Guy de Maupassant once remarked to me that it was necessary to preserve the Anarchists in order to make modern history interesting.
The rulers of the world seem to be of the same opinion. Over and over again scientists and men of common sense have told them that the Anarchist is simply a diseased mind, requiring to be dealt with like other brain-sick creatures. But statesmen and police alike have persisted in treating the Anarchist as a serious politician, with results which are, unfortunately, too well known.
It is true that, after the death of Elizabeth of Austria, the chivalrous King of Italy, Humbert, summoned a conference of diplomatists and police directors in Venice to consider methods for dealing with the Anarchists. But he would have done better to call in Professor Lombroso. I myself would undertake to guarantee the life of every ruler in Europe and America, for the sum of £20,000 a year, provided I were allowed to incarcerate in an asylum every man whom I could prove to be a sufferer from homicidal mania.
As it was, I foreboded that the only result of King Humbert’s gallant action would be to point him out to these creatures as their next victim. Yet I must now so far confess myself mistaken as to declare that the death of the late King of Italy does not really lie at the door of Anarchism.
It was another European sovereign, more alive to the realities of the situation than Humbert, who secretly commissioned me to make an investigation into the organisation of the Anarchist sect and the trend of its operations. I must not disclose the name of this monarch; to do so would be to point him out to the vengeance of the assassins.
As soon as I had received his commission I laid aside all my other work and prepared to disappear for an indefinite period.
My first step was to transform myself into a workman, or rather a loafer, for an industrious workman is seldom found among the ‘active’ Anarchists. I secured a few jobs in Paris as a house-painter’s labourer—that is to say, I did the scraping and cleaning before the skilled workman applied the fresh coats of paint. I took care to show no zeal in my employment, and in the intervals of work I hung about the brasseries and grumbled at the smallness of my earnings.
By these tactics I quickly earned the reputation of a good comrade, and a true-hearted Republican. The Socialists of the quarter I had chosen to work in quickly recognised me as a likely convert, and I allowed them to enrol me in one of the most advanced societies.
All these measures were mere preliminaries to the final one of blossoming forth as a declared Anarchist. It is from the ranks of Socialism that Anarchism draws its recruits. Though the two theories are utterly opposed, they express the same discontent with civilisation. An Anarchist is little more than a Socialist who has gone out of his mind.
By going over to the Anarchist group from the arms of their rivals, I ensured myself a welcome which would never have been given to me had I attempted to force myself upon them at the outset.