“Anarchy is the summum of humane theories. Whoso calls himself anarchist should be gentle and good. All overt acts of the nature of that of yesterday are looked on by true compagnons as crimes. If those who perpetrate these barbarities act with the design of promulgating the anarchist creed, they deceive themselves completely.
“Things will come to such a pass, there will be such disgust with the compagnons, they will inspire such horror, that no one will be willing to hear anarchy so much as spoken of.
“And yet the idea is beautiful: it is grand. See to it that it is respected. The persons who do evil in its name befoul our doctrines.”
It is not always easy for the outsider to grasp why, of two anarchist acts of violence with similar exterior aspects, the same camarade praises the one and deplores the other. What is more, he will understand still less when the camarade has explained. There are labyrinths of subtleties in anarchist apologetics through whose intricate windings the lay intelligence has no Ariadne-given thread to guide it, and depths of esoteric metaphysics which only the plummet of the adept can sound.
Vaillant had almost unanimous plaudits from the camarades, no little praise from the socialists, and approval—mark the humorous note!—from certain of the deputies whose lives he had jeopardised.
Ravachol, author of the explosions at the houses of the judges Benoit and Bulot and of other overt acts less readily comprehensible, was practically repudiated at first by the Temps Nouveaux (then La Révolte) on account of a dubious past, but was recognised loyally, if languidly, as soon as his entire disinterestedness was made plain.
The general attitude of the Temps Nouveaux towards the propagande par le fait is one of guarded detachment, verging on complete indifference,—an attitude of rare prudence, sanity, and sagacity. It treats the whole matter of the individual attempt as a side issue, with an unfortunate tendency to divert the attention of both the faithful and the unfaithful from the basal principles of anarchy, and makes it very clear that it would ignore it altogether if it could.
“If anarchy,” says this representative journal, “does not reject violence when it is demonstrated to be indispensable to enfranchisement, it does not elevate it into a system. Violence is for it a means, debatable, like everything, but which is, at most, only an accessory affair. It must disappear when the obstacles are overcome, and weakens in nothing any of the elements of the ideal itself....
“Deeds are not counselled, nor spoken, nor written. They are done. Sometimes a deed done effects more than a long period of writing. This journal will always be the first to applaud those who act. We are, then, far from repelling the propagande par le fait. Only—we have said it before, and we repeat it—the propagande par le fait cannot be the work of a journal. It is not for us to say to individuals: ‘Do this! Do that!’ If they are convinced and conscientious, they will know what they have to do....