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:—
“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!_
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.