and will
a long time yet let itself—be guided by habits. Arguments make
no great impression upon it. It modifies its customs by
imitation alone. In the case of heroic acts this imitation
extends only to individuals exceptionally placed. Its
veritable domain is the daily living. Every new doctrine which
embraces practical moral elements must provide a series of
models which may be imitated, not by an exceptional hero, but
by an ordinary man. The numerous examples incorporate the new
doctrine into the daily life. They are, broadly speaking, the
most
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