Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/81

of society can be as cruel and unscrupulous as the governing classes can in their efforts to maintain it. The firing into unarmed crowds by which non-combatants are as likely to be killed as anyone else is certainly unjustifiable, yet it is universally recognised as a legitimate act of the Executive. We, as Social-Democrats, condemn the acts of the Anarchists, and we also condemn many of the acts of existing Governments for instance capital punishment and panic-made laws. We believe the "potting" of the "heads" of states to be a foolish and reprehensible policy, but the matter does not concern us as Socialists. We have our own quarrel with the Anarchists, both as to principles and tactics, but that is no reason why, as certain persons seem to think, we should put on sackcloth and ashes and dissolve ourselves in tears because, say, M. Carnot or the head of any other state has been assassinated by Anarchists. What is Carnot to us or we to Carnot that we should weep for him? We do not specially desire the death of political personages, while we often regret their slaying on grounds of expediency if on no others. But at the same time. Socialists have no sentimental tears to waste over the heads of states and their misfortunes. To the Socialist the head of a state, as such, is simply a figurehead to whose fate he is indifferent—a ninepin representing the current political and social order. If one of these skittles is bowled over, another will be put up in its place. To talk about the "head of the state" when alive as merely the representative of an impersonal political entity, to talk of him when executing some cruel function in the name of "law and order" as a mere mechanical figure "doing his duty," and, when assassinated, as "the man, the brother and the father of his family" over whose fate we are supposed to weep our eyes out, is a little