Kropotkin presents it with extraordinary persuasiveness and charm.
We should be doing more than justice to Anarchism if we did not say something of its darker side, the side which has brought it. into conflict with the police and made it a word of terror to ordinary citizens. In its general doctrines there is nothing essentially involving violent methods or a virulent hatred of the rich, and many who adopt these general doctrines are personally gentle and temperamentally averse from violence. But the general tone of the Anarchist Press and public is bitter to a degree that seems scarcely sane, and the appeal, especially in Latin countries, is rather to envy of the fortunate than to pity for the unfortunate. A vivid and readable, though not wholly reliable, account, from a hostile point of view, is given in a book called "Le Peril Anarchiste" by Félix Dubois,[1] winch incidentally reproduces a number of cartoons from Anarchist journals. The revolt against law naturally leads, except in those who are controlled by a real passion for humanity, to a relaxation of all the usually accepted moral rules, and to a bitter spirit of retaliatory cruelty out of which good can hardly come.
One of the most curious features of popular Anarchism is its martyrology, aping Christian forms, with the guillotine (in France) in place of the Cross. Many who have suffered death at the hands of the authorities on account of acts of violence were no doubt genuine sufferers for their belief in a cause,
- ↑ Paris, 1894.
