APPENDIX A
I HAVE said very little about Anarchism—merely mentioned it by name; yet the inquiries I have made into this subject reveal an organisation and a literature astonishing to the everyday mind. To use the words of that ardent bibliophile, H. Bourdin:
“To most people the word Anarchy is evil-sounding, but it is not the same to learned men and to collectors and lovers who acquire the desire of accumulating documents for history’s sake.
“The Anarchist literature has not a determined origin, being not the expression of a system invented and progressively elaborated, but the negation of all systems, produced by the desire to batter down the despotic in all its forms, the rules and duty imposed by prejudice or by force, and to give impulse to the free development of humanity. All acts which have been accomplished and all words which have been pronounced in hatred of this constraint and in favour of this freedom are consciously or unconsciously the production of Anarchy.
“It is astonishing when one glances at the huge quantity of literature of all kinds which has been printed in the space of the last half-century for the exposition of their ideal thought; no other party or sect, for whatever cause they had to defend, can be compared to this, except Christianity, which has taken about 2,000 years over it. Consider the difficulty which they have met in publishing clandestinely their periodicals, broadsides, etc., hunted by society as wild beasts; domiciliary perquisitions destroyed their works, which were merely their thoughts.”
M. Bourdin has courteously allowed me to inspect the huge library of Anarchistical literature which he has collected, consisting of journals, broadsides, pamphlets, volumes, songs, theatrical plays, etc.
To give you an idea of the extent and nature of the Anarchistical press, I enumerate a few of the journals: