When throwers of bombs massacre persons they would not have harmed for the world, and when bombs are found in such diverse spots as cafés, restaurants, hotels, churches, soldiers’ recruiting offices and barracks, police stations, bazaars, private dwellings, public markets, stock exchanges, employment bureaus, and old people’s homes, who, indeed, can boast of his security? In the course of the years 1891-95 the fear of the dynamiters assumed such proportions as to amount almost to a panic, and this period is still referred to as “The Terror” in certain quarters.
“Ah, ah! c’est pas un’ crac La dynamit’ nous fich’ l’ trac,”
sang the clever Montmartrois chansonnier Eugène Lemercier in a witty topical song, Le Trac de la Dynamite, which had an enormous vogue.
At that time irresponsible rumour attributed to the camarades, to the “catastrophards,” such fell and fantastic schemes for the annihilation of the old society as the dispersion of malignant microbes, the poisoning of the water supply, and the introduction of nitro-glycerine into reservoirs, conduits, and sewers. There were frequent thefts of dynamite, the authors of which remained for some time at large. An anarchist cocher (probably demented) rode down pedestrians in pursuance of a vow he had made to exterminate the bourgeois. Public alarm was aggravated by the professional imaginings of the reporters and the police. It was wantonly played upon by the estampeurs (blackmailers and swindlers vaguely affiliated with “the groups”), who coined money by selling to a willingly gullible press bogus tips of conspiracies and contemplated explosions,—notably the mining of the Opéra, the Palais de Justice, and the Presidential Tribune at Longchamp, and the assassination of Leo XIII.,—and by fumistes (practical jokers), who perpetrated sardonic jokes with sand, iron filings, and sardine boxes, which were taken to the municipal laboratories[29] with the same infinite precautions as the real bombs in the ominous-looking vehicle presided over by the cocher “Ramasse” and drawn by the horse “Dynamite.”
During “The Terror” landlords begged or ordered magistrate tenants to quit their premises, lest they draw down bombs as trees draw down the thunderbolts, and added to their “To Let” notices these reassuring words, “Il n’y a pas de Magistrat dans la Maison”; the neighbours of judges compromised by the anarchist trials hastily moved into other parts of the city and even into the country; rag-pickers and concièrges fainted or had hysterics at the sight of sardine tins in the garbage boxes; concièrges quakingly told their heads before venturing to open the street doors for their own belated lodgers; anarchist tenants were as sedulously sought as magistrate lodgers were avoided, were loaded with soft words and favours, and implored not to worry themselves about their rent bills; and café and restaurant garçons vied with each other in flattering the caprices of their anarchist customers.
Flor O’Squarr tells of an anarchist, real or assumed, who, having regaled himself with a bountiful repast in a high-priced restaurant close by the Madeleine, called for the proprietor, and said:—
“I have had an excellent meal, and I haven’t a sou to pay for it. Arrest me, if you like; but I warn you that I am an anarchist, and that you expose yourself to the vengeance of my associates. Choose!” The panic-stricken Boniface insisted on drinking the audacious fellow’s health in champagne, and, when visited the following day by the police, who had heard of the affair, refused to make complaint against the swindler or give information that might lead to his detection. “A charming person, very polite, very well bred, and not proud,” was all that could be got out of him.
“Le vol” (theft) is another recognised form of the propagande par le fait.
“Are you cold,” says Charles Malato, “then enter the great bazaars which are crammed with unused garments, and take them; are you hungry, invade the meat-shops. Everything human industry produces belongs to you because you are men, and you are cravens if you do not take what you need.” Several international congresses have passed resolutions exhorting the hungry to take food wherever they can find it.
About this right of the individual to take for himself whatever is necessary to sustain his life, a right admitted theoretically, for the matter of that, by many who do not consider themselves revolutionists,—by popes, prelates, and theologians even, all the way from Saint Thomas to Manning and Parkhurst,—anarchists of all complexions agree absolutely. But over the right to steal in general there is as much dispute among them as there is over the right to kill. Some hold stealing meritorious, if the victims are properly chosen; others, if the profits are devoted scrupulously to the oral or written propaganda; others still, if they are turned over to the poor. Those who approve theft unreservedly are few indeed. Jean Grave admits that he is somewhat perplexed, but inclines to approve the open, defiant theft. He says:—