Andrieux,[1] the acts and deeds of the German and Austrian agents provocateurs, the recent revelations as to the attempt against the Madrid Parliament, etc., prove abundantly that the present Governments profit enormously by the tactics of the "companions," and that the work of the 'Terrorists in uniform would be much more difficult if the Anarchists were not so eager to help in it.
Thus it is that spies of the vilest kind, like Joseph Peukert, for long years figured as shining lights of Anarchism, translating into German the works of foreign Anarchists; thus it is that the French bourgeois and priests, directly subvention the "companions," and that the law-and-order ministry does everything in its power to throw a veil over these shady machinations. And so, too, in the name of the "immediate revolution," the Anarchists become the precious pillars of bourgeois society, inasmuch as they furnish the raison d'être for the most immediately reactionary policy.
Thus the reactionary and Conservative press has always shown a hardly disguised sympathy for the Anarchists, and has regretted that the Socialists, conscious of their end and aim, will have nothing to do with them. "They drive them away like poor dogs," pitifully exclaims the Paris Figaro,
- ↑ "The companions were looking for someone to advance funds, but infamous capital did not seem in a hurry to reply to their appeal. I urged on infamous capital, and succeeded in persuading it that it was to its own interest to facilitate the publication of an Anarchist paper. … But don't imagine that I with frank brutality offered the Anarchists the encouragement of the Prefect of police . I sent a well-dressed bourgeois to one of the most active and intelligent of them. He explained that having made a fortune in the druggist line, he wanted to devote a part of his income to advancing the Socialist propaganda. This bourgeois, anxious to be devoured, inspired the companions with no suspicion. Through his hands I placed the caution-money" [caution-money has to be deposited before starting a paper in France] "in the coffers of the State, and the journal, La Révolution Sociale, made its appearance. It was a weekly paper, my druggist's generosity not extending to the expenses of a daily."—"Souvenirs d'un Préfet de Police." "Memoirs of a Prefect of Police." By J. Andrieux. (Jules Rouff et Cie, Paris, 1885.) Vol. I., p. 337, etc.
