Moreover, the International Working Men’s Association had been founded in London in 1864, just seven years before. Although the late Professor Beesly, certainly as far from a violent revolutionist as any man could be, took the chair at the first meeting and English trade unionists of the most sober character constituted the bulk of the members in London, the terror which this organisation inspired in the dominant minority all over Europe was very far indeed in excess of the power which it could at any time exercise. But the names of Marx, the learned German-Jew philosopher, and Bakunin, the Russian peasant-anarchist, were words of dread to the comfortable classes in those days. Marx with Engels had written the celebrated “Communist Manifesto,” at the last period of European disturbance, in 1848, analysing the historic development and approaching downfall of the entire wage-earning system, with a ruthless disregard for the feelings of the bourgeoisie. Its conclusion appealing to the “Workers of the World” to unite was not unnaturally regarded as a direct incitement to combined revolt. Though, therefore, few had read the Manifesto this appeal had echoed far and wide, and the organisation of the International itself was credited with the intention to use the Commune of Paris as the starting-point for a world-wide conflagration. Thus the movement in Paris, which at first had no other object than to secure the stability of the democratic Republic, was regarded as an incendiary revolt, and the brutal outrages of M. Thiers, aided by the mistakes of the Communists themselves, gradually forced extremists to the front. Some were like Delescluze, noble enthusiasts who knew success was impossible, and courted death for their ideal as sowing the seed of success for their great cause of the universal Co-operative Commonwealth in the near future; others were such as Félix Pyat, a furious subversionist of the most ruffianly type, who mixed up personal malignity and individual hatred with his every action, and brought discredit on his own comrades. Victory for the Socialist ideals, with the Germans containing one side of Paris and the Versailles troops attacking the other, was impossible—would have been impossible even if the Communists had suppressed their truly fraternal hatreds and had developed a military genius. They did neither. Cluseret showed some inkling of the necessities of the case, but Dombrowski, Rossel and other leaders exhibited no capacity. The wonderful thing about it all was that during the crisis, which lasted two months, Paris was so well administered. The sacrifice of the hostages and the tactics of incendiarism pursued at last, not by the Communist leaders, but by the Anarchist mob broken loose from all control, have hidden from the public at large, who read only the prejudiced accounts of the capitalist press, the real truth about the Commune of Paris.
But whatever may have been done in resistance to the invasion of M. Thiers’ army of reaction, nothing could possibly justify the horrible vengeance wreaked upon the people of Paris by the soldiery and their chiefs. It was a martyrdom of the great city. The coup d’état of Louis Napoleon was child’s play to the hideous butchery ordered and rejoiced in by Thiers, Gallifet and their subordinates. There was not even a pretence of justice in the whole massacre. Thousands of unarmed and innocent men and women were slaughtered in cold blood because Paris was feared by the bloodthirsty clique who regarded her rightly as the main obstacle to their reactionary policy. It was but too clear evidence that, when the rights of property are supposed to be imperilled, all sense of decency or humanity will be outraged by the dominant minority as it was by the slave-owners of old or the nobles of the feudal times.
But the Commune itself, as matters stood, was as hopeless an attempt to “make twelve o’clock at eleven” as has ever been seen on the planet. John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry was not more certainly foredoomed to failure than was the uprising of the Communists of Paris in 1871. But the Socialists of Europe, like the abolitionists, have celebrated the Commune and deified its martyrs for many a long year. The brave and unselfish champions of the proletariat who then laid down their lives in the hope that their deaths might hasten on the coming of a better day hold the same position in the minds of Socialists that John Brown held among the friends of the negro prior to the great American Civil War. It was an outburst of noble enthusiasm on their part to face certain failure for the “solidarity of the human race.” But those who watched what happened then and afterwards can scarcely escape from the conclusion that the loss of so many of its ablest leaders, and the great discouragement engendered by the horrors of defeat, threw back Socialism itself in France fully twenty years.
Recent experience in several directions has shown the world that enthusiasm and idealism for the great cause of human progress, and the co-ordination of social forces in the interest of the revolutionary majority of mankind, cannot of themselves change the course of events. Unless the stage in economic development has been reached where a new order has already been evolved out of the previous outworn system, it is impossible to realise the ideals of the new period by any sudden attack. Men imbued with the highest conceptions of the future and personally quite honest in their conduct may utterly fail to apply plain common sense to the facts of the present. Dublin, Petrograd and Helsingfors, nearly forty years later, did but enforce the teachings of the Commune of Paris.
[CHAPTER V]
CLEMENCEAU THE RADICAL
All this Clemenceau, though not himself a Socialist, saw by intuition. His powers of organisation and capacity for inspiring confidence among the people might have been of the greatest service to Paris at that critical juncture in her history—might even have averted the crash which laid so large a portion of the buildings of the great city in ruins and led to the infamous scenes already referred to. This was not to be, and Clemenceau was fortunate to escape the fate of many who were as little guilty of terrorism or arson as himself.
The trial of the men responsible for the death of Generals Lecomte and Thomas was held on November 29th, 1871. Clemenceau himself was accused of not having done enough to save their lives. He was in no wise responsible for what had occurred, was strongly opposed to their execution, and, as has been seen, did all that he could do to prevent the two assailants of his own friends and fellow-citizens from being killed. That, however, was no security that he would have escaped condemnation if the evidence in his favour had not been so conclusive that even the prejudiced court could not decide against him. He was completely cleared from the charge by the evidence of Colonel Langlois, and given full credit for his efforts on behalf of the militarists who certainly could be reckoned among his most bitter enemies. Scarcely, however, was his life relieved from jeopardy under the law than he was compelled to risk it, or so he thought, on the duelling ground. Here Clemenceau was quite at home. He used his remarkable skill in handling the pistol with moderation and judgment, being content to wound his adversary, Commandant Poussages, in the leg. None the less, the result of his encounter was that he was fined and committed to prison for a fortnight as a lesson to him not to act in accordance with the French code of honour in future.