Anarchists and socialists unite in anti-clerical and anti-militarist mass meetings, in interfering riotously with public worship, in shouting, A bas l’Armée! and A bas la Patrie! They also unite in distributing to the conscripts manuals reciting their duties in the regiments, chief of which are disobedience and desertion; and they commemorate together many of the same anniversaries, especially those of the Mur des Fédérés[57] (May) and of Etienne Dolet[58] (August). It is at election times mainly that they try conclusions fiercely with each other, because of their antagonistic sentiments towards the exercise of the vote.
The revolutionary socialists esteem lightly trade-unions, except as a means of coercing ministries to paternalism, and take little interest in co-operation[59] as practised at present; but they have something of the same faith as the anarchists that la grève générale, which several of their congresses have indorsed, and la pan-coopération will coincide with the revolution.
In a certain sense—and not so very far-fetched a sense, either—every political party in Paris is revolutionary, inasmuch as all the “outs” are willing to resort to revolutionary methods to overturn the statu quo and all the “ins” would be willing to resort
M. GUESDE[60] to revolutionary methods to restore their respective dispensations if, by a turn of the wheel of fortune, they should become the “outs.”
The anarchists and the socialists are by no means the only bodies who find the Third Republic detestable, and who, to make way with it, would gladly descend into the street. The royalists and imperialists are reactionary revolutionists, only deterred from insurrection and a coup d’état by the absence of the magnetic man and the propitious occasion. The nationalists would pause at nothing that would enable them to substitute a plebiscitary for the present parliamentary republic, and the anti-Semites
M. ALLEMANE[61] at nothing that would expel or dispossess the Jews. Rochefort and Drumont call themselves socialists; and Guérin’s organ, L’Anti-Juif, regularly carries this head-line, “Défendre tous les travailleurs, Combattre tous les spéculateurs.” L’Autorité, L’Intransigeant, La Libre Parole, and La Patrie are as truly revolutionary sheets as are Les Temps Nouveaux and Le Libertaire; while Paul de Cassagnac, Baron Legoux, Lur-Saluces, the gilded youth of the “Œillet Blanc” (“White Carnation”) who battered the President’s hat at Auteuil, Rochefort, Drumont, Guérin, Régis, and Déroulède are as much revolutionists as the socialist Jules Guesde or the anarchist Jean Grave.
Some time before his expulsion Déroulède said to his electors: “There is no other means of safety than a revolution at once popular and military, having at its head a civilian and a soldier, both loyally resolved to maintain the republic. To deliver France and the republic, there are three methods possible: the will of a man (that is, the coup d’état); the will of the people (that is, revolution); the will of the representative assembly (that is, parliament). I will do all in my power to make the last method—the most peaceable—effective; but I do not greatly count on it, and I declare myself determined to venture everything for the triumph of the other two.”