Finally, the wily stratagems of a determined and not over-scrupulous secret police and the special rigour of a body of more or less biased judges in applying Draconian laws of exception must be reckoned with. In no department of their work do the former display more cunning or the latter more severity. Nevertheless, they have never been able, combined, to prevail over the intensity of the anarchist proselyting spirit far enough to prevent for any length of time the spread of the written word. Trick has been matched by trick and audacity by audacity. The defiance with which the authorities are met is well typified by the following manifesto:—
“Readers and Subscribers of L’Insurgé, take notice!
“We announce to our readers that we shall not be able to appear this week; but, in spite of all the rascalities of the government, we intend to appear in the breach again very soon. Vive l’homme libre dans l’humanité libre! Vive l’Anarchie!
“Santaville
“[Managing Editor of L’Insurgé].”
Previous to 1881 the press law was such that a condemned journal was forced to change its name, if it wished to reappear; and the tradition survives of an anarchist sheet at Lyons which suffered eighteen successive condemnations (involving for the managing editors imprisonment for terms varying from six months to two years), and which, therefore, bore successively eighteen different names.
After 1881 until the passage of the special anarchist restrictive acts popularly known as the Lois Scélérates, a journal could pass through any number of condemnations without losing its identity; the guilt of the responsible editor being held as purely personal. It was during this golden age of relative liberty that the Père Peinard saw ten of its managing editors condemned within three years—as a cavalry officer leading a charge may see horses shot out from under him—without having its advance materially impeded.
“Once the condemned editor was out of the way,” says a writer familiar with the administration of this curious journal, “it was as if no condemnation had intervened. There was somewhere on the trimard in France or abroad an anarchist who owed to the state two years of Ste. Pélagie and a 3,000-franc fine,[18] but the journal was not touched. Le Père Peinard remained unassailable....
“From the number and the gravity of the sentences imposed it would seem that the Père Peinard must have experienced great difficulty in the recruitment of its editors or that it must have paid them enormous salaries. Quite the reverse. The fanaticism of the anarchists was such that they vied with each other in imploring of Pouget the favour of a chance to be condemned. At any given moment several were impatiently awaiting their turn. Never did the Père Peinard pay one of its editors. Never did it even allow him a free subscription. The editor of the Père Peinard was a special type, a volunteer of the assize court, who went to the prison as water goes to the river, and who pushed his disinterestedness to the point of buying his own paper—two sous out of his pocket—every Sunday.”
Under the present laws it would be more difficult for so saucy and reckless a sheet as the Père Peinard to keep up its laughter over the discomfiture of the authorities; that is, if it were printed in France.