Paris and the Social Revolution Part 17

A fierce handbill, "_A Carnot le Tueur_," was distributed broadcast. Two red flags were planted on the grave, and a black flag was unfurled, bearing the inscription, "_Vive la Mort!_"

On every anniversary of Vaillant's death, unless the police interfere, similar scenes are enacted in the Champ de Navets; and in these weird, commemorative rites the dead man's little daughter, Sidonie, who was adopted by the _camarades_, plays a spectacular part.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A STREET RIOT]

The anniversary of the death of Ravachol is celebrated by a pilgrimage of the faithful to the tomb of Diderot, who is regarded as a precursor of anarchism (Montbrison, where Ravachol is buried, being too far away for Parisians); and every anniversary of the deaths of those who have died for the cause and every funeral of a _camarade_ is made a pretext for keeping alive the morbid cult. But the great saint day of the French anarchist calendar is the 11th of November, the anniversary of the anarchist executions at Chicago.

All anarchistic (one might almost say all revolutionary) Europe honestly believes-whether rightly or wrongly history has yet, perhaps, to decide-that the Chicago hanging was as flagrant a violation of human rights, and the preceding trial as disgraceful a travesty of justice, as the worst absolute monarchy has ever had the audacity to perpetrate.

Whatever the influence of this dramatic execution may have been in America, it was highly inflammatory in Europe. Under a practically free immigration system, America will be indeed fortunate if she does not, sooner or later, import long-stored-up rancour, originating from this event.

In the rest of Europe, as in France; in Russia, Germany, and Austria, in Italy and Spain, the violent anarchist acts of the last twenty-five years have been, broadly speaking, so many reprisals for real or fancied injuries suffered at the hands of government or society.

It is as nearly proved as a thing that is not susceptible of mathematical proof well can be that the almost complete immunity of England from anarchist violence (the Fenian attempts can hardly be so cla.s.sed) has been due, in part at least, to the relative liberty of speech, press, and a.s.semblage she has accorded,-accorded with an almost heroic consistency, in view of the pressure European governments have brought to bear upon her to change her policy. And it is surely something other than mere chance that so large a proportion of the propagandists _par le fait_ hail from Italy. The unconcerned fas.h.i.+on in which the Italian peasants and labourers-at Milan, at Carrara, in Sicily-have been given cold lead when they have had the effrontery to ask for bread, and the mediaeval tortures, a hundred times worse than death, inflicted on Pa.s.sanante[44] and his successors, under the hypocritical guise of clemency and humanity, have acted naturally enough as provocations toward anarchism rather than restraints against it.

The following account of the fate which awaited Bresci appeared in the Paris _Matin_ immediately after his condemnation had been p.r.o.nounced:-

"The penalty of imprisonment for life which has fallen upon Bresci is very rigorous, and will be aggravated by solitary confinement day and night.

"The condemned man will probably be taken to the _bagne_ of St. Etienne, where he will be clothed in the black and yellow striped prison uniform. During the first years he will occupy a cell two and a half metres long and one metre wide, which has never more than a half-light. Later he will be transferred to a cell a little larger and fully lighted. A table, slightly inclined, half a metre wide, will serve him for bed and furniture. His food will be bread and water once a day only.

The jailers will hand it in to him through a hole covered with coloured gla.s.s, which permits them to see the prisoner without being seen by him.

"The days must pa.s.s in absolute silence. The punishments which threaten the prisoner who does not submit to this terrible regime are: I. The "strait-jacket" (_chemise de force_). II.

Irons which bind the hands to the feet, holding the body bent forward. III. The _lit de force_, a wooden box exactly like a coffin, pierced at the lower end with two holes for the feet.

The legs cannot be moved, and the arms are held motionless by the _chemise de force_.

"After ten years of this regime the prisoner is allowed to work during the day; but at night he returns to isolation and silence. Neither visits nor letters-nothing-can penetrate this tomb till the day when death or madness comes to deliver him who inhabits it."

The above is given for what it is worth without a guarantee of the strict accuracy of every detail. But the _Matin_ is not a revolutionary sheet, and would seem to have no good reason for misrepresentation. If only one-half of what it reveals is true, the crime of the Italian government will seem to many more heinous than the worst thing the anarchists have ever done or been accused of doing. No wonder Bresci contrived to put himself out of the way before a year had elapsed, and little wonder that the friends of Bresci have threatened reprisals.

The folly of taking official cognisance of the expression of incendiary views was signally demonstrated at the time of the last visit of the czar to France, when the poet Laurent Tailhade was sentenced to a year of prison and a 1,000-franc fine for a prose-poem glorifying regicide, published in _Le Libertaire_. This article would have been seen, had the authorities but had the tact to ignore it, only by the few regular readers of _Le Libertaire_, and would have been _read through_, it is safe to say, only by a small and unexcitable minority of these; for M.

Tailhade is characterised by a style that is incomprehensible, save to the _lettres_. But the author must needs be haled into court;[45] and, presto! Paris and the provinces are in an uproar. Well-known literary and artistic personalities-Zola, Gustave Kahn, Frantz Jourdain, E.

Ledrain, and Jean Marestan among them-testify for their brother craftsman in person, and Mirbeau, De Heredia, and Anatole France by letter. The auditors applaud the culprit's utterances, bear him away, after the announcement of the verdict, in triumph, and hold banquets in his honour. The dangerous article, or at least its incriminated pa.s.sages, and the proceedings of the court are published, in spite of the fact that such publication is expressly forbidden by law, throughout the length and breadth of France; and all the papers teem with _chroniques_, leading articles, and skits upon Tailhade or anarchism.

Indignation meetings are held in every corner of Paris, and resolutions of protest are pa.s.sed by socialists, free thinkers, and simple republicans, and even by Masonic lodges.

The obscure _Libertaire_ is given an enormous quant.i.ty of free advertising, the anarchist propaganda is carried on by its enemies, and a martyr is made of a man with no special vocation for martyrdom. To be sure, the offender is in durance for a twelve-month, but he is not silent; and n.o.body is deterred from following his example. A clearer instance of making a mountain out of a molehill it would be hard to find.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Guillotine in Moonlight ]

CHAPTER VII

THE CHARACTER OF THE PROPAGANDIST "PAR LE FAIT"

"_Give the devil his due._"-Popular proverb.

"_He rose at five, and read until the work hour. His shop a.s.sociates, knowing him sincere, generous, incapable of plat.i.tude, did not detest him in spite of his unsociable ways._"-J.-H. ROSNY, in Le Bilateral.

"_Granted, the s.h.i.+p comes into harbour with shrouds and tackle damaged; the pilot is blameworthy; he has not been all-wise and all-powerful: but to know how blameworthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round the globe or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs._"-THOMAS CARLYLE.

"_J'ai regarde le juge en face.

Certain d'abord d'etre pendu, Je ne me suis pas defendu.

A quoi bon mendier sa grace!

Le cuir est fait pour le tanner; Le code est fait pour cond.a.m.ner.

J'ai regarde le juge en face._"

MAURICE BOUKAY, in Chansons Rouges.

The first anarchist I ever knew in any country was a dear, grandfatherly American workingman in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, who conducted me, the Sunday following our chance meeting, to an ethical culture society in Dorchester on purpose to show me how children should be taught to be good.

The second was a young doctor of philosophy, dreaded by reputable Boston for his well-doc.u.mented _sans-gene_, who chanced to be rusticating on a farm where I spent ten days with a gang of a dozen city street boys. I found him infinitely gentle and kind; and it was he of all the farm household who came to relieve me one night while I was keeping an anxious bedside vigil beside one of the boys, who had received an accidental injury to the head that threatened to prove dangerous.

These my first two experiences with anarchist types were scarcely of a nature to dismay me, nor have I ever found anything dismaying in the private characters of the anarchists I have since known in the Old World.

In an every way remarkable study of the anarchist temperament, based on a thorough investigation of anarchists of many professions and all stations in life, A. Hamon, author of _La France Sociale et Politique_ and _Une Psychologie du Militaire Professionnel_, has arrived at these suggestive conclusions:-

"The positive method confirmed by the rational method enables us to establish an ideal type of anarchist whose mentality is the aggregate of common psychic characteristics. Every anarchist partakes sufficiently of this ideal type to make it possible to differentiate him from other men. The typical anarchist, then, may be defined as follows: a man perceptibly affected by the spirit of revolt under one or more of its forms,-opposition, investigation, criticism, innovation,-endowed with a strong love of liberty, egoistic, or individualistic, and possessed of great curiosity,-a keen desire to know. These traits are supplemented by an ardent love of others, a highly developed moral sensitiveness, a profound sentiment of justice, an alert logical faculty, and p.r.o.nounced combative tendencies.

"Such is the average psychic type of the anarchist. He is, to summarise, a person rebellious, liberty-loving, at once individualistic and altruistic, enamoured of justice, and imbued with missionary zeal."

To these conclusions every one who has been privileged to know well any number of anarchists will be likely to subscribe. And, if M. Hamon, instead of extending his investigations to all sorts and conditions of anarchists, had limited them to the propagandists _par le fait_, his conclusions would not have been essentially different. He would probably have felt constrained to admit that the "ardent love of others" and the "profound sentiment of justice" were curiously blended with petty cravings for notoriety or large desires for glory; the "missionary zeal," with a reticence amounting to mystification about matters of purely personal concern or projects of violence; and the "highly developed moral sensitiveness," with a seemingly contradictory moral callousness regarding the means permissible to attain an end. But, on the other hand, M. Hamon would surely have added these sterling qualities: a rare love of animals, surpa.s.sing sweetness in all the ordinary relations of life, exceptional sobriety of demeanour, frugality and regularity, austerity even, of living, and courage beyond compare.

Ravachol, the most difficult of all the French propagandists _par le fait_ to comprehend, Ravachol who never allowed (no more than a great financier might) a sentiment of humanity to interpose when the success of a plan was at stake, who never showed a gleam of remorse for his murder of the miser hermit of Chambles and the pillaging for jewels of the tomb of the Marquise de la Rochetaille,[46]-Ravachol was by the testimony of all who knew him well, even his enemies, an unusually kind-hearted man where the Cause-I had almost said where politics-was not concerned. In his young manhood he supported his mother and younger brother, and treated them with the greatest consideration. He was fond of children, and remonstrated fiercely against cruelty to animals. The presiding judge tried in vain to wrest from the little son of Ravachol's _compagne_ some hint of brutality on Ravachol's part. "_Il etait tres doux avec maman et avec moi_" was all the boy could be got to say; and the only time Ravachol broke down during his detention and trial was at the sight of this little one. Chaumartin, who had betrayed Ravachol from fear or some baser motive, said on the witness-stand, "He taught my little children to read, and cut out pictures for them"; and Ravachol forgave this same Chaumartin his baseness in open court.

Only a short time before the explosion of the rue de Clichy, Ravachol escorted to a shoe store a pitiable beggar girl he had chanced upon in the street, and saw her provided with a new pair of shoes, for which he paid seven francs.

The charities and compa.s.sions of Pini, and Duval's more than platonic solicitude for the welfare of working-women, have been previously noted.

Decamp, though he earned barely fr. 2.50 per day, and had a wife and three children to provide for, adopted a homeless six-year-old child to save it from vagabondage.

Faugoux, who was given twenty years of hard labour for stealing dynamite, wrote to a _camarade_ regarding the damaging testimony of one Drouet:-

"As to Drouet, I pardon him his want of frankness regarding me. He has little instruction, and he hoped in this way to save himself from the law. This _compagnon_, although convinced, has much sentiment for his family; and this is a powerful motive. When he thought of the struggle and the misery which his wife and child would have to support, he forgot that he was an anarchist. Let us not lay it up against him nor refuse him our hands."

Salsou adored, as he was adored by, his father and mother and his several brothers and sisters. He wrote them often in the years after he left home for the _trimard_; and his letters were replete with affection, notably one in which he acknowledged the photograph of his mother and two of the children, Martha and Henri, playfully calling the last named "Henricon." His _compagne_ had no complaint to make of his treatment of her, and even his laundress testified to his being courteous and kind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOUISE MICHEL]

Reader's of Zola's _Germinal_ will remember the anarchist Souvarine's affection for the pet rabbit, Pologne, and his sorrow at her death. The point is well observed. Nearly every French anarchist, whether propagandist _par le fait_ or not, is a defender of the rights of all four-footed things; and many are strict vegetarians. In her fascinating autobiography, Louise Michel returns again and again with flaming wrath to the sufferings of domestic animals.

"Under my revolt against the strong," she says, "I find, farther back than I can remember distinctly, a horror of the tortures inflicted on dumb beasts. I would have liked to see the animal defend himself,-the dog bite the one who abused him, the horse, bleeding under the lash, trample on his torturer. But always the dumb beast endures his lot with the resignation of the subdued races. What an object of pity is the beast!"

This typical anarchist trait is graphically ill.u.s.trated by the following anecdote related by Flor O'Squarr:-