Paris and the Social Revolution Part 13

Vaillant had almost unanimous plaudits from the _camarades_, no little praise from the socialists, and approval-mark the humorous note!-from certain of the deputies whose lives he had jeopardised.

Ravachol, author of the explosions at the houses of the judges Benoit and Bulot and of other overt acts less readily comprehensible, was practically repudiated at first by the _Temps Nouveaux_ (then _La Revolte_) on account of a dubious past, but was recognised loyally, if languidly, as soon as his entire disinterestedness was made plain.

The general att.i.tude of the _Temps Nouveaux_ towards the _propagande par le fait_ is one of guarded detachment, verging on complete indifference,-an att.i.tude of rare prudence, sanity, and sagacity. It treats the whole matter of the individual attempt as a side issue, with an unfortunate tendency to divert the attention of both the faithful and the unfaithful from the basal principles of anarchy, and makes it very clear that it would ignore it altogether if it could.

"If anarchy," says this representative journal, "does not reject violence when it is demonstrated to be indispensable to enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, it does not elevate it into a system.

Violence is for it a means, debatable, like everything, but which is, at most, only an accessory affair. It must disappear when the obstacles are overcome, and weakens in nothing any of the elements of the ideal itself....

"Deeds are not counselled, nor spoken, nor written. They are done. Sometimes a deed done effects more than a long period of writing. This journal will always be the first to applaud those who act. We are, then, far from repelling the _propagande par le fait_. Only-we have said it before, and we repeat it-the _propagande par le fait_ cannot be the work of a journal. It is not for us to say to individuals: 'Do this! Do that!' If they are convinced and conscientious, they will know what they have to do....

"To say to the workers, 'Do this, burn that, hang that one,'

is child's play, since the reader may demand with reason why he who preaches so glibly does not do himself what he urges others to do."

The American labour leaders are wont to a.s.sure us, while reserving to themselves in all cases the right to criticism and opposition, that there never has been, using terms broadly, and never can be, an unsuccessful strike, since the strike that is the least necessary and most immediately disastrous serves the large purpose of focussing public attention on the strained relations between capital and labour, of revealing by a sort of cathode-ray efficacy the hidden ills of the body politic, and so of bringing just that much the nearer the final cure.

Similarly, the anarchist leaders a.s.sert that in anarchy no forces are lost, and that the manifestations which are, in appearance, the most foolhardy and shocking may have, equally with those which are, in appearance, the most reasonable, the saving merit of compelling the thoughtless world to think. "And perhaps," says one of these leaders, "it will occur to the hide-bound _bourgeoisie_ to find society defective when they shall have discovered that there is some danger in perpetuating its errors."

"The anarchist had been told," wrote Zo d'Axa in _L'Endehors_, apropos of the dynamite exploits of an unknown, who turned out to be Ravachol, "that the idea for which he was willing to brave every danger did not exist. He had had it dinned into his ears that, in other times, the precursors talked less and acted more. His theory had been laughed at. His hope had been mocked. When, upon the highway as an apostle, he had attempted to convert the people, no one of these laughers and mockers had been willing to tarry and listen an instant.

"Now, behold him!

"Like the street vender drawing crude charcoal pictures on the sidewalk to attract the c.o.c.kney crowd to which he means to offer an _article de Paris_ a little later, a primitive propagandist of anarchy has decided to force attention by the brutality of an act.

"Back of this act is the faith, so much tabooed, to which he has at last drawn fruitful discussion.

"It was an Idea the dynamiter displayed.

"And no one can deny it,-at the moment when, by favour of the excitement, the journals are giving their readers the very '_articles de Paris_' which the terrible unknown dreamed of showing. Side by side with their invectives the _Figaro_, the _Eclair_, other sheets, print and expound theories which had not had the freedom of their columns before. These journals have become, in spite of their reserves, the propagators of the accursed Idea.

"Is it a result?

"Men read, discuss, realise perhaps."

To _comprehend_ the foregoing manner of reasoning or, rather, point of view (the word "comprehend" is italicised lest any one confound inoffensive comprehension with dangerous approval), one must have had in some country or other some bitter experience-stinging rebuke or angering, insulting rebuff-with the vapid self-complacency, the dogmatic thick-wittedness, the dictatorial stubborness, and the cruel hard-heartedness of the bourgeois. One must have been shocked and sickened by his vulgar flaunting of a stupid-or wicked?-determination to persist in his denial that his fellow-men ever starve, unless he can see them, with his own eyes, throw up their hands dramatically, stagger, and fall around him.

If one has had this disillusionising experience with the bourgeois, he will _comprehend_-there will be no lapsing here into such atrociously bad form as hinting the possibility of acquiescence-that there are numerous poor devils who say, "Let the bourgeois have the dramatic demonstration of starvation, since he will credit no other!"

He will _comprehend_ that there are some, not poor devils, who think that a certain manifestation of the hungry in Trafalgar Square was a beautiful eye-opener for the British public; that there are others who look upon the march of c.o.xey's grotesque army as anything but a ridiculous failure; and that there are still others who, recalling a memorable famine winter in Boston,-the shudderful winter when the authority of the state was invoked to disperse a peaceable a.s.sembling of the unemployed,-hold it a real pity that the a.s.sembling was quite so peaceable.

He will _comprehend_ these last when they say that a few broken window-panes in the swaggering Back Bay and self-sufficient West End would have made the inhabitants of those districts less glib in their a.s.sertions that there was no real suffering in the city and less eager, by way of a clinching argument, to parrot, as having happened to their very selves, the incident which probably did happen sometime and somewhere to some one, thanks to some irresponsible tramp's sense of humour,-of the professedly hungry man who refused to work because he had a previous engagement to march in the procession of the unemployed.

There is an appreciable distance from broken windows to broken heads.

Still it is plain enough that the person who can _comprehend_ the point of view that in a given exigency applauds the first can _comprehend_ (always bear in mind that this word is an innocuous one) the point of view that in a graver exigency applauds the second.

If it is true that there are bourgeois, as there are dogs, who understand no argument and respect no appeal but the blow,-let it not be said here that it is true,-it is not surprising, however deplorable it may be, that there are those among the proletariat who find it "a source of innocent merriment," in the words of Gilbert's Lord High Executioner, "to make the penalty fit the crime."

Anarchist and dynamiter are so far from being interchangeable terms that it would be possible and, perhaps, justifiable to write a treatise on the theory of anarchy without making the slightest reference to dynamiting or any other form of the _propagande par le fait_. Taken by itself, the list of the overt anarchist acts in France during the last twenty-five years seems a long one; but, when it is viewed in the light of the total number of anarchist believers, it is evident that the dynamiter is the exception among the _camarades_. When, furthermore, the few hundred victims anarchy has made in all the world during the quarter of a century it has been militant are compared with the number of the victims the Minotaur-poverty-devours in a single country in a single year,[28] or with the havoc wrought by any one of the commoner diseases, anarchy as a menace to human life ceases to appear a very serious matter.

Nevertheless, the alarm the _propagande par le fait_ has excited is not to be wondered at. The dread of the dynamiter, like the savage's dread of the railroad, is a dread of the mysterious and uncontrollable, superst.i.tious perhaps, but which no amount of civilisation can entirely eradicate from the human mind. Lightning, which also does relatively little damage, is feared, and will probably continue to be feared so long as there is no forecasting where it will strike.

In the case of the new dynamite propaganda the unknown quant.i.ties were, in the beginning at least, so numerous as to be bewildering; and several of them still remain uneliminated. Much more is now known about anarchist doctrines, about the nature and power of dynamite, and the other fabulously destructive modern explosives, and a little more about the characters of the persons who employ these explosives. But the dynamiter's seeming illogicality in the choice of his victims and his actual inability-comparable only to a woman's proverbial awkwardness in throwing a stone-to attain the victims he has chosen, while he does attain others, are as p.r.o.nounced as ever.

When throwers of bombs ma.s.sacre persons they would not have harmed for the world, and when bombs are found in such diverse spots as cafes, restaurants, hotels, churches, soldiers' recruiting offices and barracks, police stations, bazaars, private dwellings, public markets, stock exchanges, employment bureaus, and old people's homes, who, indeed, can boast of his security? In the course of the years 1891-95 the fear of the dynamiters a.s.sumed such proportions as to amount almost to a panic, and this period is still referred to as "The Terror" in certain quarters.

"_Ah, ah! c'est pas un' crac La dynamit' nous fich' l' trac,_"

sang the clever _Montmartrois chansonnier_ Eugene Lemercier in a witty topical song, _Le Trac de la Dynamite_, which had an enormous vogue.

At that time irresponsible rumour attributed to the _camarades_, to the "_catastrophards_," such fell and fantastic schemes for the annihilation of the old society as the dispersion of malignant microbes, the poisoning of the water supply, and the introduction of nitro-glycerine into reservoirs, conduits, and sewers. There were frequent thefts of dynamite, the authors of which remained for some time at large. An anarchist _cocher_ (probably demented) rode down pedestrians in pursuance of a vow he had made to exterminate the bourgeois. Public alarm was aggravated by the professional imaginings of the reporters and the police. It was wantonly played upon by the _estampeurs_ (blackmailers and swindlers vaguely affiliated with "the groups"), who coined money by selling to a willingly gullible press bogus tips of conspiracies and contemplated explosions,-notably the mining of the _Opera_, the _Palais de Justice_, and the Presidential Tribune at Longchamp, and the a.s.sa.s.sination of Leo XIII.,-and by _fumistes_ (practical jokers), who perpetrated sardonic jokes with sand, iron filings, and sardine boxes, which were taken to the munic.i.p.al laboratories[29] with the same infinite precautions as the real bombs in the ominous-looking vehicle presided over by the _cocher_ "Rama.s.se" and drawn by the horse "Dynamite."

During "The Terror" landlords begged or ordered magistrate tenants to quit their premises, lest they draw down bombs as trees draw down the thunderbolts, and added to their "TO LET" notices these rea.s.suring words, "IL N'Y A PAS DE MAGISTRAT DANS LA MAISON"; the neighbours of judges compromised by the anarchist trials hastily moved into other parts of the city and even into the country; rag-pickers and _concierges_ fainted or had hysterics at the sight of sardine tins in the garbage boxes; _concierges_ quakingly told their heads before venturing to open the street doors for their own belated lodgers; anarchist tenants were as sedulously sought as magistrate lodgers were avoided, were loaded with soft words and favours, and implored not to worry themselves about their rent bills; and cafe and restaurant garcons vied with each other in flattering the caprices of their anarchist customers.

Flor O'Squarr tells of an anarchist, real or a.s.sumed, who, having regaled himself with a bountiful repast in a high-priced restaurant close by the Madeleine, called for the proprietor, and said:-

"I have had an excellent meal, and I haven't a sou to pay for it. Arrest me, if you like; but I warn you that I am an anarchist, and that you expose yourself to the vengeance of my a.s.sociates. Choose!" The panic-stricken Boniface insisted on drinking the audacious fellow's health in champagne, and, when visited the following day by the police, who had heard of the affair, refused to make complaint against the swindler or give information that might lead to his detection. "A charming person, very polite, very well bred, and not proud," was all that could be got out of him.

"_Le vol_" (theft) is another recognised form of the _propagande par le fait_.

"Are you cold," says Charles Malato, "then enter the great bazaars which are crammed with unused garments, and take them; are you hungry, invade the meat-shops. Everything human industry produces belongs to you because you are men, and you are cravens if you do not take what you need." Several international congresses have pa.s.sed resolutions exhorting the hungry to take food wherever they can find it.

About this right of the individual to take for himself whatever is necessary to sustain his life, a right admitted theoretically, for the matter of that, by many who do not consider themselves revolutionists,-by popes, prelates, and theologians even, all the way from Saint Thomas to Manning and Parkhurst,-anarchists of all complexions agree absolutely. But over the right to steal in general there is as much dispute among them as there is over the right to kill.

Some hold stealing meritorious, if the victims are properly chosen; others, if the profits are devoted scrupulously to the oral or written propaganda; others still, if they are turned over to the poor. Those who approve theft unreservedly are few indeed. Jean Grave admits that he is somewhat perplexed, but inclines to approve the open, defiant theft. He says:-

"Anarchy recognises in every individual from the moment he has seen the light of day the right to live. Individuals suffer from hunger by reason of a defective social organisation. And yet the planet has still, and will have for a long time, enough and more than enough to nourish the beings it carries.

Every individual who finds himself reduced by the fault of society to a want of bread has the right to rebel against society, to take food wherever it exists....

[Ill.u.s.tration: POSSIBLE REVOLUTIONISTS]

"Nevertheless, there is a thing that puzzles many of us; namely, the ign.o.ble means it is necessary to employ, if one would steal, the perpetual deceit to throw the victim off his guard, the constant duplicity to capture his confidence....

"Every one acts as he understands, as he can. If his ways of proceeding are in contradiction with the established order of things, it is for him and the defenders of the code to have an explanation. But, when certain persons pretend to derive their way of living from a special order of ideas, when they seek to disguise with the cloak of the _propagande_ deeds done for their own preservation, we have a right to say what we think.

"If, then, we place ourselves at the view-point of the right which the individual has to live, he may steal. It is his privilege, especially if society drives him to want by refusing him work. And I add that it would be very stupid of him to commit suicide when society has made him dest.i.tute. The right to the defence of one's own existence being primordial, one must take where there is.

"But, if the act of stealing is to a.s.sume a character of revendication or of protest against the defective organisation of society, it must be performed openly, without any subterfuge.

"'But,' retort the defenders of _le vol_, 'the individual who acts openly will deprive himself thus of the possibility of continuing. He will lose thereby his liberty, since he will be at once arrested, tried, and condemned.'

"Granted. But, if the individual who steals in the name of the right to revolt resorts to ruse, he does nothing more nor less than the first thief that comes along who steals to live without embarra.s.sing himself with theories.

"It is with stealing as it is with the military service. There are persons who refuse to let themselves be enrolled, preferring to expatriate themselves. This way of proceeding has its little character of protestation. But alongside of these there are others who, by the simulation of an infirmity, by taking advantage of an exemption or the utilisation of an efficacious protection, manage to evade military servitude.

They are right, surely,-a thousand times right,-from their point of view. But, if they tell us that they have thereby performed acts of revolutionary propaganda, and contributed to demolish the regime, it would be easy to demonstrate that their claim is false....

"To resort to ruse, to dissimulate, in order to capture the confidence of the person one is planning to despoil, is, it must be confessed, an unwholesome and degrading line of conduct."

Among the few Paris pilferers whose lives have distilled the odour of sanct.i.ty, who have taken on themselves to perpetuate the tradition of the magnanimous bandit, the philanthropic pirate, and the tender-hearted outlaw, to incarnate the paradox of the "_bon voleur_" (honest thief), the two most famous are Pini and Duval.

Clement Duval, who robbed and attempted to burn the mansion of Mlle.

Madeleine Lemaire, was an iron worker of an independent spirit, who became so disgusted with the sufferings and humiliations of the labourer's lot that he determined to make a dramatic protest. His previous record was absolutely clean, save for a petty theft from an employer when his _compagne_ and children had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours; and he carried away from the Lemaire residence only a small part of the valuables at his disposal, which shows that gain was not his primary object. In his written defence, which the presiding judge, Berard des Glajeux, did not allow him to read, he dwelt at great length on the hards.h.i.+ps of the working-woman. In fact, Duval was a feminist of the first water. Saint Clement Duval! Forget him not, feminists, when you make up your calendar of saints!