“Monsieur, for a number of years there has passed under our eyes here in France certain strange phenomena. Thousands of Frenchmen have, so to speak, separated themselves from the rest of the nation.
“All the sentiments that the nation honors itself by professing these other Frenchmen rebuke—the love of country, public spirit, accord between citizens, social repose, and respect for communal law and order—these other Frenchmen regard as the hallucinations of a nation of dupes.
“Separated by such unfortunate ideas from the nation within whose boundaries they live, they continue to abuse, even to threaten, the society and the country which gives them shelter.
“France is only a name to them; they were born there, 108 they live there, they derive their nourishment from her without gratitude. But France is nothing to them; their mother-land is the Internationale!”
I was certain now that the shadow of a sneer had settled in the corners of Buckhurst’s thin lips.
“I do not speak of anarchists or of terrorists,” I continued, nodding as though profoundly impressed by my own sagacity. “I speak of socialists—that dangerous society to which the cry of Karl Marx was addressed with the warning, ‘Socialists! Unite!’
“The government has reason to fear socialism, not anarchy, for it will never happen in France, where the passion for individual property is so general, that a doctrine of brutal destruction could have the slightest chance of success.
“But wait, here is the point, Monsieur Buckhurst. Formerly the name of ’terrorist’ was a shock to the entire civilized world; it evoked the spectres of a year that the world can never forget. And so our modern reformers, modestly desiring to evade the inconveniences of such memories among the people, call themselves the ’Internationale.’ Listen to them; they are adroit, they blame and rebuke violence, they condemn anarchy, they would not lay their hands on public or individual property—no, indeed!
“Ah, madame, but you should hear them in their own clubs, where the ladies and gentlemen of the gutters, the barriers, and the abattoirs discuss ‘individual property,’ ’the tyranny of capital,’ and similar subjects which no doubt they are peculiarly fitted to discuss.
“Believe me, madame, the little coterie which you represent is already the dupe and victim of this terrible Internationale. Their leaders work their will through you; a vast conspiracy against all social peace is spread through your honest works of mercy. 109 The time is coming when the whole world will rise to combat this Internationale; and when the mask is dragged from its benignant visage, there, grinning behind, will appear the same old ’Spectre Rouge,’ torch in one hand, gun in the other, squatting behind a barricade of paving-blocks.”