The Indicateur Anarchiste was practically a reprint of a series of articles that had appeared in the London journal, L’Internationale,[20] under the rubric “Un Cours de Chimie Pratique,” which articles were in their turn practically a reprint of a series that appeared in La Lutte of Lyons under the rubric “Produits Anti-Bourgeois.” They included minute directions for the fabrication and use of several explosives and of Greek fire, the common and scientific names and the prices of their ingredients, and a detailed description of the tools and vessels best adapted to the various necessary processes. The announcement of the original series in La Lutte was as follows:—
“Produits Anti-Bourgeois
“Under this heading we shall put before our friends the inflammable and explosive materials which are the best known, the easiest to handle and prepare,—in a word, the most useful. These preparations are not classical. If we point them out to the camarades notwithstanding, it is because we have discovered that they are superior to others and offer less danger.
“We shall mention only the most indispensable products, and yet these are unknown to many of the camarades. In the approaching conflict each one must be a bit of a chemist. This is why it is high time to take matters into our own hands, and demonstrate to the bourgeois that what we want we want in earnest.”
The excitement aroused by the publication and general circulation of this ominous brochure proved to be well-nigh gratuitous. Experience has demonstrated that in France, where the most scholarly anarchists are little inclined to participate in the propagande par le fait,[21] the majority of dynamiters are forced (like Salvat in Zola’s Paris), to steal their explosives. They are not capable of putting the precepts of this so-called popular manual, rudimentary as they appear, into practice; the required manipulations, even when reduced to their simplest terms, being too dangerous and delicate for any but laboratory trained hands to execute.
