THE ATTEMPT ON COUNT CAPRIVI.
WE are by no means sure, if the world has to declare war on Anarchists, Nihilists, Itivincibles, and the other varieties of the genus dynamitard, that the best way, as well as the most merciful way, would not be to declare them irresponsible, exempt them from all punishment, and shut them up as dangerous lunatics until they regained their reason. Many of them are undoubtedly homicidal maniacs, and the proceedings of the remainder are often distinguished by an amount of folly which is concealed from us by its murderous effects, but which is inconsistent with complete or ordinary reasoning power. The man Lauthier, for example, hating society because, as he told a restaurant keeper, it ought to give him good dinners and did not, stabbed in revenge for his wrongs a Servian Minister, who, even from his point of view, had no more to do with them than the Emperor of China. The villain who shattered the gentlemen and ladies in the stalls of a theatre at Barcelona must have had in him before he scattered death among the powerless, something nearly approaching to homicidal mania, and was probably affected by that form of insanity, the exaggeration of personality, which forms so great a feature in all Continental statistics of lunacy. The man, again, who tried to blow up Count Caprivi must have been, as far as his judgment was concerned, almost an idiot. In making a similar attempt to blow up the Emperor, he did, no doubt, attack society as he wished, for the death would have convulsed Europe from end to end, and might have produced war—civil war—or even momentary anarchy ; but what was the use of assassinating the Chancellor? He is an excellent man, no doubt, and an able administrator, but he is not Bismarck ; and even Bismarck's disappearance hardly created a ripple in the great lake of social order. The Emperor could find a dozen Caprivis. The attempt, moreover, adds to the security of all great political personages. It seems, at first sight, as if no such personage was safe, for he can be approached by post even in Gatschina, but in reality his safety from such attacks is now almost assured. Nothing is easier, if Rulers are once warned, than to make it an etiquette tliat no Sovereign or politician shall personally open a box addressed to him, unless such box bears a particular stamp or seal or signature, and this method of " execution " can therefore be reduced at once to futility. It does not even frighten, or compel the precautions which, by hampering his liberty, render life a, misery to a i Sovereign or a Premier. Either s as safe as an Oriental despot usually is from poison, and for the same reason—the poison cannot reach the person for whom it is intended. Neither is the Anarchist's central idea advanced one step by such a crime, nor is his hatred gratified in any degree perceptible to himself.. The only effect is that the reactionary ardour, which no Anarchist can wish to in- crease, is greatly increased in volume, and that measures of repression such as wise statesmen dislike, because they give to murderous attacks on them the character of reprisals, are accepted as measures of necessity, It becomes necessary, moreover, especially on the Continent, where so many statesmen are soldiers, to strike back hard, lest the populace should suspect the rulers of timidity, and striking back hard means usually a suppression of all law. Napoleon III., under the law of public safety, would have sent all Anarchists in Paris to Cayenne in a single night, and the present rulers of Europe are at least as hard as Napoleon III. ever was. Already we can see signs of a change in the general temper of Englishmen upon this subject. No European statesman has shown such moderation in the treatment of Anarchists as Mr. Asquith. He has, in fact, behaved towards them as if he held them to be visionaries rather than either fanatics or lunatics, and has even in his half- contemptuol a judgment allowed them to meet in Trafalgar Square, where the guardianship of the area ie vested by statute in his own hands. That was of course a grave mistake, as it looked to a world which never understands Englishmen like toleration for men who preached assas- sination, and Mr. Asquith has since receded from his position. He has, however, gone much further, not permit for, open if we understand his answer of Tuesday, he will meetings of active Anarchists anywhere, they being inimical to public order. In other words, Mr. Asquith has convinced himself that the propagation of Anarchist doctrines is dangerous to social order—so dangerous, that it ought to be prohibited. If that is so, international action for the repression of Anarchy cannot be far off, and will include the repression of its teaching in all public places. Anarehy will, in fact, be treated as if it were piracy, and all public utterances on its behalf will be considered efforts to enlist men for the purpose of committing outrages forbidden by international law.
As we have had occasion to state before, there is no moral objection to such international action. If any country may prevent or punish bomb-throwing, so may all countries in common ; and, as a matter of fact, we do combine to prevent it whenever the thrower has command or possession of a ship on the high-seas. Pirates are treated as men at war with the world, and not with a nation or a class; • and so, from the moral point of view, max Anarchists be. The only question is one of expediency, and that, again, resolves itself into two questions,— the expediency of punishing an Anarchist because he is an Anarchist, and the expediency of repressing Anarehist teaching. On the first point, we entertain only one doubt,— the possibility of distinguishing between the active and the philosophic Anarchist ; between the man who thinks that the destruction of society would be a good, and who may personally be a man like Delos- cluze or Elise 6 Reclus, and. the man who thinks that the only method of destruction is the incessant massacre of all above the "executioners." That difficulty will be very grave, for the number of decent Anarchists, strange to say, is considerable, and it may prove perhaps insuperable, for the nations differ in their ideas of evidence, and in their horror of men who preach subversion as a philan- thropic theory. A great many, including all Socialists, will stand up for complete liberty of ideas, and a great many more will be afraid of the terrible width which a Continental Police and Continental Judges would give to any sufficiently stringent law of prevention. We think, however, that opinion is hardening itself to run this risk, and that the Anarchists in their madness are incurring the danger of a Thuggee law, under which, all over Europe, including England, to be an Anarchist, even without committing crime, would be an offence punishable with discretionary imprisonment. If there is an explosion in this country, that will certainly be the course of affairs ; and the Home Secretary evidently believes that the fancied sanctity of Great Britain as a refuge for the oppressed is a fancy merely. As to the repression of discussion, how- ever, the case is different. We should gravely doubt whether the majority would bear it.. They do bear it, no doubt, as regards the discussion of sexual.questions ; but then that is because they are convinced that in that depart- ment of human life knowledge is often an evil, and always more or less of an incitement. Can that idea be applied honestly to Anarchy ? If not, it is offensive to the robust thought of most Englishmen, who believe that discussion must produce at all events a greater inclination towards moderation. The Labour party, in particular, will be ex- ceedingly disinclined to make offences of hot words directed against classes, or even of arguments that we should be much more prosperous without the rich; or threats that the disinherited will one day take their inheritance by force. We agree with them, on the whole, believing that talk in tap-rooms can be quite as dangerous and quite as propa- gandist in result as talk in meetings ; and, indeed, more so, for talk in tap-rooms may be racy, though it usually is not, and talk in meetings on a subject like Anarchy is apt to be inconceivably wearisome. Indeed, but for one serious doubt, our opinion would be as clear as that of the strongest Radicals. Much evidence has forced us to believe—as it has, we are told, forced most doctors and all Royal Families—that the number of crypto-lunatics moving unsuspected in the world, especially among the miserable, is much larger than is popularly sus- pected. There are men by the score among us with grievances or unreal hopes who are within a hair's- breadth of killing somebody to relieve or to realise them, and on such men the effect of Anarchist discussion may be frightfully serious. That is a point for more evidence, and for decisions from medical jurists as well as politicians; but for the present, at least, we would rather risk an even extreme freedom of discussion. An international law against dynamitards would be perfectly just, and would be at least a declaration of the horror entertained by civilisation of such practices, while it might also be ex- pedient, as restricting attempts to the very few desperadoes like Pallas, who care no more for their own lives than for those of their victims, and are not looking backward as they strike for a harbour of refuge. An international Jaw, also, against advanced Anarchists would not be unjust in principle, provided its punishment was only detention, though we should watch it in practice with some distrust, not believing in the single-mindedness of Continental policemen. But an international law against discussion should as yet be avoided. It is sufficient to punish direct incitements to crime, which we can do already, without laying down the dogma that as regards human society the mere expression of contempt or dislike for it should be treated as a crime. We rather think the early Christians were not moderate in their language about Rome, and are not prepared as yet to assert that swearing at large at human society leads more directly to crime than swearing at large at anything else. There have been societies, though ours is not one of them, which, resting as they did on the basis of slavery, greatly wanted overturning. We are upsetting one at this moment in Matabeleland.
Previous page
