The conditions in France, Spain, and Italy were such that only the maintenance of the revolutionary spirit that had developed amongst the Internationalist workers previous to the Franco-German war prevented the governments from taking decisive steps toward crushing the whole labor movement, and inaugurating the reign of White Terror. It is well known that the reestablishment of a Bourbon monarchy in France was very near becoming an accomplished fact. Marshal MacMahon was maintained as president of the republic only in order to prepare for a monarchist restoration; the very day of the solemn entry of Henry V into Paris was settled, and even the harnesses of the horses, adorned with the pretender’s crown and initials, were ready. And it is also known that it was only the fact that Gambetta and Clémenceau—the opportunist and the radical—had covered wide portions of France with committees, armed and ready to rise as soon as the coup d’état should be made, which prevented the proposed restoration. But the real strength of those committees was in the workers, many of whom had formerly belonged to the International and had retained the old spirit. Speaking from personal knowledge, I may venture to say that the radical middle class leaders would have hesitated in case of emergency, while the workers would have seized the first opportunity for an uprising which, beginning with the defense of the republic, might have gone farther on in the socialist direction.
The same was true in Spain. As soon as the clerical and aristocratic surroundings of the king drove him to turn the screws of reaction, the republicans menaced him with a movement in which they knew, the real fighting element would be the workers. In Catalonia alone there were over one hundred thousand men in strongly organized trade unions, and more than eighty thousand Spaniards belonged to the International, regularly holding congresses, and punctually paying their contributions to the association with a truly Spanish sense of duty. I can speak of these organizations from personal knowledge, gained on the spot, and I know that they were ready to proclaim the United States of Spain, abandon ruling the colonies, and in some of the most advanced regions make serious attempts in the direction of collectivism. It was this permanent menace which prevented the Spanish monarchy from suppressing all the workers’ and peasants’ organizations, and from inaugurating a frank clerical reaction.
Similar conditions prevailed also in Italy. The trade unions in north Italy had not reached the strength they have now; but parts of Italy were honeycombed with International sections and republican groups. The monarchy was kept under continual menace of being upset, should the middle-class republicans appeal to the revolutionary elements among the workers.
In short, looking back upon these years, from which we are separated now by a quarter of a century, I am firmly persuaded that if Europe did not pass through a period of stern reaction after 1871, this was mainly due to the spirit which was aroused in Western Europe before the Franco-German war, and has been maintained since by the anarchist Internationalists, the Blanquists, the Mazzinians, and the Spanish “cantonalist” republicans.
Of course, the Marxists, absorbed by their local electoral struggles, knew little of these conditions. Anxious not to draw the thunderbolts of Bismarck upon their heads, and fearing above all that a revolutionary spirit might make its appearance in Germany, and lead to repressions which they were not strong enough to face, they not only repudiated, for tactical purposes, all sympathy with the western revolutionists, but gradually became inspired with hatred toward the revolutionary spirit, and denounced it with virulence wheresoever it made its appearance, even when they saw its first signs in Russia.
No revolutionary papers could be printed in France at that time, under Marshal MacMahon. Even the singing of the “Marseillaise” was considered a crime; and I was once very much amazed at the terror which seized several of my co-passengers in a train when they heard a few recruits singing the revolutionary song (in May, 1878). “Is it permitted again to sing the ‘Marseillaise’?” they asked one another with anxiety. The French press had consequently no socialist papers. The Spanish papers were very well edited, and some of the manifestoes of their congresses were admirable expositions of anarchist socialism; but who knows anything of Spanish ideas outside of Spain? As to the Italian papers they were all short-lived, appearing, disappearing, and reappearing elsewhere under different names; and admirable as some of them were, they did not spread beyond Italy. Consequently, the Jura Federation, with its papers printed in French, became the centre for the maintenance and expression in the Latin countries of the spirit which—I repeat it—saved Europe from a very dark period of reaction. And it was also the ground upon which the theoretical conceptions of anarchism were worked out by Bakúnin and his followers in a language that was understood all over continental Europe.
III
Quite a number of remarkable men, of different nationalities, nearly all of whom had been personal friends of Bakúnin, belonged at that time to the Jura Federation. The editor of our chief paper, the Bulletin of the federation, was James Guillaume, a teacher by profession, who belonged to one of the aristocratic families of Neuchâtel. Small, thin, with the stiff appearance and resoluteness of Robespierre, and with a truly golden heart which opened only in the intimacy of friendship, he was a born leader by his phenomenal powers of work and his stern activity. For eight years he fought against all sorts of obstacles to maintain the paper in existence, taking the most active part in every detail of the federation, till he had to leave Switzerland, where he could find no work whatever, and settled in France, where his name will be quoted some day with the utmost respect in the history of education.
Adhémar Schwitzguébel, also a Swiss, was the
