“You are not guilty because you are ignorant, but you are guilty when you resign yourselves to ignorance.”—Mazzini.
“What we should try to do is to sow ideas, to force reflection, leaving to time the care of making the ideas which it shall have received blossom into consciousness and deeds.”—Jean Grave.
In 1898-99 Sébastien Faure took advantage of the exceptional chance for agitation offered by the Dreyfus matter to found an anarcho-Dreyfusard daily, Le Journal du Peuple. All other attempts to establish a daily anarchist organ seem to have failed completely,[11] and the Journal du Peuple lived—if its feeble panting for existence can rightly be called living—only a few months. After its demise, M. Faure, as if to conceal his defeat, started an anarchist weekly, Les Plébéiennes, the good will of which he was not slow and, apparently, not too reluctant to turn over to another anarchist weekly, Le Libertaire (eight pages, price two sous a copy), which had been printed intermittently at Montmartre for a considerable period, and which M. Faure himself had been instrumental in founding. The public proclamation of the consummation of the fusion between Les Plébéiennes and Le Libertaire, which, being the fusion of two miseries, was at the farthest possible remove from the up-to-date fusion that goes to the forming of a trust, is of interest because it throws a great deal of light on the make-up of an anarchist paper, and on the anomalous and difficult position in the newspaper world of the anarchist press:—
“Because of material difficulties—want of money, to speak frankly—the Libertaire was obliged to suspend publication. It reappears to-day after a very short eclipse, and we have every reason to hope that the regularity of its appearance will be exposed to no fresh interruptions....
“We have profited by this short, obligatory vacation to attempt to group about the Libertaire new forces and more numerous signatures; in a word, to take all the measures necessary to insure it a vigorous life.... You will see elsewhere that our friend Sébastien Faure has interrupted the publication of his excellent Plébéiennes in order to rally as many readers as possible about the Libertaire. It is in the Libertaire, then, that Sébastien Faure will hereafter express his thoughts as often as he shall feel inclined to do so.
“Furthermore, precious and assiduous collaborators have formally promised us regular contributions; namely, Laurent Tailhade, who with his incisive and scholarly pen will treat especially of the vulgarities of Christianity; Paul Ary Cine, who will expose barrack life; Raphaël Dunois, who will chronicle and interpret the labor movement; Georges Pioch, dramatic and literary criticism; J. G. Prodhomme, musical criticism; A. R. Vertpré, art criticism; Alfred Griot, review of the reviews; Fred-Pol, review of the week; Alfred Bloch, scientific chronique; A. Harrent, anti-clerical chronique....
“In a word, we are doing what we can. Let our readers on their side do what they can in making known the Libertaire, in seeking new purchasers for it, in sending us financial aid sometimes, and in establishing in favour of their organ a serious and persevering propaganda.
“In this manner we can be certain that we and ours will have a journal to voice our opinions, our angers, and our hopes, and one which we can depend on to lead the people in the way that is frankly ‘libertaire’ on the fast-approaching day when it is going to be necessary to ‘fight it out,’ when all the political parties are going to fall on each other in order to retain power or usurp it. We are on the eve of important events. It is the moment for all of us to show ourselves, to shake off, some of us, our apathy, others of us our egoism, to silence all our dissensions, to combine with force will, abnegation, and audacity.”—Le Libertaire.