THE ANARCHISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2106, 5 July 1894, Page 44

THE ANARCHISTS.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE MOVEMENT.

Ssmehow, notwithstanding the very energetic "propaganda par le fait," and the visible Bavachols and Vaillants of the anarchist hagiology, notwithstanding the copious and accessible writings of the philosophers of the movement with which everyone who pretends to study the time must have made himself more or less acquainted, notwithstanding even the Club Autonomies within easy reach till the other day of Fleet street and the House of Commons, we do not seem as yet (says the Lundon Speaker) to have got as near as we ought to the heart of the mystery of Anarchism. What is the true inwardness of the atmosphere of which breeds, as vermin are bred, that race of " companions " who sally forth with a saucepan full of picric acid and horse-nails under their waistband to make war upon "bourgeois" society?The philosophy does not account for everything — indeed, we are inclined to think it accounts for very little, beyond a Ehare in the general ferment of ideas which goes on at every period of social change. What is it that bridges the interval between the revolutionists of thought and the revolutionists of action peculiar to the present time 1 What is it that directly inspires the latter ? We can hardly expect that it is a study of the visionary dialectic of amiable savants like Kropotkine and Reclus which compels an illiterate cobbler in Barcelona or Vienna to thirst for the blood of the bourgeois. Even in their newspaper, La Revolte, these benevolent doctrinairies preach sometimes the sanctity of human life, and deprecate the wanton taking of it. Their notion of a " propaganda par le fait" is doing something publicly which will place their action in harmony with their ideas of a perfected future, such, for instance, as the " free marriage " celebrated by the daughters of Reclus. The tanner who sets dynamite booby-traps for police commissaries the morning after a raid on his " camaros " ; the tailor who one fine afternoon descends upon Greenwich Observatory with an infernal machine; the shoemaker who thrusts his knife into a bourgeois after dinner, using the knife he works with "through a delicate feeliDg"; the savage prodigal who flings a bomb amongst a crowd of innocent people, and regrets that it did not do more killing — must have lit their passions at other than these mild Utopian fires. Where have they done so ? What, for example, is the nature of that " Anarchist literature," quantities of which the police seize whenever they raid an Anarchists' lodging? What is the special cachet which distinguishes the ideas of the militant section of this newest phase of revolution ?

These and several kindred questions are, to a great extent, answered for us by a book which haß just been published in Paris by M. Feiiz Dubois, "Le Peril Anarchiste" (Flammarion)— a book at only come of whose varied contents we can glance in this article. M. Dabois has made a study of the Anarchism of the moment which is peculiarly valuable as a collection of evidence. From its front cover, which contains a cartoon from " Le

Pere Peinard " (a bourgeois hanging from a tree in presence of a crowd of proletarians, one of whom thrusts a pitchfork into his abdomen, whence a shower of money falls), to its back, on which about a score of front pages of Anarchist newspapers are given in reduced facsimile, the book is a mass of evidence not otherwise procurable by the ordinary reader — documents 'and facts as to the organisation of Anarchism and its personnel, its journalism, its propagandism, is psychology. We confess the effect of the book Is to give us a more formidable impression of the phenomenon than »va had hitherto entertained. Especially were we unprepared for the ability, tenacity, and the proselytising fervour of the Anarchist press. M. Dubois only attempts to compute the strength of Anarchism in France, and France, it must be remembered, though it supplies what seems to be the most ingenious and enterprising, by no means supplies the most numerous body of Anarchists. SpaiD, Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, and the United States (whose Anarchist elements chiefly come from Germany) have each probably a larger— certainly quite as large— a contingent. According to M. Dubois, there are about 10,000 militant " companions " in France ; besides these there are about 20,000 active sympathisers — persons who help with money and in other ways, but who do not take a hand in the actual bomb business. Amongst the latter are a good many literary men and artists, chiefly, as might be expected, of the decadent schools—schools which Nordau has already classified as the Anarchism of art. The " companions " organise themselves in " groups " in a spontaneous and promiscuous fashion, in which the maximum of encouragement is given to individual initiative, and the maximum of obstruction to the ideas of authority and form. They start newspapers, issue placards, print leaflets, and make bombs in a similar spirit. Yet there is a distinct method in the madness. Songs, poems, squibs, cartoons, leading articles, chemical receipts, bate de nuit, fetes champetres, meetings, freelove feasts, vegetarian lunches, martyr-worship — through it all there runs a dominant sense of solidarity which is none the less impressive because it is never very tangible. One of the most characteristic and important agents of the propaganda is the "trimardeur." "Trimard" is slang for highway, and the trimardeur is a companion who tramps his way over France, generally begs his way, endeavouring, as he passes from farm to farm, to stir up in the peasant's soul dreams of revolt and hopes of jacquerie. In return for a little hospitality he will fcing some of the songs of the numerous Anarchist poets, or he will bestow some copies of the " Soldier's Catechism " or of Reclus's letter, "To my Brother the Peasant." One of these trimardeurs is himself a poet — the Fran 501s Villon of the movement, a true nomad, wandering over the loads at the whim of a Bohemian fancy, musing on his Utopia, stopping nuw and then to compose a couplet, and nourishing uader a naive exterior an implacable hatred of society and its laws. He dees not beg like the others. The wallet he carries on his shoulders contains all he needs for his subsistence : a few small cooking utensils and some tools for— making false money. His pretensions in the latter

! respect do not go high, being limited to half-* franc bits ; but this modesty has not saved him from being arrested and condemned &0 a coiner, and he is just now in gaol. When we come to the Pfere Peinard, the now suppres?ed weekly illustrated organ o£ the movement, one feels that at last one is, listening to the inner chord of militant "narchism vibrating. Here is the sheet which has been read and gloated over by the Rabardys, the Pawels, the Leauthiers. As one reads its thieves' argot and looks at its atrocious and diabolically effective cartoons,, one seems to hear the greasy, garlic-laden laughter of the low cabaret in which " Leg bons bougres, norn de Dieu I " are enjoying these jokes entirely after their heart; ona seems to see the crack-brained criminal going off to his lodging to construct his infernal skillet or sharpen his knife, determined to earn this congenial and intoxicating applause. M. Dubois's book is grangerised with facsimiles of pictures from Le Pfire Peinard. They are in themselves a compact explanation of Anarchism— direct, naked, uncompromising incitements to crime and class hatred, to murder and rapine wholesale and retail. The bourgeois,\ the "proprio," the "richard," is exhibited in every conceivable guise that can excite passion against him. Here he is, " The True Cholera," a huge, respectable pig, seated in an armchair, crushing the bodies of the poor. Hero he is being chocked against the wall by a good " Auarcho," who is pressing his knee against his stomach. There is a hideous picture of a capitalist lying slain, while a proletarian is making a leisurely meal off hiß entrails. A double cartoon represents on one half a barefooted wretch who has hanged himself from the ratter of his garret, and on the other half a barefooted wretch stabbing a bourgeois ; the legend beneath runs : "There is nothing else for it— rip up a. Richard or commit suicide." Glorified portraits of Ravachol are issued with three lines from the most abominable verse of the Pere Duchesne, which he sang as he walked to the guillotine. Panama furnishes the inspiration for many a picture ; indeed, Panama was a great weapon for Anarchism, and was fully made use of. It is a factor in the situation which must by no means be forgotten. With that example operating from above, and Le Pere Peinard operating from below, upon a society in which — to adopt fi. recent summarisation of Mr Asquith's — the decay of faith, the spread of superficial education, and the growing selfconsciousness of the ignorant and the suffering, have been playing their part, Anarchism is less a wonderful than it is a menacing phenomenon.

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