Chapter II The Oral Propaganda of Anarchy
“Woe is me if I preach not the gospel!”—Saint Paul.
“The orthodox believers went to hear Him, but understood nothing.”
Tolstoy.
“For He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”
Saint Matthew.
“The chanson, like the bayonet, is a French weapon.”—Jules Claretie.
“We must arm the camarades, we must never rest from arming the camarades, with stronger and stronger arguments. We must enrich their memories and imaginations with fresh facts which prove more clearly the necessity of the social revolution.”—Pierre Lavroff.
Anarchist propaganda is of four sorts, viz.: I. Oral. II. Written. III. By example (propagande par l’exemple). IV. By the overt act of violence (propagande par le fait).
With the anarchistic as with other creeds the simplest, most natural form of oral propaganda is, of course, that which consists in telling one’s faith to one’s neighbour.
The proselyting zeal that prompts a man to take his gospel with him wherever he goes,—to his workshop, to his café, to his restaurant, to the street corner, to “the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,”—and to couple with exhortation the
“Little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love”
that make up neighbourly service, is a force not the less real and potent because its operations are unseen and the measure of them cannot be taken. It is a factor to be reckoned with, the
“presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense”;
but it is essentially an affair of the soul not to be declared save by the novelist or poet, and it is of the same substance in all cases of genuine conviction, whatever the basis of the conviction may be.
The unit of the only oral propaganda of which the public can take cognisance is the “group” (le groupe).
The anarchist group is unique—among organisations, one would say if one might. Whether it consist of three persons or thirty, or some number between these limits,—in point of fact it is oftener three than thirty, with an average of perhaps a dozen,—it has neither constitution nor by-laws, neither president, vice-president, nor executive board. It is as exempt from human guidance as a Quaker meeting, to which, for the matter of that, it bears more than this one superficial resemblance, and as guiltless as an old-fashioned ladies’ committee meeting of parliamentary law. Now the camarades do not always conduct themselves with exemplary decorum, and it sometimes happens that two or three of them are on their feet together and talking at once; but, at the most, this predicament does not arise more frequently than in more rule-bound bodies, and it cannot, on the whole, be said that the groups are any more disorderly, distrait, dilly-dallying, and ineffective than the boresome assemblies in which, often, conceited lack-brains make parliamentary tactics an end, not a means, by perpetually “rising to points of order” and “appealing from the decisions of the chair.”
The group meets sometimes at a café or wine-shop and sometimes at the lodging of a member. It is oftenest born of a mutual desire for fellowship on the part of the anarchists of a street or quarter; but it may result, quite independently of propinquity, from a common enthusiasm for a special phase of the doctrine, a common wish to pursue the same line of study, or from a common interest in some concrete enterprise, such as coming to the rescue of strikers, raising funds for the families of the victims of police persecution, founding libraries and lecture courses, or the circulation of tracts. In any case there are no formal conditions of membership, a group never being at a loss to rid itself, without appeal to written law or precedent, of an intruder who makes himself obnoxious.
The programmes of group meetings vary infinitely with the tempers and caprices of the members, as well as with the objects of the groups; but they may be said, in general, to consist of the reading of original essays and poems, reports on the progress of the cause at home and abroad, a consideration of the bearing on the cause of the latest events in the world at large, an exchange of journals and brochures accompanied by expositions and discussions of their contents, a volunteering of service for the tasks in hand, and that untrammelled exchange of ideas in which the lines between speech-making and conversation, wrangle and discussion, are not too rigidly drawn.
The group is highly ephemeral. Everything about it being guided by the exigencies of the moment, it rarely survives the accomplishment of the special object for which it is formed. It dies, as it is born, easily; or, rather, yielding to the charm of the untried, it takes to itself a new body when the old body grows cramping or monotonous. Such deaths do not signify complete exhaustion of vitality or even a diminution of strength. By a sort of transmigration of souls the vital force is redistributed, that is all.
This remarkable fluidity makes it practically impossible to get any group statistics that are worth the paper they are written on. An estimate made a few years back by a person who seemed as well situated as any one to know, put the number of groups at about one hundred in Paris and between four hundred and five hundred in the rest of France. The same authority would probably give rather higher figures now. But such figures, even if accurate, are of very slight importance, since the number of groups is no criterion whatever of the number of anarchists. The most militant anarchists hold aloof from the groups in order to have complete freedom of action and escape police surveillance; many are in commercial or administrative situations which counsel reticence; and many labourers are constrained to a similar reticence by the danger of losing their jobs. Furthermore, many anarchists call themselves socialists in order to benefit by the greater tolerance accorded to the socialists, especially since the Combes ministry came into power. In a word, the anarchist has every reason to conceal his identity from the prying statistician, and usually succeeds in doing so. Mark Twain, commenting once on the inadequate census returns of the Jews in America, affirmed that he himself was personally acquainted with several million. The meagre numbers ordinarily assigned to the anarchists in France tempt one strongly to imitate Mark’s facetious audacity. At least, if French anarchists are really so few, one may affirm with safety that he is personally acquainted with them all.
Group names are of no great moment when group identity is so evanescent; but some of the names are picturesque or suggestive enough to bear recording:—
Les Enfants de la Nature, La Panthère de Batignolles, Les Gonzes Poilus du Point-du-Jour, La Jeunesse Anti-Patriotique de Belleville, Le Drapeau Noir, Les Quand Même, La Révolte des Travailleurs, Le Cercle Internationale, La Torpille, Le Groupe Libertaire, Les Forçats, Le Réveil, Les Résolus, L’Emancipation, Les Anti-Travailleurs, Les Indomptables, Les Sans-Patrie, Les Amis de Ravachol, Les Cœurs de Chêne, La Dynamite, Terre et Indépendance, Les Indignés, La Vipère, L’Affamé, Le Glaive, Les Parias de Charonne.
As each individual of a group is a law unto himself, recognising no authority in the group as a whole, so each group is a law unto itself, independent of every other group and recognising no higher authority whatsoever. In France, formerly, as is still the case in several countries, groups of the same region formed a federation; but the only present tangible proofs of the existence of an anarchist movement on a large scale are district, national, and international congresses to which whoever wishes3 may be a delegate. These congresses have no legislative, administrative, or coercive power over their component parts; their functions are purely advisory like those of the district conferences of the Congregational churches in America.
A newly formed group usually gets itself into touch, by correspondence, with its senior groups somewhat after the manner of a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle or the local branch of a “correspondence university.” Thus: “The group Les Vengeurs would like to put itself into communication with the existing groups. Those who have not received a personal letter, but who wish to correspond, are requested to direct their letters to the following address,” etc.
Union meetings of several groups are not infrequent. Thus: “L’Avenir Social of St. Ouen invites the camarades of the groups of St. Denis, Stains, Argenteuil, Puteaux, and Aubervilliers to a grand meeting which will be held Sunday, February 17, at 8.30 o’clock.” But these union meetings can no more bind by their action the individual groups participating than the “union temperance meetings” of the churches of New England towns can bind the action of the individual churches participating.
Anarchist mass meetings are relatively rare. If landlords are found willing to let their halls to anarchists,—and such landlords are not plentiful,—the police interpose at the last moment. Besides, money to pay for a hall is not always forthcoming, and the hesitancy of even the warmest sympathisers to compromise themselves by appearing publicly in the company of the camarades has to be reckoned with. But the anarchist has ways of holding a mass meeting—without holding it—that are worth two of holding it in the stereotyped fashion, and that speak volumes for his resourcefulness.
One of his favourite devices is to get himself named in due form a candidate for the Chamber, which gives him the right to cover the walls of the government buildings with unstamped posters4 and the free use of the public-school property for meetings. “Several camarades are astonished” (I quote from a number of Le Libertaire) “to see Libertad a candidate. Reassure yourselves. With his customary enthusiastic and communicative eloquence he exposes in his meetings the imbecility and the infamy of the parliamentary system. Paraf-Javal seconds him with his marvellous talent as a logician. Between them they are doing an excellent and useful work. At the last meeting an auditor—to carry out the farce of the campaign rally—proposed a resolution which was not voted, but which was gayly read by Libertad in the midst of general approbation. You will perceive by this resolution that our camarade is not on the point of occupying a seat in the Palais-Bourbon:—
“‘The electors assembled in the school building of the Boulevard de Belleville, after having listened to the bogus candidate Libertad and the camarade Paraf-Javal, conclude (agreeing thus at every point with the candidate himself) that voting is too stupid to be thought of, and that liberty of opinion, like every other liberty, is not to be asked for, but to be taken, whatever the obstacles. They are determined to send packing all the genuine candidates in whom they see only imbeciles or knaves.’”
The anarchist’s sense of humour, you see, is much more highly developed than is ordinarily supposed. Nothing tickles this sense of humour more than to pack the meetings of his antagonists, the bourgeois politicians, divert these meetings from their primitive object by virtue of numbers, address, strength of lung, hardness of fist, or all of these combined, and so carry on his propaganda at the expense of the very persons it is directed against.
He effects this peacefully, as a rule, if his numbers are overwhelmingly superior. In this case it is very much an affair of bravado and lungs. He simply elects a bureau5 to his mind—for so good an end he is more than willing to stifle his scruples against parliamentarianism—and, having installed a number of the camarades upon the platform, carries on the meeting with his own orators and as nearly in his own fashion as circumstances permit; of course, not without more or less noise and abusive protest, if the adherents of the original cause remain in the audience.
If, however, the numbers are more evenly matched, the interlopers, without attempting to capture the organisation of the meeting, make a dash for the front at a preconcerted signal, scale the platform as though it were a rampart, throw down every member of the bureau into the body of the house, and send the speaking-desk with its pitcher and glass of eau sucrée, the secretary’s table, and all the rest of the platform paraphernalia flying after them. Then, if resistance is offered on the floor of the hall, a pitched battle ensues, and the possession of the platform (except as it gives the advantage of position and an admirable chance to strut, game-cock fashion) counts for little, in the utter impossibility of getting heard, even if it is maintained, which it is not always, there being instances on record of the platform being taken and retaken, quite as if it were a strategic redoubt, several times in a single evening. Supposing, however, that the interlopers follow up the platform victory by another victory in the body of the hall, and succeed in ejecting the rightful occupants completely; the dispossessed, if they are not able to call up re-enforcements for a re-entry and renewal of the conflict, have no other redress than to persuade the proprietor of the hall to vacate it by cutting off the gas supply or by summoning the police. Either way, they gain nothing but the emptiest sort of dog-in-the-manger vengeance, since they cannot hope to resume their own interrupted meeting.
During the days succeeding the Dreyfus affair, when excitement was running high over the struggle between the nationalists and the socialists for the control of the Paris municipal council, a great nationalist mass meeting (”une grande réunion patriotique”), to be presided over by a nationalist deputy and addressed by other celebrities of the party, was announced for half-past eight of a certain Friday evening, in the assembly room of the Tivoli-Vauxhall, close by the Place de la République. On the morning of the night set for the meeting all the nationalist organs printed the following item:—
“We are informed at the last moment that the anarchists are coming in force to-night to our patriotic meeting at Tivoli-Vauxhall in order to prevent its being held and to transform it into a demonstration of sans-patrie. They propose to wave the red and the black flag. We are obliged, therefore, much to our regret, to take measures to prevent the entrance of our adversaries, and must limit the entries strictly to those who are provided with invitations. Invitations may be had by applying at,” etc., etc.
On the other hand, the revolutionary organs of the same morning printed the following:—
“The Comité d’Action Révolutionnaire invites all republicans, all socialists, and all libertaires [libertaire is a euphonious name for anarchist] to assist at the public meeting organised by the nationalists for this evening, Friday, at 8.30, Tivoli-Vauxhall, rue de la Douane in the Château d’Eau Quarter. All the camarades and citoyens are urged to wear the red eglantine.”
To one familiar with Parisian ways these antithetic notices promised a beautiful scrimmage. There was a beautiful scrimmage.
The doors opened at eight, and during half an hour or more the persons duly provided with invitations straggled into the hall; while, on the sidewalk opposite, a hostile crowd of socialists and anarchists, which the police had the greatest difficulty in restraining, asserted angrily their right to enter.
Just as the president of the evening, a phenomenally fat politician, arose to speak, the police lines gave way under the strain put upon them; there was a terrific stampede across the street, and before the public had time to pull themselves together again and before the ticket-takers could oppose the slightest resistance or really knew what was happening, more than two thousand persons without invitations had invaded the hall.
“Vive la Sociale! Vive l’Anarchie! A bas l’Armée!” bellowed the invaders.
“Vive le Drapeau! Vive Rochefort! Vive l’Armée!” screamed the invaded.
And, presto! pandemonium reigned.
In vain the elephantine president brandished his bell and pounded on the table. In vain he made a speaking trumpet with his hands and roared through it for order. The antagonistic yells mounted, collided, cracked, and exploded in mid air.
“A bas la Calotte!”—“Vive l’Armée!”
“Mort aux Juifs!”—“A bas Drumont!”
“A bas Zola!”—“Vive Loubet!”
“Vive l’Internationale!”—“Vive le Drapeau!”
In the rear of the hall, to the air of Les Lampions, a surging band chanted,
“Déroulède à Charenton,6
Déroulède à Charenton,
Ton taine,
Déroulède à Charenton,
Déroulède à Charenton,
Ton ton.”
And in the front of the hall another surging band retorted, to the same air,—
“Conspuez Loubet!
Conspuez Loubet!
Conspuez!”
“Enlevez l’homme tonneau!” (Away with the hogshead-man!) a shrill and mocking voice in one corner piped.
“Enlevez l’homme tonneau!!”
a hundred, five hundred, a thousand voices caught up the derisive cry.
“ENLEVEZ L’HOMME TONNEAU!!!”
the whole two thousand interlopers bawled.
And, bawling thus, they seethed on to the platform like a wave, lifted the frantically gesticulating “homme-tonneau” and his two hundred of avoirdupois clean off his feet, and, receding with multitudinous laughter, swept him down the aisle and out through the door as if he were a chip, and all his satellites and followers in the wake of him.
The new broom of the proverb never swept one-half so clean. Not a nationalist, at least not a nationalist who dared to raise a nationalist cry, was left in the hall. The socialists and anarchists were in complete possession; but the real scrimmage of the evening was yet to come.
A bureau was chosen in which the two parties were about equally represented, and a resolution was passed branding the nationalists as tools of the bourgeois and as royalist reactionaries more dangerous than the royalists themselves. Then a socialist, in an excess of zeal, made the blunder of introducing a resolution committing the meeting to the support of a certain socialist candidate for the municipal council. The anarchists, holding to their cardinal principle of non-participation in elections, vigorously dissented. Hot words followed; the crucial differences between the doctrines were evoked and emphasised; old injuries were recalled; old disputes were raked up; old sores were probed and laid open. Plainly, the hall was much too small for both.
From furious debate the meeting went to still more furious shouts and counter-shouts. Vive l’Anarchie, which had so lately locked arms with Vive la Sociale, now confronted it and hissed threatenings and curses in its teeth. And from shouts (there being no “homme-tonneau” to kindle saving laughter) the meeting went to blows. Fists, canes, umbrellas, chairs, and benches cleaved the air; shoes battered shins and heads concaved stomachs; clothes were torn, hats crushed in and trampled under foot; furniture was dismembered, and mirrors, windows, and gas globes were shattered. The field days of the French Chamber were left far in the rear, so was even the legendary South Boston Democratic caucus. The pushing, pulling, pounding, kicking, scratching, biting, and butting, the oaths and calls for help, the howls, growls, and yelps of baffled rage and pain, would need the pen of a French Fielding to describe and transcribe.
Finally, the socialists passed out by the same door as the nationalists, and in very much the same fashion. But the anarchists had barely time to catch their breath and to pronounce the socialists “the tools of the bourgeois and the most dangerous of reactionaries, because the most disguised,” when the police arrived, and with their fateful “Messieurs, la réunion est dissoute,” backed up by the extinction of the gas, evacuated the hall.
Once in the street, the anarchists were solidaire again with the socialists against their common bourgeois enemies, the nationalists. What is more, all three were solidaire against their common enemy, the police; and the latter were forced to call on their reserves and a body of the Garde Républicaine to disperse the rioters.
The joint debates (assemblées contradictoires) which are held, now and then, during the political campaigns, are very apt to degenerate into similar scrimmages. As a rule, such encounters—there must be a special providence for scrimmages as there is for MAULED TO DEATH FOR SHOUTING, ‘VIVE L’ARMEE!’ MAULED TO DEATH FOR SHOUTING, ‘VIVE L’ARMEE!’ lovers—work no great harm beyond bruises to those engaged in them; but fatal results are not unknown. Not long ago, at an anti-militarist meeting in the hall of the “Mille Colonnes,” a man who had the bad taste or the misplaced courage to cry, “Vive l’Armée!” was quickly mauled to death by the infuriate audience. This was not an “assemblée contradictoire,” it is true; but, if it had been, the outcome would probably have been the same.
It is only fair to say, however, that the anarchists, on such occasions, are not more intolerant than others. There is no certainty that a man would have fared better who, alone, in a patriotic assembly at that time had raised the cry, “A bas l’Armée!”
The anarchist, with all his haughty insistence on directness and sincerity, is not totally averse to taking or administering the sugar-coated pill. He has punchs-conférences (punch-talks) and soupes-conférences (soup-talks), the former for himself, the latter for others. At the punch-conférence he washes down the word with the beverage of his choice,—more often wine, coffee, or beer than the punch which gives the name. At the soupe-conférence he dispenses to hungry vagabonds the soup that sustains life and the doctrines that, to his mind, explain it and make it worth while; precisely as the city missionaries and the “Salvation lassies” dispense food and gospel to “hoboes” at the “mission breakfasts” and “hallelujah lunches” of English and American cities and large towns.
In the summer he has “ballades de propagande,”—picnic trips into the country, which are given a serious turn by doctrinal speeches, in the open air, after lunch.
He has also—at least he had for a season—his weekly déjeuners végétariens, at which the somewhat attenuated coating of sugar which a vegetarian lunch gives to the lecture pill is overlaid with the more substantial sweetness of frolic, song, and badinage.
He has his theatre (that is to say, he has his amateur theatricals) about which a glamour of mystery and adventure is shed by the fact the greater part of the répertoire is under the ban of the censorship. Entrance to the performances is by invitation only and free. It is thus the law is evaded, a fixed and obligatory cloak-room charge replacing the fee of admission.
The Maison du Peuple of the rue Ramey, which calls itself socialistic from motives of prudence, has a permanent band of actors (le Théâtre Social) on the border line between professionals and amateurs, who give evening and matinée performances nearly every Sunday throughout the winter and spring, and who occasionally go upon the road.
A single announcement will suffice to explain the operations of this and all similar troupes:—
“Théâtre Social.
Maison du Peuple de Paris, 47 rue Ramey (4, impasse Pers).
“Camarades,
“Before its departure for Belgium, where it is going to give a series of representations of its great success, L’Exemple, the Théâtre Social has decided to give two other representations (evening and matinée) of the piece of Chéri-Vinet, at the Maison du Peuple, in order to accommodate the camarades of the suburban districts.
“We invite you, then, camarades, to assist at the third and fourth representations (strictly private) of L’Exemple, interdicted by the Censorship, the unpublished revolutionary drama in 4 acts and 5 tableaux, which will be given Sunday, the 31st of March, at two o’clock and at half-past eight sharp.
“L’Exemple will be preceded by En Famille, a piece by Méténier in one act.
“Obligatory cloak-room fee, ten sous.
“Invitations may be procured at the Maison du Peuple, 47 rue Ramey, at the offices of L’Aurore, La Petite République, and Le Petit Sou, and at the house of the citoyen A——, number —, rue Championnet.”
As at the Théâtre d’Application (formerly la Bodinière), the various independent theatres, and the “Thursdays” of the Odéon, the performance of the revolutionary troupe is usually preceded by an explanatory or relevant talk either by its author or some well-known thinker or littérateur. Thus, when Charles Malato’s Barbapoux, announced as an “Œuvre Aristophanesque, Symbolico-fantaisiste,” was performed at the Maison du Peuple, Malato himself provided an introductory lecture, entitled “Le Cléricalisme et le Nationalisme.”
Above all, the anarchist has his soirée familiale. For example:—
“The anarchist group, Les Résolus, announce for Mardi Gras a grand soirée familiale et privée, to begin at nine. Concert by amateurs, preceded by a lecture by L. Réville, subject ‘Le Socialisme et l’Anarchie,’ and followed by a ball and a tombola [lottery]. Entrance free. Obligatory cloak-room fee, six sous.”
In a big, barn-like, crudely lighted, smoke-begrimed, rafter-ceilinged hall, whose walls are adorned with the painted texts which are anarchy’s great watchwords,
NOTRE ENNEMI C’EST NOTRE MAÎTRE
La Fontaine
LA PROPRIÉTÉ C’EST LE VOL
Proudhon
LA NATURE N’A FAIT NI SERVITEUR NI MAÎTRE
JE NE VEUX NI DONNER NI RECEVOIR DES LOIS
Diderot
LE CLÉRICALISME C’EST L’ENNEMI
Gambetta
NI DIEU NI MAÎTRE
Blanqui
to the laboured sounds of a patient, plethoric orchestra, the Résolus couples, some commonplace, some grotesque, and some graceful, dance with honest zest; but with a restraint and modesty in striking contrast with the reckless abandon of such resorts as the Moulin Rouge, maintained mainly for the prudent depravity of touring English and American men and (alas!) women, who flock there to fan jaded or hitherto unawakened senses into flame, under the flimsy pretext or the fond illusion that they are studying French life.
“To the laboured sounds of a patient, plethoric orchestra, the couples dance with honest zest; but with a restraint and modesty
in striking contrast with the reckless abandon of such resorts as the Moulin Rouge, maintained mainly for the prudent depravity of tourists.
In connection with the soirée familiale, it is highly diverting to note the same advertising dodges on the part of the managers; the same meaningless compliments to performers on the part of those who introduce them; the same ill-concealed impatience on the part of the audience during the serious part of the exercises for the dancing to begin; the same fluttering preoccupation with ribbons, robes, coiffures, and aigrettes, and the same jealousies of superior beauty, superior style, and more numerous or assiduous adorers on the part of the young women; and the same fussy solicitude on the part of doting mammas to have their daughters dance with the young men that are “likely” as in assemblies that do not occupy themselves with lofty ideas and ideals; also the same tiptoeing excitement over the drawing of the tombola as in the soirées of the working people, who do not profess a contempt for gain.
But he would be a precipitate reasoner, not to say a sorry churl, who should pounce on these little charming inconsequences as refutations of the anarchist theory, or should even call attention to them as other than reassuring evidence that the anarchist is a very human and likable being, not unaffected with amiable vices, and that he is not the abject slave of that angular consistency which, if it be a virtue at all, is the most unlovely of all the virtues. Your sound anarchist will probably tell you that he is sincerely ashamed of these failings, that they are deplorable relics of the old spirit of over-reaching which cannot, in the nature of the case, be entirely expelled so long as the old social régime continues. But this apology is so familiar, so threadbare even, it has been proffered so many, many times by so many very different sorts of people, that you prefer to ignore it, and attribute the anarchist’s dainty peccadilloes to the good old human nature which has always made men so much more companionable—let us guard ourselves against saying so much better—than their creeds.
In all the anarchist assemblies—the group meetings, the congresses, the mass meetings, and the various social and semi-social evenings—the trimardeur is a noteworthy figure. The trimardeur7 (literally, pilgrim of the great road) is a camarade who devotes himself to winning converts while making his tour of France. He has a certain kinship with the ancient bard, the mediæval troubadour and itinerant friar, and the German apprentice on his Wanderjahre.
But he is chiefly interesting as being the nearest modern approach to the early Christian apostle and the most perfect embodiment of the missionary spirit in existence. Figure him as the contemporary missionary or missionary agent minus a salary and a domicile,—if you can imagine such an anachronistic phenomenon!
He is usually a skilful and reliable workman who has lost his job from his irresistible propensity to spread radical ideas among his fellow-workmen or for his active connection with a strike. He sets out on his proselyting tour “with neither purse nor scrip nor shoes,” “neither bread, neither money” almost literally; and, literally, without “two coats.” In the country he mingles with the peasants and farm labourers, sleeping under their roofs, “eating and drinking such things as they give,” and converting as many as he may, sure of a welcome, for that matter, wherever there is a lodge—and where is there not?—of that most fraternal of all freemasonries,—discontent. In the cities he works during his sojourn, if work is to be had; and, when he “goes out of a city,” he blesses that city if it has “received” him, and “he shakes off the very dust from his feet as a testimony against it” if it has “received him not.”
The origin, methods, and manners of the trimardeur have been well described by one Flor O’Squarr. I take up his description at the point where the incipient trimardeur has been turned away by his employer. “He offers his labour to the factory opposite, to the foundry adjacent. Vain proceeding! Unfavourable reports immediately follow him or have preceded him there. The employers also combine. He will be received nowhere except by mistake and for a short time. At the beginning this conspiracy of the world against him surprises and disturbs him. He exclaims: ‘What have I done to them, then? Why do they drive me away thus, as they would a mangy or vicious cur? I have defended my interests and those of my fellows. It was my right, after all.’
“Later he discerns injustice in this persistent hostility,—bourgeois injustice, parbleu! This discovery provokes in him the idea of revolt, as a draught of alcohol inflames the blood. Persecution has begun then. Well, let it be so! He will accept it, not without pride. The theory of anarchy sinks a little deeper into his brain, after the manner of a spike on which the employers have tried their sledges. Then he buckles his belt, turns up his pantaloons, tightens his shoe-lacing, and gains the trimard with a few sous in his pocket, en route for the nearest large town, where he hopes to find employment and an unworked field for his neophytic zeal.
“If he sets out from Angers, from Trélazé, for instance, he tramps as far as Nantes, where he improvises himself porter or stevedore along the quays of the Loire, undertaking with the rashest indifference any occupation for which only muscle is required....
“Signalled anew,... our man rebuckles his belt, turns up again his pantaloons, retightens his shoe-lacing, and gains the trimard with a few sous in his pocket, headed towards St. Nazaire or Brest, towards Rennes or towards Cherbourg, towards any city whatsoever in which he can hope to earn his bread and convert men. Along the road he manages to get shelter on the farms, and he carries on his propaganda among the peasantry.
“This tireless fanaticism will carry him through Normandy towards the regions of the north. He will be expelled from the spinning-mills of Rouen, the glass-works of Douai, the mines of Anzin, the forges of Fives. From there he will pass into Belgium, always ‘on the hoof’ (à pattes) and on the trimard: he will visit Brussels, where the marvellous workingmen’s organisations of Brasseur and Jean Volders will make him shrug his shoulders,—‘Fudge, all that! authoritative socialism, that’; Antwerp, which will detain him a week, a bit disconcerted by the machine; Liège and Scraing, which will keep him a month; le Borinage, which he will contemplate as a promised land. Perhaps he will go into Germany, the vast Germany so inclement to anarchy,—that is, if he does not descend into the east by the Luxembourg, and gain the Jura by the Vosges.
“In two or three years he will have seen many districts and many countries, and will have scattered behind him everywhere, indifferently, seeds of revolt without troubling himself about the nature of the ground. His information will be considerably augmented. He will have made good by experience the defects of his education. He will know various languages and patois, having spoken Breton at Vannes, Normand at Caen, Walloon at Namur, Flemish at Gand, Marollien at Brussels, German in the east or in Switzerland; and, like the cosmopolitan Bohemian who had learned to borrow five francs in all the tongues of the world, he will have become capable of preaching anarchy in all the ‘argots.’...
“If during his travels the trimardeur has not acquired fine manners, at least he has acquired some very extended notions on customs and industries. He will know, without referring to a note, by a simple habit of memory, the distribution of the revolutionary contingents, here, there, and everywhere, in labour unions or socialist or anarchist groups, and the efficacy of each; what can be attempted at Montpellier, what is possible at Calais, how the iron is extracted at Mont-Canigan, and how it is worked at St. Chamond; why the fitters of the Seine are better paid than those of Nevers or Creuzot; where one stands a chance of being welcomed if one has been driven from the workshops of la Ciotat; by what artifice one may travel gratuitously in the baggage-cars of the company of the Midi, etc., etc. This miscellaneous information is not a bad substitute for science, and forms in fact a sort of fund of practical science very useful in the every-day life.”
“Nous partons tous faire le tour du monde
Quand nous manquons de travail et de pain;
Et cependant notre terre féconde
Produit assez pour tout le genre humain,
Nos exploiteurs veulent jouir sans cesse:
Dans tous nos maux ils trouvent un plaisir.
Nous travaillons pour créer la richesse,
Et de misère il nous faudrait mourir?”
Refrain.
“Allons, debout! les Trimardeurs,
Tous les hommes, enfin, veulent l’indépendance;
Supprimons donc nos exploiteurs,
Afin d’avoir le droit de vivre dans l’aisance.”
So runs the first stanza of the Chant des Trimardeurs; and this chanson, though execrable poetry, is, nevertheless, amply suggestive of the spirit of the trimardeur, and at the same time fairly illustrative of the popular revolutionary chanson (chanson populaire révolutionnaire).
“Of all the peoples of Europe,” said Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “the French people is the one whose temperament is the most inclined to the chanson.
“The chanson is the Frenchman’s ægis against ennui.... He uses it sometimes as a kind of consolation for the losses and reverses he sustains. He sings his defeats, his poverty, and his ills as readily as his prosperity and his victories. Beating or beaten, in abundance or in need, happy or unhappy, gay or sad, he sings always. One would say that the chanson is the natural expression of all his sentiments.”
France’s chanson populaire has always been one of the most important breeders and disseminators of social and political discontent. It has always kept pace with and frequently forerun revolutions. It is not surprising, therefore, that it is looked on by the anarchists as one of the most efficacious means of propaganda. The circulation among the masses of songs of revolt (chansons de propagande) is vigorously carried on by a number of revolutionary publishing concerns, which retail them at two sous each8 and wholesale them at fr. 4.50 a hundred, and which also distribute them gratuitously as often as a camarade or sympathiser will provide a fund for the purpose.
In these chansons, logic is deliberately ignored, and metaphysics and ethics are very little meddled with. All the subtleties and refinements of the doctrine, all the gentleness and sweet reasonableness of the accredited expounders of the doctrine, are crowded out by the necessity for the simple, downright, direct appeal to the passion which is the chanson’s peculiar province.
The very titles of these chansons de propagande show that their purpose is inflammation rather than persuasion. Notice a few of them:—
“Ouvrier, prends la Machine!” “Crevez-moi la Sacoche” (money-bag)! “Fusille les Voleurs,” Les Briseurs d’Images, Le Drapeau Rouge, Le Réveil, “Vivement, Brav’ Ouvrier!” La Chanson du Linceul.
When proselytism is not sufficiently pronounced in the chansons themselves, caustic foot-notes make up the deficiency. Thus this definition of the word députés: “Deputies are persons who make rules for others and exceptions for themselves.”
These chansons, besides being sung in the various anarchist functions, appear, along with ballads, amorous ditties, and the topical songs of the day, on the programmes of the little wine-shop concerts of the faubourgs, at which each and every person present is expected to “do his turn” and all are counted on to help out with the choruses. These diminutive faubourg concert halls are the lineal descendants of the famous historic workingmen’s goguettes and guinguettes into which the great Déjazet was happy to escape and from which the thought and the spirit of revolt were never far distant. “Behind their closed doors,” says Jules Claretie, “the government was roundly berated, the couplets of the chansonniers there becoming for it more redoubtable than the fiercest articles of the press.”
The chansons de propagande—the more catchy, least compromising of them, that is—are sung in the public squares and on the street corners of the working districts by the itinerant musicians, who are at all seasons, but especially at fête times, a picturesque feature of Paris streets, and who conduct so many open-air singing schools, as it were, in that they teach their motley audiences to sing the songs they have the wit to sell them.
Only a few of the anarchist chansons ever see the types. The majority either circulate in handwriting among the groups or, without having been taken down, are transmitted orally, like the mediæval folk-songs or the Homeric lays, suffering, like those, all sorts of modifications and corruptions of text in the transmission.
Of the chansons populaires révolutionnaires which have come down to the present from the Great Revolution, the Marseillaise, a true chanson de propagande in its time, well called by Lamartine “the fire-water of the Revolution,” is not in favour with the orthodox anarchists, because it is essentially patriotic and uses the offensive word citoyen. The “Ça Ira” is still sung by the anarchists, but not always to its original words. The Père Duchêne, a part of which dates from the Directoire, is sung mainly by the coal-miners of the region of the Loire. The Carmagnole alone—the saucy, rollicking, explosive, diabolic Carmagnole!—has held its own against all new-comers, changing, but losing nothing of its sauciness, its explosiveness, and its diabolism as it has passed from the versions of 1792-93 through its seven clearly defined texts to the version of the memorable strike of Montceau-les-Mines in 1883.
After the execution of Ravachol9 the airs of the “Ça Ira” and the Carmagnole were combined into a chanson called La Ravachole, which, in spite of this hybrid origin, may fairly be classed as the latest and by far the most vindictive version of the Carmagnole.
LA RAVACHOLE
I
Dans la grande ville de Paris (bis)
Il y a des bourgeois bien nourris, (bis)
Il y a les miséreux
Qui ont le ventre creux.
Ceux-là ont les dents longues,
Vive le son, vive le son,
Ceux-là ont les dents longues,
Vive le son
D’ l’explosion.
Refrain
Dansons la Ravachole,
Vive le son, vive le son,
Dansons la Ravachole,
Vive le son
D’ l’explosion.
Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Tous les bourgeois goût’ront d’ la bombe,
Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Tous les bourgeois on les saut’ra,
On les saut’ra.
II
Il y a les magistrats vendus, (bis)
Il y a les financiers ventrus, (bis)
Il y a les argosins;
Mais pour tous ces coquins
Il y a d’ la dynamite,
Vive le son, vive le son,
Il y a d’ la dynamite,
Vive le son
D’ l’explosion!
Dansons, etc.
III
Il y a les sénateurs gâteux, (bis)
Il y a les députés véreux, (bis)
Il y a les généraux,
Assassins et bourreaux,
Bouchers en uniforme,
Vive le son, vive le son,
Bouchers en uniforme,
Vive le son
D’ l’explosion.
Dansons, etc.
IV
Il y a les hôtels des richards (bis)
Tandis que les pauvres déchards (bis)
A demi-morts de froid
Et souffrant dans leurs doigts.
Refilent la comète,
Vive le son, vive le son,
Refilent la comète,
Vive le son
D’ l’explosion.
Dansons, etc.
V
Ah, nom de dieu, faut en finir! (bis)
Assez longtemps geindre et souffrir! (bis)
Pas de guerre à moitié!
Plus de lâche pitié!
Mort à la bourgeoisie,
Vive le son, vive le son,
Mort à la bourgeoisie,
Vive le son
D’ l’explosion!
Dansons, etc.
The revolutions of 1830, 1848, and 1871, as well as the Great Revolution, left to the people generous heritages of bourgeois-baiting chansons. The barricades of those agitated periods rang with lyric improvisations born of the ferment and frenzy of the hour. The authors were oftener clerks or day labourers than they were poets or professional chansonniers, and their songs, many of the best of which have survived, were genuine songs of the people. But the one supremely great chanson populaire révolutionnaire of the last half of the century just closed, a song as striking in its way as the Carmagnole, the “Ça Ira,” the Père Duchêne, or the Marseillaise, is the Internationale. Wherever there is revolt or faith in revolt, brotherhood or yearning after brotherhood, this stupendous hymn of the religion of humanity (for it is much more a hymn than a chanson) is fervidly and reverently sung. The Internationale has something of the profundity and awfulness of Martin Luther’s “Ein’ Feste Burg.” Like that marvellous psalm, it is at once uplifting and crushing. In concept it is probably the biggest song of liberty that has ever been written. It is surely the biggest in this respect of all the French revolutionary chansons. As the Marseillaise, with its fierce, defiant staccatos and fiery, resistless appeal, is the perfect lyric expression of the fury of onset (furia francese) in the field, and as the Carmagnole, with its madly reeling, rolling, booming rhythms and its terrible, mocking, blasphemous mirth, is the perfect lyric expression of the drunkenness and dare-devilness of mobs and barricades, so the Internationale, with its slow, solemn, stately measure and its universal reach of feeling and of thought, is the perfect lyric expression of the eternal might and majesty of humanity. Hearing it, it is as if one heard the cadenced beat of the million-millioned tread of the advancing race, sweeping all barriers of pride and prejudice before it.
In the meetings, the numerous stanzas of the Carmagnole and the Internationale are generally delivered as a solo from the platform by a camarade who is blessed with a good memory and exceptional lung power, the audiences leaping into the choruses. The effect is invariably inspiriting, whatever the personality of the soloist or the quality of his voice, and whatever the composition and the voices of the audience. Indeed, these two chansons seem to belong to that rare sort of music which cannot be spoiled by bad, if it be not half-hearted, execution. So that there is conviction behind it, it carries,—the music in which sincerity and fervour atone for all defects of pitch, key, and voice.
In the open air, the more familiar stanzas are sung in unison just as is the Marseillaise, just as are the songs of the students, and just as are, for that matter, all the songs of the people in France,—a method by which a great deal more is gained in lilt and concentration (where only the primal emotions are concerned) than is lost in charm. And I defy any one who has a drop of red blood in him to be at the centre of several thousand excited people who are shouting the Marseillaise, the Internationale, or the Carmagnole, and not join in, even though his every instinct and belief be anti-revolutionary and he has neither voice nor ear. He who has not shared the surging and chanting of an angry Paris mob has only half experienced the popular thrill, and can have only half an idea what solidarity of emotion means.
The Internationale is as much the rallying cry of the opening of the twentieth century as the Marseillaise was of the opening of the eighteenth; and it would not be surprising if its author, Eugène Pottier, who is already called by the faithful “the Tyrtæus of the Social Revolution,” should win ultimately the same sort of an apotheosis as Rouget de Lisle won by the Marseillaise.
Poor Pottier, who died in 1887 at seventy-one years of age, saw only the beginning of the phenomenal vogue of his masterpiece as a revolutionary slogan.
Pottier was one of the few who dared to speak his mind freely during the Second Empire, and was a prominent figure on the barricades of both 1848 and 1871. He was proscribed for his participation in the Commune, but escaped to America, where he remained till amnesty was declared. Unable to work steadily at his trade after his return, because his natural employers resented the part he had taken in the organisation of his craft, as well as his share in the Commune, and systematically neglected as a poet and song-writer by the bourgeois press, his poverty was terrible at times,—so terrible that it is no hyperbole to say that many of his best pieces were written with his heart’s blood. They were real cries of real anguish. His boundless love and pity for the poor and his incessant struggle for the emancipation of the oppressed turned his life—like that of the noble Communard, Blanqui, to whom he dedicated a marvellous sonnet—into an uninterrupted series of self-sacrifices; and he stands side by side with Blanqui among the finest modern revolutionist types. Many of his chansons besides the Internationale have survived him. He left also a quantity of far from despicable poems.
They are legion, the men of the people whom anarchy has inspired of late years to sing; but the majority of them are unknown to the general public and even to other anarchistic groups than their own. A few, however, have a Parisian reputation for their abilities or eccentricities.
Paul Paillette, a quaint, picturesque personality, inhabits a correspondingly quaint and picturesque lodging, which he calls his “grenier de philosophe” (philosopher’s garret) on the summit of Montmartre. He was originally a jeweller; but of late years he has supported himself by rendering his own productions and those of Bruant and Xanrof in the salons of the bourgeois, who gladly pay him for ridiculing and abusing them. He is also a favourite feature of the union meetings and soirées familiales in several quarters of the city.
Paul Paillette can be bitter, caustic, and violent when he chooses; but his dominant note is gentle, hopeful, idyllic, and ideal, as the following chanson from his principal volume, Les Tablettes d’un Lézard, testifies:—
HEUREUX TEMPS
Air: Le Temps des Cerises.
I
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Les humains joyeux auront un gros cœur
Et légère panse.
Heureux, on saura, sainte récompense,
Dans l’amour d’autrui doubler son bonheur!
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Les humains joyeux auront un gros cœur.
II
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
On ne verra plus d’êtres ayant faim
Auprès d’autres ivres:
Sobres nous serons et riches en vivres;
Des maux engendrés ce sera la fin.
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Tous satisferont sainement leur faim.
III
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Le travail sera récréation
Au lieu d’être peine.
Le corps sera libre, et l’âme sereine,
En paix, fera son évolution.
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Le travail sera récréation.
IV
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Les petits bébés auront au berceau
Les baisers des mères.
Tous seront choyés, tous égaux, tous frères;
Ainsi grandira ce monde nouveau.
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Les bébés auront un même berceau.
V
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Les vieillards aimés, poètes-pasteurs,
Bénissant la terre,
S’éteindront, béats, sous le ciel mystère,
Ayant bien vécu, loin de ces hauteurs.
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Les vieillards seront de bien doux pasteurs.
VI
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Nature sera paradis d’amour;
Femme souveraine,
Esclave aujourd’hui, demain notre reine,
Nous rechercherons tes ordres du jour!
Quand nous en serons au temps d’anarchie,
Nature sera paradis d’amour.
VII
Il semble encore loin, ce temps d’anarchie;
Mais, si loin soit-il, nous le pressentons;
Une foi profonde
Nous fait entrevoir ce bienheureux monde
Qu’hélas! notre esprit dessine à tâtons.
Il semble encore loin, ce temps d’anarchie;
Mais, si loin soit-il, nous le pressentons!
Brunel, a café garçon by profession, author of Le Chant des Peinards, has been associated with Paul Paillette in organising soupes-conférences and déjeuners végétariens.
Achille Leroy calls himself “author, publisher, and international book-seller,” and his invariable response to the simple salutation, “Comment ça va?” (How goes it?) is:—“L’idée marche” (The idea moves). He earns his living by selling his own and other iconoclastic works at the doors of revolutionary gatherings,10—anarchist gatherings preferred,—scrupulously devoting to the cause whatever he may gain beyond the bare necessities. Though an honest, harmless body, if ever there was one, he is so addicted to the spots where trouble is going on or brewing that he has been arrested many times; for instance, on the day of the 1899 Grand Prix for having cried, “A bas les Sergots!” Achille wrote a letter of self-defence at that time which was printed in certain of the newspapers and in the Almanach de la Question Sociale. He was also defended in the Journal du Peuple by M. Lucien Perrin, as follows:—
“Among the condemnations which evoked violent murmurs from the listeners was that of our worthy camarade, Achille Leroy, the revolutionary publisher. He had bravely cried, ‘Vive la Liberté!’ when he was seized by the police and maltreated, as only these brutes know how. As he was unarmed, and had committed no violence, the police officers accused him of having cried, ‘A bas les Sergots!’ (what a crime!) The ruse succeeded, and our friend was condemned to a month of prison without reprieve.”
Auguste Valette, a roving vagabond character, sometimes attached to a Paris caveau (concert-cellar) or café-concert and sometimes to a strolling show, gained some little notoriety at the time of the trial of Salsou for his attempt against the Shah of Persia, and came near being indicted with Salsou as an accomplice because two violent anarchist poems by him, dedicated to Salsou, were found among the latter’s papers.
Other singers of anarchy are Olivier Souêtre, author of Marianne and La Crosse en l’Air, two chansons that enjoy and deserve high favour; H. Luss, author of La Défense du Chiffonnier and La Grève de Cholet; Félix Pagaud, author of Les Tueurs; Daubré, to whom is attributed the last stanza of Père Duchêne; Hippolyte Raullot, Jacques Gueux, Martinet de Troyes, Pierre Niton, and Jean la Plèbs, who style themselves “poètes plébéiens”; Théodore Jean, Luc, Marquisat, Doublier, etc. It is useless to go on naming them, as their names mean nothing outside of the revolutionary circles of Paris.
They are all most striking individualities, however, ranging all the way from freaks to heroes; and it is the individuality which they lavish on the rendering of their chansons that constitutes their drawing power. You must hear a Brunel, a Valette, a Paul Paillette, sing his own chansons to comprehend the influence they exert, since, in simple print, the most of these productions seem decidedly flat.
Père La Purge, the jovial-faced cobbler of the narrow, dark, and tortuous rue de la Parcheminerie in the Latin Quarter, calls for a special word here, because he perpetuates worthily the revolutionary tradition of the cobbler.
Père La Purge is a perfect modern counterpart of the cobblers who secreted intended victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew under the refuse of their shops; who, under Richelieu, managed to get letters to prisoners in the Bastille by sewing them between the soles of the prisoners’ shoes; who were among the first shop-keepers to set the tricolor cockade over their shops, and made themselves otherwise remarked for their zeal in the Revolution; and who, under the Restoration, played an important revolutionary rôle by placarding the walls of their shops with caricatures and Pasquinades (Pasquino, it should not be forgotten, was a cobbler) and by secretly circulating seditious pamphlets and chansons.
The invasion of machinery to do heeling and soling “while you wait” (ressemelage Américain) is driving out of Paris the old-time cobblers who made their shops rendezvous of the opposition and nurseries of revolt. But a few of these cobblers still persist; and of these Père La Purge is the best known, if not the most talented or most dangerous, example. His Chansons du Gars, which are issued with a superb cover design by Ibels, display a great deal of shrewdness and aptness of phrase,—
“I ‘a d’ la malice!
Oui, foi d’ Bap’tiss!”
but his most popular work is the lurid and penny-dreadful Chanson du Père La Purge, which has given him his name.
LA CHANSON DU PÈRE LA PURGE
I
Je suis le vieux Père La Purge,
Pharmacien de l’humanité,
Contre sa bile je m’insurge
Avec ma fille, Egalité.
Refrain
J’ai ce qu’il faut dans ma boutique,
Sans le tonnerre et les éclairs,
Pour watriner toute la clique
Des affameurs de l’Univers.
II
Pendant que le peuple s’étiole
Sur le pavé, sans boulotter,
Bourgeoisie, assez de la fiole!
Avec ma purge il faut compter.
J’ai ce qu’il faut, etc.
III
J’ai des poignards, des faulx, des piques,
Des revolvers et des lingots,
Pour attaquer les flancs uniques
Des Gallifets et des sergots.
J’ai ce qu’il faut, etc.
IV
J’ai du pétrole et de l’essence
Pour badigeonner les châteaux;
Des torches pour la circonstance,
A porter au lieu de flambeaux.
J’ai ce qu’il faut, etc.
V
J’ai du picrate de potasse,
Du nitro de chlore à foison,
Pour enlever toute la crasse
Du palais et de la prison.
J’ai ce qu’il faut, etc.
VI
J’ai des pavés, j’ai de la poudre,
De la dynamite, oh! crénom!
Qui rivalise avec la foudre
Pour vous enlever le ballon.
J’ai ce qu’il faut, etc.
VII
Le gaz est aussi de la fête!
Si vous résistez, mes agneaux,
Au beau milieu de la tempête
Je fais éclater ses boyaux.
J’ai ce qu’il faut, etc.
VIII
Ma boutique est toute la France,
Mes succursales sont partout.
Où la faim pousse à la vengeance,
Prends la bouteille et verse tout!
J’ai ce qu’il faut dans ma boutique,
Sans le tonnerre et les éclairs,
Pour watriner toute la clique
Des affameurs de l’Univers.
“For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals
For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders.”
Walt Whitman.