Boston a novel
the diplomatic intrigues. This had made him into a radical, he had
kicked over the traces, and now was a free-lance journalist, writing
mostly for papers which could not pay him anything. But he had a small
income, and was expecting to shake the world with a book about the
“White Terror,” on which he worked diligently every morning, and talked
all the rest of the day if any one would listen.
It was evident that Joe’s eyes followed Betty wherever they could, and
Cornelia, being still an old-fashioned grandmother, wanted to know
about it. “He is a dear,” said Betty, “and I have to admit that he
makes me shiver now and then. But I’m not sure we shall hit it off. I’m
trying to make sure.”
“What is the problem?”
“Well, several. In the first place, I’ll have to propose, because Joe
is poor, and he thinks I am going to be rich. I’ll have to explain that
I’ll escape being rich if I marry a Red. Also, there’s his wife.”
“Wife?” echoed Cornelia--but managing to keep too much surprise out of
her voice.
“Didn’t you know he had one? She went back to New York several years
ago. She doesn’t love him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Joe is. It seems that she’s reactionary, and you know enough to
realize that no man and woman can be happy when they hold opposite
opinions on the class struggle. That’s what I am concerned about--I
think I’m turning into a communist, and Joe still ties himself to the
old social-democracy that was killed in the war and doesn’t know it.”
“I see,” said Cornelia. Her heart warmed to Joe, because she did not
want Betty to go with the fighting crowd. But she must not say so!
“You know,” said the girl, “I think it’s a form of our Anglo-Saxon
egotism, we think we can change our social system by a method different
from all the rest of mankind. We have such a marvelous constitution,
and such a wise electorate, we can do it step by step--and all the
while the truth is we don’t intend to change a thing, but to smash
anybody that dares a move. No rough stuff--except what the possessing
class needs in its business. Pierre quotes Lenin’s definition of the
state: ‘a monopoly of violence.’ Don’t you see it, Grannie?”
“I am still one of the sentimentalists, Betty dear.”
“Yes, I know, and you’ll back up Joe in all our wrangles, no doubt.
Well, he needs you, for he’s got all current history against him--to
say nothing of the ruling class of the world!”
V
To this quartette of assorted thinkers came the news about Sacco and
Vanzetti. When the first letter was read, Cornelia said it would be
pleasant to have Bart here. But Joe Randall smiled dryly and told her
not to count too much upon it; for capitalist policemen were not so
eager to provide their victims with vacations on Italian lakes. When
the second letter came, he said, “I told you so.”
“But it’s too absurd!” cried Cornelia. “They are innocent!”
“They have to prove it,” said Joe.
And Pierre Leon eyed the old lady with a quizzical expression. “Don’t
forget, comrade,” said he, “it sometimes happens that anarchists are
guilty.” Then, seeing Cornelia’s startled look, he added, “I was an
anarchist myself for years; and I assure you I wasn’t always innocent!”
Said Betty, “You mustn’t say that to Grannie. She is soft-boiled.”
Pierre was interested in American slang, which he said was a new
contribution to the world’s poetry. He asked about this phrase, and
then went on: “People that are soft-boiled had better not go wandering
about in the radical movement, because they may get their shells
broken.” He went on to say that about anarchists you could never make a
general statement, each one was a law to himself. You had to know him
before you could say what he would do--and even then you didn’t always
know.
“Well, we know Bart,” insisted Cornelia; “and we know he is no bandit.”
“And the other one?”
“I don’t know him so well, I only met him two or three times. But he’s
a gentle, soft-spoken young fellow--”
“Which means absolutely nothing,” said Pierre. “Even your American
two-gun-men have been that; I think it’s a tradition, out on the
western plains, that your deadliest sheriffs have been mild-mannered
men. The first thing you have to know about an anarchist is what
leaders he follows.”
“Bart and Nick belong to the Galleani group.”
“But Galleani is a militante. If you don’t believe that, go down to
Milano, or wherever he’s living now, and hear him. Who gave you the
idea he is a pacifist?”
“I didn’t have that idea. Bart told me he was a militant--”
“But then, when an anarchist tells you he’s a militant, why don’t you
believe him?” Pierre’s face indicated that this was one more droll
aspect of American ladies. “Understand me, Comrade Thornwell, it is
good of rich and cultured ladies to take an interest in the exploited
workers; but you suffer always from the fact that you can’t possibly
realize how they actually feel.”
“Don’t forget, Comrade Leon, I worked for a year and a half in a
cordage plant, and lived on the wages.”
“I know, Betty told us; and I never heard anything like it. But all the
same, if you will pardon me, it wasn’t practically real, because if you
had been ill or out of a job, you’d have gone back to your family; it
wasn’t psychologically real, because you always knew you could, and you
had the moral support of knowing you were a lady. No worker has that;
so don’t be shocked if you should some day learn that some workers
commit what the bourgeoisie calls crimes in the struggle against their
exploiters.”
There was a pause, while Cornelia digested these uncomfortable words.
At last she said, “Crimes such as banditry, Comrade Leon?”
“Well, that’s a question that calls for definitions. If you mean by
banditry, robbing for private advantage, the answer is no. If you mean
robbing for the cause, the answer is, there have been such anarchists:
not many, but a few. Take Ravachol; he robbed the rich and gave the
money to the poor, and boasted of it.”
“What do other anarchists say of that?”
“I have heard a thousand arguments about it. It’s a practical question,
whether such a course helps the cause; some say yes, some say no. A
few anarchists repudiated Ravachol, others endorsed him--Elisée Reclus
among the latter, and he is a god of the movement, a great scientist
and a great soul. You see, Comrade, it is difficult for any anarchist
to repudiate another who has acted from good motives. There are two
things a real anarchist will never do; one is to betray a comrade,
and the other is to profit at the expense of the cause. So long as he
is loyal, and risks his own life for the cause, nothing he does can
be repudiated; that lies in the nature of the doctrine, because he is
a law to himself, and has a right to be that, and other anarchists
proclaim that right. How can they control him? How can they refuse to
stand by him?”
“That ought to frighten me,” said Cornelia, “but we New Englanders were
raised on that creed--we called it Transcendentalism.”
“I know,” said Pierre. “There are few anarchist book shops without
copies of Thoreau’s ‘Duty of Civil Disobedience.’”
“But we managed to keep the doctrine from involving the right to kill
other people.” Thus Cornelia, sure of her Boston.
“Did you really?” asked Pierre. “Stop and think now!” There was
something in his tone that told Cornelia he was going to have fun with
her. The twinkle was also in Betty’s eye and in Joe’s, so she knew they
were in the secret. “Think hard!” said the Frenchman, and when she gave
it up, he said, “Did you ever hear of a practicing anarchist by the
name of John Brown?”
“Well,” said Cornelia, hesitating; “I suppose he did kill people--”
“Yes, do suppose it! It so happens we have been reading a life of
him--and while you are talking about bandit-raids, consider the one at
Harper’s Ferry. It was a surprise attack, you remember; it was going to
give the slaves a chance to rise and get hold of an arsenal with some
guns; and to that great end, four white men, quite innocent, harmless
fellows, not even slave-holders, were shot dead in the streets of a
country town. And remember, they took him and hanged him as a common
felon, and were certain that history would agree with them. But up
in Boston your Wendell Phillips proclaimed in a public meeting, ‘He
has abolished slavery in Virginia!’ And some anarchist poet wrote four
lines--Comrade Betty, can you say those lines that you like so much?”
And Betty, who had been smiling, became suddenly serious, and recited:
_Not any spot six feet by two
Will hold a man like thee!
John Brown will tramp the shaking earth
From Blue Ridge to the sea._
VI
Needless to say, there were many questions Cornelia wanted to ask of
Pierre Leon. She realized that the time for dodging was past, it was up
to her to get clear in her own thinking. She admitted to these three
friends what before she had feared to admit even to herself: the doubts
as to whether it could be true, as the government and the newspapers
took for granted, that some of the Italian anarchists had been doing
that wholesale bombing.
Said Pierre, “Set this down for certain at the outset--all militant
anarchists believe in bombs. Not all make them--any more than
all Christians sell their goods and give to the poor. It is too
uncomfortable and dangerous. But the faith calls for it, ‘anarchist
christenings,’ is the phrase--and when some young enthusiast comes
along and wants to practice, the preachers can’t very well say no. And
when the boys get into trouble, then of course the movement has to
rally and defend them.”
“And that, of course, includes telling the world they are innocent?” It
was Joe, with a touch of socialist sarcasm.
“Naturally. It goes without saying that anybody who will fight will
try to deceive the enemy. What you have to get clear is the central
doctrine of anarchism, that property used for exploitation is theft.
That makes capitalist society a gigantic bandit-raid, a wholesale
killing; any killing you have to do to abolish it, or to cripple it,
always is a small matter in comparison. Twenty years ago, when I used
to argue questions like this, they were more or less academic; our
generation had never known war. But now take what has happened, and
you realize that to the working-class theorist, human life has ceased
to have any value, compared with the bringing on of the revolution. We
know that capitalism means one more world slaughter after another; it
means that inevitably, you might say by definition. Every capitalist
society has to compete for markets and raw materials, or else cease
to be a capitalist society. It intends to take our lives by the tens
of millions; and are we denied the right to save ourselves--because,
forsooth, the effort means killing a few capitalists and kings
and judges and police spies and what not? You can see that, to an
anarchist, such an idea is childish.”
“Or to a communist,” added Joe Randall, the socialist.
Said the other, “Between the anarchist and the communist it is a
question of technique. I once heard an American labor leader put it
effectively: ‘Never use violence--until you have enough of it!’ That
will serve for the communist formula--and I leave it for Joe to explain
the polite social-democratic program of killing a tiger half an inch at
a time.”
So they wrangled for a while, saying sharp and bitter things with
perfect good humor. Pierre declared that some day he would have
the job of putting Joe into jail--and maybe Cornelia, too, because
she believed in free speech for capitalists, and might insist upon
practicing her theory. Maybe Betty would be putting her own Grannie
into jail--stranger things had happened in revolutions. To which Joe
replied that it was people of Pierre’s way of talking that made a