THE ANARCHIST BLOOD-FEUD.
IS the gospel of Anarchy spreading ? Are we face to face with some great conspiracy against society which it will take all our energy to suppress ? Is there no way of protecting the lives of our public men, or are they always to be at the mercy of criminals like Angiolillo ? Ought we to devise some new and exceptional way of treating these offences ? These and a dozen other questions of a similar kind naturally spring to the mind at the thought of the atrocious crime which is now horrifying Europe. There is something so abominable, something so essentially unjust in the cold-blooded, premeditated slaughter of the able peasant's son who ruled Spain till last Sunday that the mind cannot help rebelling against the notion that there is nothing special to be done, and that, after all, the crime was more or less normal. Yet normal in truth it was, or at any rate, not half so abnormal as the crime of exploding a dynamite bomb in the public street, in the belief that it must do a certain amount of good because it is sure to kill, wound, and frighten a good many of the bourgeoisie. Apparently the latest Anarchist crime was primarily a murder of revenge. The Anarchists,—whether rightly or wrongly is another question,—believe that their comrades, when in the hands of the Spanish police, are tortured. They are therefore exasperated beyond measure with the Spanish Govern- ment, and have been for months resolved on revenge. Naturally enough, front their point of view, they selected the head of the Government as a victim. Almost certainly he had personally no sort of knowledge of the ill-treatment, if it took place, and no direct responsibility ; but he was looked upon as the man who was putting down Anarchism with blood and iron, and therefore as the man to be attacked. Primarily, then, the crime was, as we have said, a regular Southern crime of revenge. A blood-feud was established between the Government and the Anarchists, and the head of the Government fell in the course of the vendetta.
The question of how far the Spanish Government is to blame for this state of blood-feud is one which it is most difficult to decide. We hate and loathe the notion of torture applied to any form of criminal, and especially to the semi-insane criminal, and we suspect, though no doubt we cannot give proof, that the Spanish Government has acted against the Anarchists with unnecessary, and indeed culpable, ferocity. But though we feel this, we are not inclined to be run away with by any sentimental feeling for the Anarchists. He who rages against the Spanish Government is apt to take up the attitude of the aggrieved French naturalist, when he wrote of the badger : "This ill-tempered brute when attacked defends itself with ferocity." If the Spanish Government has acted with ferocity against the Anarchists, it is not so much because of its essential wickedness or cruelty, as because it, as the representative of society, has been attacked with fiendish ingenuity and fiendish violence by the Anarchists. When. dynamite bombs are exploded in theatres, or thrown into crowded streets, it is no wonder that a Government formed. of Southerners and influenced by a panic-stricken nation seeks to repel barbarity with barbarity. It is of course no excuse to say that the Government has answered cruelty by cruelty, for a civilised Government ought to know better than a set of crazy, famine-stricken Anarchists ; but at any rate it is an explanation. The crimes have been Southern in their barbarity and intensity, and so, we fear, have been the punishments. That is the reason why Anarchism has taken so dreadful a form in Spain. The thing is, we fear, a vicious circle. Certain men of wild and subversive opinions formed themselves into groups and talked heady nonsense against society in general, and sometimes, no doubt, definite treason also against the Government nearest them. For this talk they were, as Englishmen will think, most foolishly harried by the police. They were watched, they were worried, they were prosecuted, they were exiled, and they were generally exasperated. Being Southerners they did not resist stubbornly and doggedly, but with the devilry of the ISoutherner when he is roused to killing point. The result was a policy of assassination against society. The exasperated Anarchists tried to stab and kill society as an exasperated Italian or Spaniard uses the dagger on the man he hates because that man has injured him in love or trade, or because he has wounded his feelings beyond endurance. Of course, a Southern Government replied in kind, and thus arose, as we have said, a sort of vendetta, based upon the foolish abstractions of the doctrinaire Sociologist. By writing this we must not be supposed to mean that we think it would now be wise or possible to conciliate the Spanish Anarchists. In their present state of mind it is probably impossible to do anything but to use strong measures. When a mad dog is biting it is no good to inquire what drove him mad. The only thing is to shoot him or to tie him up securely and at once. If, then, the Spanish Government were to have recourse to very ex- peditious military methods for dealing with Anarchist crime—were, in fact, to shoot directly any murderer or would-be murderer of the Anarchist type caught red-handed—we should see no reason to blame them. When once you are face to face with murder, you can only act promptly and strongly and without any thought of the murderer's motives or temptations or excuses. But though the red-banded Anarchist may be treated like a mad dog, it behoves the State in which he lives to see to it, not only that it is doing nothing to produce mad dogs, but that it is doing everything it can to prevent dogs going mad. Healthy dogs, or dogs that are only a little inclined to rabies, may be driven mad if they are tied up and bullied, or otherwise badly treated. No doubt there are certain dogs that will go mad whatever you do, but the fact remains that there are plenty of others in whom the inclination remains dormant unless it is specially provoked.
The causes which have produced the recent outbreaks of Anarchy in Europe, and especially in Spain, require to be considered. For ourselves, we do not believe that there is much mystery about Anarchism. The world has had plenty of experience of the thing in the past, though it has called it by other and less sensational names. The men against whom Sidmouth and Castlereagh legislated with such blundering ferocity, and who planned the Cato Street conspiracy, did not profess to be Anarchists, but when it came to action their methods were much the same. That they and the Anarchists are also alike in origin we do not doubt. To give it a plain name, it is in the long run misery and discontent which make men Anarchists, just as it was misery and discontent which made them Luddites or Spenceans. Sometimes misery and discontent come directly from the follies and blunders of government. Sometimes they are a symptom of national decay; sometimes, again, a sign that violent and organic changes are taking place in the body politic. Some- times, too, they are results of the strain of a great and, it may be, necessary national effort. Of this kind was the misery and discontent which filled England at the end of the Great War. Possibly the disease was not very wisely treated, but at any rate its appearance was a lesser evil than giving way to Napoleon. Our freedom and the freedom of Europe must be considered well pur- chased even if we reckon the full tale of suffering caused by the drain of blood and treasure. In Spain the misery and discontent in which Anarchism breeds so easily seem to be caused by a combination of almost all these elements. The Government is corrupt and inefficient, and its fiscal policy places terrible burdens on the people. Next, Spain is, we fear—at present at any rate—a decaying nation. There may be a revival, but just now there are not wanting the signs of senile degeneracy. Lastly, Spain is undergoing a terrific strain in her attempts to keep her remaining colonies. People here hardly realise what Spain has done in the course of the struggle -with Cuba. She has sent so many conscripts to die there of fever and home-sickness and Wretchedness, that at present the Spanish War Office has a greater experience in the matter of the transport of troops by sea, not merely than any other War Office of modern times, but of any times. Spain in the last few years has put two hundred and fifty thousand men into Cuba. That she does not have to provide for bringing them home is the most dreadful and disastrous fact of all. The Cuban War has done much to exhaust Soain in three ways. It has cost huge sums of money, has absorbed the energies of govern- ment, and, more important, it has robbed the country of half her crop of young men. The conscripts have been sent to die in Cuba at the very moment when they ought to have been using their young energies in tilling the soil, winning iron from the mines, or working in the trades. In a land where the men have an invincible longing to rest in the shade after forty, and are old at fifty, the nation cannot do without its youths. Spain, then, under its present conditions, is exactly the country in which one would expect the gospel of Anarchy to flourish and abound. No doubt we should not write so coolly about it, and feel so certain that there was nothing really new or abnormal in Anarchism, if one of our own rulers had been struck down, for the first impulse of a nation in a panic is always to think that the world has never before been so deranged. Still, we are convinced that there is nothing to be specially alarmed about in the present outbreak of Anarchy. The social order is in no real danger. It seldom is. What is in danger is the life of the chief ruler in any country where the Anarchists feel that they are engaged in a blood-feud with the Government, for then revenge becomes a point of honour, and men will die for a point of honour far more readily than for anything else. Our general belief is, there- fore, that society is not imperilled as a whole, but that the police must take very special precautions about the lives of Ministers in all Southern countries,—i.e., in all countries where the spirit of revenge is likely to be keenly alive in the minds of the Anarchists. After all, a reasonable amount of precaution would have saved the life of Selior Canovas. Most Continental Sovereigns would be killed to-morrow if their police protection were so casual and so ineffective.
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