Nouvelles communications
Charles Péguy
We publish these communications as they reached us before the holidays.
Picture this: after their victory in Paris, the nationalists want to preach a crusade throughout the provinces. Two of them, Gaston Méry and Barillier, I’m told, have planned to come here on Sunday the 12th of August to give a public lecture at the theater. The comrades’ first impulse was to cry out: “We’ll heckle them and they won’t speak.” A reaction that evidently came from good instincts, but that gives a rather poor impression of their political education. It seems to me preferable to put up a contradicteur against them. Unfortunately we have no one here who is up to the task. Those of our comrades who have some education and facility with words are muzzled by their positions. We need to find a solid debater in Paris. Could you ask someone from the general committee?
Gustave Leblond, History Professor at the Local Lycée
We receive an ever-increasing number of communications. We publish all those we can. We do not wait until we can provide a response. That would cause a backlog. We shall give all the responses we can. We respond today as best we can to M. Cyprien Lantier. We ask our correspondents to kindly have some patience. We would rather send them considered responses than hasty chatter.
Citizen Péguy, since your cahiers are an institution, I shall take the liberty, as a socialist, of drawing your attention to a campaign that could be waged in your cahiers and which, it seems to me, would be far more profitable than the one you are currently waging against the P.O.F. and against Lafargue.
You know perfectly well, indeed, that it is not the members of the P.O.F. whom you are converting, for they do not read you; and that those who do read you are either already converted if they are Parisians or former Parisians, or else know nothing of socialist discussions, and are probably unaware even of Lafargue and Le Socialiste, if they are schoolteachers.
Given this, would it not be far more urgent to expose all the faults, all the weaknesses of a newspaper like La Petite République, where the great name and great honesty of Jaurès allow genuinely nationalist methods in the paper’s composition to pass unnoticed by often inattentive readers.
You have already pointed out—and this is why I am writing to you—the ridiculous advertisement that La Petite République and L’Aurore ran in favor of the Panorama Marchand; but there are facts far graver that will doubtless revolt you as much as they did me. Here is one: La Petite République habitually reports in full the sentences incurred by arrested strikers; yet it failed to do so for those of Chalon, even though the total sentences handed down exceeded twenty-seven months in prison. I read in Les Temps Nouveaux of June 16–23:
“Police. — At Chalon-sur-Saône, gendarmes brutally charging the crowd, one of them received a stone. They immediately drew their revolvers and fired twenty-three bullets (this is the figure they themselves give) into the mass of fleeing people: three dead and numerous wounded.
Last week, ten of the demonstrators arrested during the disturbances appeared before the court. The first defendant is Bonvois-Marinier, aged eighteen, born in Lille, of no fixed address, escaped from the penal colony of Boulogne in July 1898; he had been confined there since 1896 for vagrancy. The prosecutor demands a severe sentence. Marinier is sentenced to one month in prison, the maximum penalty, for insults, and to sixteen francs fine for carrying prohibited weapons. Lassacq, charged with violence and insults, two months with benefit of suspended sentence. Bonnardot, throwing stones at officers and insults, three months and sixteen francs fine. Genty, same charges, four months in prison and sixteen francs fine. Denis Gros, same charges, plus carrying prohibited weapons, six months in prison, sixteen francs fine, five francs for violation of a municipal ordinance. Marius Gros, same charges, same sentences. Caillet, violence and violation, three months in prison, sixteen francs fine and five francs for violation. Bague, same charges, two months, sixteen francs fine, and five francs for violation. Merle, same charges, sentenced only to five francs fine. Matron, charged with insulting the gendarmerie, ten days in prison and five francs fine. The excessiveness of these sentences is producing a deplorable effect here (1).”
(1) La Petite République forgot to record these sentences. — Note from Les Temps Nouveaux.
Having thus forgotten the sentences, it refrained from campaigning for pardons. And how many similar facts could one find. Are these not genuine nationalist methods, with the aggravating circumstance that it was to the detriment of their adversaries that L’Éclair and L’Écho de Paris distorted the facts, whereas it is to the detriment of those they claim to defend that the socialist newspapers engage in the same game.
To deceive those who have placed their trust in you, to abandon to their fate those whose defenders you have set yourselves up as—this, it seems to me, is paying rather dearly for a socialist’s entry into the ministry.
Socialist and increasingly revolutionary greetings.
14, boulevard Émile Augier, Paris Sir,
One day when your friend Pierre Baudouin is less tiresome than last time, reward him by arranging an easy triumph: ask him what difference there can possibly be between an electoral poster and this editorial poster:
NOVEL OF THE NERONIAN ERA, by Henryk SIENKIEWICZ (One large 18mo volume of 600 pages, at 3 francs 50)
Quo Vadis (“Where are you going?”), which, in novelistic form, sets in conflict Christianity in its heroic period and paganism at its apogee, stands as the masterpiece of Sienkiewicz and of Polish literature and as one of the capital works of universal literature. Here it is at last, in the Éditions de la Revue Blanche, presented to the French public; but since 1895, the date of its appearance, it had already been translated into some twenty languages or dialects; and its sales, from the first year alone, amounted to a million copies in the United States, 40,000 in Italy, 150,000 in Germany. Such enthusiasm in such diverse countries must have profound causes. And indeed, it is justified by the importance of the questions at stake, by a singularly novel application of realist methods to an idealist conception, by an extraordinary fertility of dramatic invention, by the author’s gift for moving crowds and endowing characters with authentic life. Among these, several assume more specifically a representative role of ideas: the Arbiter of Elegances Petronius, who represents the prestige of a dying civilization; the Christian Lygia, with whom a new beauty is born into the world; the military tribune Vinicius who, under her influence, evolves toward the religion of Christ. Nero and the Apostle Peter dominate events and determine them. The giant Ursus, the athlete Croton, the Chilon Chilonides, a hundred other supporting characters set the action in motion. Without the fundamental originality of the work being compromised for an instant, certain parts will evoke the descriptive brilliance of a Flaubert (the feast at the Palatine, the burning of Rome, circus scenes), the roughness of a Kipling (Nero’s death), the persuasive simplicity of a Tolstoy (Peter’s martyrdom), the superior skepticism of a France (Petronius’s conversations): infinite variety of tones whose contrasts are unified in the harmonious flow of Sienkiewicz’s style; infinite variety of episodes, which makes this 650-page book too short for the reader’s captivated curiosity.
In the course of reading I corrected one spelling error and several typographical errors. I did not correct the errors of French, because in the humanities classes I teach nothing but mathematics. I wondered for a long time what could have happened in the mind of the poor intellectual proletarian charged with drafting this poster. Either he does not know French, for I received at the lycée a solid literary education, and I cannot accept either the general tone or certain particular expressions in this advertisement: “such enthusiasm”; “moving crowds”; “set the action in motion”—I pass over others equally stiff. Or else the intellectual proletarian amused himself, by way of sabotage, by drafting it in a vague Polish. Or finally, knowing French when he is interested in what he is doing, he let himself go through boredom and discouragement, through disgust at servitude and a feeble clumsiness that allowed all these commercial incorrections to slip through. If he wished of his own accord to spice up his style, I pity him.
Note well that I hold nothing against the book or its author on this account. It may be that this Quo Vadis, advertised so commercially, is nonetheless, as they say, one of the masterpieces of the human spirit. It would suffice for it not to resemble the image the merchant wished to give us of it. Nor am I unaware that we owe to the Revue Blanche a very great number of interesting, beautiful, useful, indispensable, suitable editions. I merely say that if one followed one’s first impulse, a poster like the one I am sending you would rather give me the desire not to go see what is in the book.
Justin Latour
My dear Péguy, I continue and I shall continue as long as I can.
I read in La Petite République of Saturday, June 2: “From the Atlantic to the Red Sea. There is no spectacle more interesting and more curious than the superb canvases of the painter Castellani that constitute the ‘Panorama Marchand’ at the Trocadéro. This is not only, indeed, the faithful history of a voyage through the mysterious regions of Africa in all its gripping reality, it is equally a work of high artistic interest and the public never tires of admiring it.”
I read in La Petite République of Friday, June 8: “The Panorama Marchand. The company of this attraction communicates the following note to us: The very resounding and very legitimate success of the Panorama Marchand, at the Trocadéro, was inevitably bound to bring about, outside the grounds of the Exposition, imitations of the gripping reproduction of the stages of the Congo-Nile mission. The ‘Panorama Marchand’ is the only one that has been officially admitted by the general commissariat to the Exposition and whose curious canvases are due to M. Castellani, the painter of the Marchand mission.”
Every day, from nine o’clock to eleven o’clock in the morning, except Sundays and holidays, non-commissioned officers, corporals, and soldiers of the land and sea forces, in uniform, will be admitted to the Panorama of Madagascar, Place du Trocadéro.
“Non-commissioned officers and soldiers at the Exposition. The Minister of War has just informed the military governors of Paris and Lyon, the corps commanders, and the commander of the Tunisian occupation division that re-enlisted or commissioned non-commissioned officers who request it are authorized to travel to Paris to visit the Exposition. These non-commissioned officers will travel at their own expense, but will receive a travel order that will allow them to be placed in subsistence with a corps of the Paris garrison; the duration of their stay will be six full days; they will have the right to free entry to the Exposition. Non-commissioned officers who have not re-enlisted, corporals, brigadiers, and soldiers, who request to travel to Paris individually and entirely at their own expense to visit the Exposition, may also obtain the necessary permissions under the regulatory conditions.”
I read in La Petite République of Sunday, June 10: “In Madagascar. Every day, from nine o’clock to eleven o’clock in the evening, except Sunday and holidays, non-commissioned officers, corporals, and soldiers of the land and sea forces, in uniform, will be admitted to the Panorama of Madagascar, Place du Trocadéro.”
I read in L’Aurore of Sunday, June 10: “Gondola! Gondola! such is the joyous rallying cry of all our elegant ladies and of society that amuses itself, since it has become fashionable to meet at Venice in Paris. Nowhere else does one pass the time more gaily.”
I did not think we had elegant ladies of our own. I had imagined it was the bourgeois who had such elegant ladies. I had also imagined that we were not of the world that amuses itself, but of the world that is bored and impatient while awaiting the social revolution.
I read in L’Aurore of Sunday, June 17: “It is a truly impressive spectacle and of real artistic character, that of the Panorama Marchand, where the painter Castellani has represented in such gripping fashion the principal episodes of the Congo-Nile mission.”
I read in La Petite République of Monday, June 18: “The Panorama Marchand. It is a truly impressive spectacle and of real character, that of the ‘Panorama Marchand,’ where the painter Castellani has represented in such gripping fashion the principal episodes of the Congo-Nile mission. Each day, an admiring crowd files through the Trocadéro before these curious canvases, increasingly confirming the panorama’s success.”
I read in L’Aurore of Thursday, June 21: “The number of daily admissions to the Exposition undergoes inevitable variations; but at the Panorama Marchand the number of visitors increases regularly. Tomorrow Friday, select day, the admission price is raised to 5 francs.”
Have we become select?
I read in La Petite République of Friday, June 22: “The Panorama Marchand. The number of daily admissions to the Exposition undergoes inevitable variations, but at the Panorama Marchand, the great attraction of the Trocadéro, the number of visitors always follows an increasing course. It could not be otherwise given the powerful interest of the spectacle. In view of the ever-growing success and at the request of a large number of visitors, the Panorama Marchand is also adopting from tomorrow a select day, Friday, with an admission price of 5 francs.”
I read in La Petite République of Monday, June 25: “Panorama of Madagascar. Would you like to spend a charming hour and experience a very agreeable artistic sensation? Visit the Panorama of Madagascar, Place du Trocadéro, where scenes of African life truly gripping are reproduced with striking truth.”
I read in La Petite République of Wednesday, July 4: “Diorama of the Marchand mission called Fashoda. Although a considerable public ceaselessly files past, 16, avenue de Suffren (Champ-de-Mars station), before the ten very interesting canvases, the management, desirous of allowing everyone to visit the Diorama, has fixed admission prices for Sunday and holidays at 0 fr. 50. Children and soldiers pay only 0 fr. 25.”
I read in La Petite République of Thursday, July 5: “Mercier Champagne Pavilion. The number of persons who attended the free cinematograph showings at the Mercier Champagne pavilion during Sunday’s session was 6,230. Fourteen thousand guides were offered to visitors to the panorama representing the famous cellars of the Mercier house in Épernay.”
I thought we fought the alcoholism of the rich no less than the alcoholism of the poor. I read in La Petite République of the same Thursday, July 5: “The Fashoda Diorama. All persons who alight at the Champ de Mars station, before entering the Exposition, go to see Fashoda, diorama of the Marchand mission, which is located right nearby, at number 16, avenue de Suffren. It is a most instructive spectacle that all lovers of artistic canvases and scenes of savage life cannot fail to go visit.”
I read in La Petite République of the following Friday, July 6: “The Panorama Marchand. As was to be expected, the very resounding and very legitimate success of the Panorama Marchand has brought about imitations of the captivating spectacle of the Congo-Nile mission. But the public cannot be mistaken, for the Panorama Marchand—at the Trocadéro—is the only one within the grounds of the Exposition and the only one officially admitted by the general commissariat. Each day moreover, an ever more numerous public presses before the canvases of M. Castellani, the painter of the Marchand mission.”
I read again in La Petite République of Sunday, July 8: “A curious panorama. The Compagnie des grands vins de Champagne is the most important in all the Champagne region; situated at the very center of the vineyards, it possesses the most considerable cellars in the area, carved into the chalk, without any masonry, they extend under the mountain for more than 18 kilometers in length. There is no need to make a long journey to visit this natural curiosity; at the Champ de Mars, at the Mercier Pavilion, one can, while tasting an excellent glass of Champagne, admire the magnificent ‘Panorama of the cellars of the Mercier house, in Épernay.’”
I read in La Petite République of the following Monday, July 9: “A diorama. The diorama of the Marchand Mission called Fashoda is not located inside the Exposition, but at 16, avenue de Suffren, right next to the Champ de Mars station. What explains the immense success it is achieving is the absolute exactitude with which the savage scenes and the landscapes of the banks of the Ubangi and the Upper Nile are reproduced.”
I read in La Petite République of the following Tuesday, July 10: “In Madagascar. The success of the Exposition is still for the Panorama of Madagascar, so artistic and so faithful, for the moving walkway—the only free one—that leads to it, and for the excellent and original Malagasy music that is applauded there.”
I wait four days and I read in La Petite République of Saturday, July 14: “The Marchand Diorama. Visitors to the Exposition who have only a few days to spend in Paris should not have come without going to admire the Diorama of the Marchand Mission whose superb pavilion rises at number 16, avenue de Suffren, right next to the Champ de Mars station.”
I wait a week and I read in L’Aurore of Saturday, July 21: “Octave Mirbeau has just triumphed over the difficulty of making the reading of a social novel attractive by allowing the ideas and theories to emerge from the action itself. In the Diary of a Chambermaid, which appears today from Fasquelle, in a volume of the Bibliothèque Charpentier, the author has certainly chosen the best observation post, the one from which one can best see unfolding the tableaux of corruption, of misery, sometimes also of grandeur, in the most diverse milieus of society.”
This one is a bit strong, as they say colloquially. I know well, or I think, that this note is paid for by the publisher, that it is drafted by a clerk of the publisher, and that poor Scaramouche is entirely innocent of it. But finally this note placed on the front page of L’Aurore is a bit strong. When one has written a filthy book, one at least has the courage to say one has written a filthy book, and one does not say—or at least one does not allow to be printed—that it is a social novel. Why not sociology? All hypocrisies disgust me. At least Vacher did not say he had practiced gynecology. I conclude. I read in La Petite République of Thursday, July 26: “The Fashoda Diorama. From the ever-rising flood of visitors to the Fashoda Diorama, 16, avenue de Suffren, one can measure the interest of this attraction. The ten immense canvases that recount the principal episodes of the mission are harmonized with natural foregrounds that impose the perfect illusion of lived experience.”
Goodbye. I am leaving on holiday. You will forgive me if I have forgotten some. I am not inexhaustible.
Jean Terrier
Sunday morning, August 12, 1900 My dear friend,
You know my profound and already old admiration for Jaurès, whose beautiful articles once opened me to socialist life, to life. More than anyone I applauded his fine campaign in the affair. For about six months now his articles not only no longer give me the same satisfaction, but sometimes make my heart sick. Do you still have present in your mind his plea in favor of the amnesty law, at the very time of the debate in the Senate? A plea unworthy of a firm republican, a strange recantation from the author of Les Preuves. Jaurès’s friendship for Millerand makes him too ministerial, too optimistic. Have you noticed that he now avoids explaining himself on burning questions, that he dwells little on the massacres of Le François or Chalon, that he no longer demands the suppression of courts-martial, the suppression of officers’ property rights in their rank—cornerstone of bourgeois society—etc., etc. It is not by watering down socialist demands that we can attract the most adherents—especially from bourgeois society and from among the bourgeoisie. What matters is less having unconscious partisans, a mob on which one cannot count, than thoroughly converting solid recruits—few in number, it is true—but capable of converting others. That is to say, I believe we must begin building the socialist city from the foundation. For this it is good not to count too much on governmental action, or rather one must always distrust it. Let us march in parallel, and not in the tow of the ministry. Let us be an organized force with which all ministries will have to reckon.
I detest the narrow-mindedness of the Guesdists. But I am forced to recognize that their sectarianism has its merits; it preserves the party to a certain extent from bourgeois compromises, it maintains the revolutionary spirit. But we shall discuss all this next Thursday, rue des Fossés-Saint-Jacques.
Very affectionately. Albert Mathieu
A bourgeois republican from Orléans, intelligent and very self-aware, a former notary, M. André Thouvet, writes us a long letter. We reproduce it because it will doubtless serve as a basis when we respond to the principal bourgeois arguments:
Sir and dear fellow citizen, I have read your cahiers with interest, without believing in any way in their effect on the public. The milieu in which we live is so constructed that I do not see at all the means of improving—according to the settled and reasoned views of a satisfactory program—the destinies and lot of the proletarians, in the short term. Certainly it is equitable that we should arrive there, but I estimate that the obstacles come far more from those concerned than from the so-called bourgeois class—a class that does not exist in reality, as you are not unaware. There is no class struggle, but a struggle of appetites. And I find this struggle of appetites, however prosaic the image may be, absolutely natural, legitimate, and necessary, in principle. In such a way that I do not understand why one speaks of class struggle rather than struggle of appetites. There are no classes, there are only appetites—some satisfied, others not. There are no classes, for I defy anyone to show a line of demarcation. I go further: the proletariat furnishes the best recruits to capitalism every day, weakening and exhausting itself ceaselessly for the benefit of the satisfied, whose number and strength it constantly increases.
Reflect on the facts and you will recognize it. Individual success, personal savings strengthen capitalism every day, at the expense of the proletariat, crushed by machinery. One might think that from this very development of capitalism there could result an excess that would throw the proletariat out of its rut and give it the agreement and strength necessary to conquer the place to which it is entitled. Sincerely I do not believe it, not at all, far from it. The weakening of the proletariat will, in my view, be irremediable if its members do not know how to modify their ideas, their aspirations, if they continue to live on false ideas and dangerous illusions for the greater glory of those who wish only to exploit them.
The evil is great. The cause is just. But the means of making it triumph are so slow, so vague, they require so much virtue, so much obscure courage, so much continuous abnegation, that most men grow disgusted with the task. Such is the truth. Natural inequality is an appalling law contrary to all our ideas of justice. It exists nonetheless and it is not possible for us to deny it; we must indeed submit to it, while seeking to attenuate it. It alone suffices to strike with impotence all the best-reasoned theories, the most elevated, the purest. The motley of the human mind, the astonishing diversity of characters, of physical, intellectual, and moral faculties, will never allow humanity to enter into a perfect framework that logic can trace, determine, and specify rigorously, but that facts will shatter at the first blow. There is absolute incompatibility between collectivism and liberty—and I maintain that liberty is necessary to humanity.
I do not mean to say that there is nothing to be done, far from it. In 1869 we founded in Orléans a cooperative society, which perished only before the absolute indifference of the workers, who were rather hostile even than indifferent. It seems that since then ideas—let us say cooperative ideas—have progressed, although certain socialist schools proscribe them as suited only to enervate socialist action. They have progressed especially outside France, but often also they have deviated. Whatever the case, these ideas are in my view the only ones that can improve the lot of the Proletarians, lead them not to the destruction, but to the conquest of capital, something indispensable for them. I say capital, that is to say everything that produces—whether naturally, or industrially, or through the union of natural and industrial forces. The proletariat must therefore work toward this conquest; it can do so, it will suffice for it to unite in a long and valiant effort.
Every revolutionary means will fail and end in reaction, that is certain. True progress is scientific progress, it is the only kind that remains, but it is acquired only through slow studies sanctioned by experimentation. Through their organization into production, consumption, relief, and retirement societies, the proletarians will accomplish progress by rising slowly but surely to possession of real capital, the only kind that counts, and by training themselves for their new role. Beyond that, there is only trouble, division, confusion. You are free to believe that the functioning of the collective institutions I speak of will lead humanity to collectivist socialism. In truth I would have nothing to say against it, I do not believe it, that is all; and that is why I have the conviction that all violent and rapid means will result in failure and reaction, in such a way as to set back the improvements that can already be made—if the worker wants them. A preparation is necessary, whatever the ultimate end. The mechanism of societies of all kinds will be in the hands of the proletariat the best of preparations. That is why I would like men of your age who have the ardor for good, who want to devote themselves to saving the proletariat, to limit their action in this direction, so as to produce immediate, relatively easy progress, instead of engaging in dogmatic polemics that can only bring divisions without any useful result. It is not Byzantine discussions we need, they make us lose precious time, it is actions.
If the money badly spent were devoted to solid and lasting conquests, we would already be far along in thirty years. And what have we done? Less than nothing. We have weakened and divided ourselves, we have rallied our adversaries. Socialism is a great present evil. That there should be a workers’ party, I understand and I wish for it, but a socialist party, no. In 1848 socialism threw the liberals into reaction. We are still there today and what awaits us is a reactionary and clerical republic with Caesar. It would be quite otherwise if the workers’ party, legitimately and legally united, strong in its true strength which is numbers, contented itself with organizing peacefully for the conquest of capital that will be its instrument of work and emancipation.
How many things there are to say!—that I renounce expressing to you and that are suggested to me by the experience of life—already long for me. Allow me only to insist, to call your sustained reflections upon this fatal law of natural inequality, a law irreconcilable with the geometric calculations of systems of social life. Why do we come into the world not only so different, but struck with so many inequalities? The problem is formidable, it is frightening and deprives us of all means of envisaging clearly the future of humanity. We must limit ourselves to working for real, scientific, and certain progress; our descendants will perhaps see better than we. I am and wish to remain an obscure soldier of democracy. I hate noise. I would only like, in the interest of your very ideas and for your satisfaction, to see you enter upon a more practical and more fruitful path, more sure and more fertile. I see in your young friends upright men, in love with justice, but led astray by theories logically calculated on a false basis—and who are wasting their time and their strength. Humanity will always be perfectible, it will never be perfect.
Your most devoted fellow citizen, Thouvet, former notary
Bourgues-les-Eaux, Sunday August 1900 My dear Péguy,
It has been a long time since I wanted to converse with you, but my laziness delayed it from day to day. And besides, what is the point since we are more or less in agreement. If the political spirit commands any insincerity, then we must have no more of it. Eighteen months ago, at the height of the affair, I truly believed that this elementary truth would end up taking root, I do not say in the masses—it is too simple an idea for the masses to take a liking to it—but in the conscience of a few intellectuals who had become militants. I believed that Dreyfusism had taught this to the best of the socialists. And I see that it is nothing of the sort. I see for example that the Dreyfusards of Bourgues-les-Eaux are making desperate efforts to cover for a freethinker inspector of foster children who embezzled funds—and who has been sent to another department to renew his exploits. And I conclude that the idea has made little progress, for it collided from its first steps with a terrible obstacle: the horrible accumulation of grudges, hatreds, vanities, personal interests, pettiness, and stupidities that goes by the name of local politics.
Paul Lebel
37, Albert Street, Regent’s Park, London, July 1900 My dear friend,
You will find enclosed a money order for five francs, which, I fear, can only be cashed at the Central Post Office. You will wonder why I am not sending eight francs. It is because I prefer to send five francs twice rather than eight francs at once. Besides, it is not my fault if I am sending so little, but rather that of the infamous capitalists, as you call them, to whom I pay six percent and from whose hands I am trying to save my brother. If I had only myself to think of, I would quickly have arranged my life. My new situation is not very cheerful: eight hours of night work, eight hours of sleep, eight hours of—whatever—oh! not rest. Anyway, it is still the three eights.
I do not know if I shall decide to stay here permanently. The English milieu seems sad to me in every sense of the word. You complain of the nationalists: in England I believe there are twenty million of them. They climb on the chairs in the public gardens to explain that they alone have rights in China and that it is important to get rid as quickly as possible of Krüger’s ignoble gang—I heard that rather strong expression. The English are ferocious in triumph. And then I am witnessing the fabrication of newspapers: falsehoods, falsehoods, and in Paris the public swallows the English dispatches—all to the glory of England; naturally the others are suppressed. If you lived a little as I have in Germany and especially in England, I believe you would end up becoming a nationalist. The more I know foreign lands, the more I find that the French do not esteem themselves at their true worth. I shall explain that to you when I see you; I fear I may not be able to obtain the slightest leave this year, because of the affairs in China that are giving us a great deal of work. I want to tell you that the cahiers keep me from falling asleep in the stupefaction of a mechanical life. I am not an internationalist, like you. But I love your cahiers, because I am even more provincial than the provincials.
Very cordially yours, Camille Gondaillan
Perrusquier, near Vesoul (Haute-Saône) My dear Péguy,
We are wondering here what your cahiers can possibly be good for. They are already rather tiresome. All the little stories you take pleasure in telling us are personally quite indifferent to me. We had hoped at the beginning that at least they would serve to tell the truth. It is nothing of the sort. You do as others do. You tell only the truths you are willing to tell. For more than six months Mirbeau has been publishing in the Revue Blanche his vile Diary of a Chambermaid, and you have not yet published that it was vile. You will never make me believe it is because you have not had the time. Only you do as everyone does. Good comrades before all. You lingered over Lafargue. It was less compromising. Yet Lafargue was not wrong to rise up violently against intellectuals who make themselves incomes by selling filth to the bourgeois. If I had been there, at the Sociétés Savantes, I would have vigorously applauded Lafargue at that passage.
When I became a Dreyfusard, after long discussions with you and very long internal hesitations, I truly believed you were serious. I imagined that we were renouncing once and for all in life the insincerities of party and school comradeships. If Rochefort had written a Torture Garden and Lemaître a Diary of a Chambermaid, you would all be screaming like village constables. But it is Octave Mirbeau, a dear comrade, a former good Dreyfusard, a former soldier like us. I did not believe that Dreyfusism would result in thus instituting a dirty Dreyfusard comradeship. I went to Paris the week before last. I did not go to see you, because not everyone is rich enough to spend the entire week there and wait for you until Thursday. And besides I am somewhat lacking in patience and it does not please me to be kept waiting.
They were talking about Mirbeau’s book: “What filth!” said the men—“what a work,” wrote the journalists; “what obscenities!” said the men—“what admirable observations,” wrote the journalists; “what a vile book,” said the men, all the men—“prodigious social studies,” wrote the journalists, all the journalists. The same individual who said to you casually: “Well! isn’t that disgusting?” began in the evening in his newspaper: “It is a marvelous spectacle, that of a talent that renews itself as remarkably as that of M. Octave Mirbeau.” It is enough to turn one’s stomach. How Octave Mirbeau must despise all those scribblers who have succeeded in being even a bit more disgusting than he, through comradeship and professional obsequiousness. One does not know if you are more cowardly than hypocritical or more hypocritical than cowardly.
Carry on. Your servant. Jacques Roudier
Thermes-les-Bourgues, Saturday, May 12, 1900 I shall tell you for the record that I am very busy. I am giving two popular courses, in the evening, to a working-class audience, though a limited one: one in elementary political economy, and the other in history. We would very much like to transform all this, and create here a kind of Popular University. It is not easy to shake this heavy mass of general indifference. I am doing my best. I shall keep you informed of the results. Be assured of my most cordial devotion.
Paul Lebail
Thermes-les-Bourgues, Friday, May 18, 1900 I find this letter again, which I thought had been sent. Order has never been my strong point. — I would have much to add to it, but time presses. For a month our P.U. has taken shape. It is going to be founded under the title of Secular Circle. I believe that within a fortnight or three weeks it will be done. I have seen about a hundred bourgeois to obtain their support and their money. Everywhere I was well received. — We are looking at the moment for a location. Our statutes are those of the general circular of the P.U.s, which you doubtless know. As for the workers, we shall have them in droves. The socialist idea is gaining ground here every day. The day before yesterday a lecture organized by the clericals—and where Marpaux spoke—was a collapse for them. Five hundred listeners out of five hundred and fifty gave Marpaux an ovation. It was extraordinary.
Goodbye—yours truly Paul Lebail
Thermes-les-Bourgues, Thursday, June 28, 1900 My dear Péguy, I have the pleasure of announcing to you the founding of a P.U. in Bourgues under the name of Edgar Quinet Circle—Quinet was from Bourgues. You will send the cahiers to the Edgar Quinet Circle, 14, rue de la République, Bourgues. Very cordially yours Paul Lebail
Saint-Pierre-la-Tourbe, Easter Monday, April 16, 1900 My poor friend,
I cannot help telling you a very distressing story that has just happened to me. We have founded here a kind of Popular University, the Tourbière. We sometimes receive in the evening and always on Sunday the men, women, and children who are willing to come. We do readings together. I have even learned to read aloud for an audience. It is a very difficult art, as old Legouvé says. I understood nothing of it. I have also learned to give lectures. We give interesting lectures. I have even learned the material of my lectures. To teach, I teach myself. We teach everything. I have taken charge of history and natural sciences. My colleague in German does geography and ethics. My colleague M. Thomas, the devoted gymnastics teacher, teaches with me the botanical excursions. He teaches the excursion, I the botany, the rest accordingly.
We have subscribed to all the advanced reviews. Yesterday, Easter Sunday, there was library in the morning and a grand excursion in the afternoon. When there is library there is attendance duty. My colleague in English was on duty. But out of habit I went to see. M. Thomas was there too. We had fifteen readers, which is considerable. There were to be twelve excursionists in the afternoon, twelve strollers, as M. Thomas says familiarly. Three of our readers, two boys and a girl, aged fifteen, eighteen, and sixteen, were reading in a corner of the rather long table. They continued their reading, at once composed like young people who want to behave well, and passionately, which is not much their habit. Our populations are indolent. I suspected what was happening. They had in hand two issues of the Revue Blanche.
I must tell you that for three months, since the Revue Blanche has been publishing Mirbeau’s filth, I have been invaded from fortnight to fortnight by an inner rage that was growing and consuming me. I was born angry. I have become angry. I am angry. If I were six feet four and had the muscles I have always vainly wished for, I would rage less. But I have, added to the usual meter, only sixty centimeters. With that, irritable and, my friends say, violently authoritarian. So I rage perpetually. And for three months I have been perpetually raging against Mirbeau.
I suspected what was happening. Our three students were seated before the Diary of a Chambermaid. You cannot know what effect it had on me, when I saw that the filth of this literature merchant was compromising entire years of work, of care, of patience, of teaching. It is as if at the washhouse a pig amused himself by coming to throw garbage on the beautiful white linen painfully rinsed. I had nausea from anger. I brutally snatched the book from their hands. They looked at me vaguely, because they did not know I was given to rage.
“Why are you reading that?” “Because it is by M. Mirbeau.” “You are lying. First of all, you do not know M. Mirbeau.” “Yes we do, sir! Even that he is with us, since he came last year to La Tourbe-la-Grande with citizen Pressensé to give a lecture for Dreyfus.” “You are lying. M. Mirbeau is not with us. We are not with him. He is a bourgeois. He is a pig. I do not want to see that anymore.”
And I threw both reviews to the back of the fireplace. My poor fellows, who are not bad at heart, were quite disconcerted. And they looked at me, not having imagined that a professor could get angry. There was a chill. The workers did not understand very well. My colleague in English and M. Thomas came, approached. M. Thomas first wanted to save the situation. “My friends,” he said to the workers, “we would do well to go to lunch right away. We shall leave earlier. We shall make a longer excursion. I have devised a serious route: fourteen kilometers without drinking.” This word of M. Thomas had its usual success. A former old non-commissioned officer like there were before the advent of the young upstarts, M. Thomas claimed that nothing beats downing a parrot to give the infantryman heart. Since we made him anti-alcoholic, he has found it ingenious to adapt to his new convictions the old marching song: eighteen hundred kilometers without drinking, where the number of kilometers varies at will. This adaptation has been very successful with the general public, that is to say with the thirty-odd people who work with us.
When we were alone, my colleague in English said to me quite grieved: “You forgot, M. Souvestre, that it was I who was on duty. You had no business intervening in this unfortunate affair.” He was right. I said nothing. M. Thomas was very embarrassed. He had brought back from the regiment this profound conviction that one must never meddle in the service when one is not on duty for the week. He ended up saying however: “I think M. Souvestre is right, because I am anti-alcoholic. Certainly,” he said to my colleague in English who was seeking a connection. “Certainly: if those youngsters had brought us a bottle of absinthe that they would have drunk while reading, you yourself, M. Boisdenier, who are a patient man, you yourself would have thrown the bottle in the fireplace.”
M. Boisdenier did not reply. “All the same,” continued M. Thomas, “you are not going to make yourselves miserable over all this filth. Go to lunch and both of you come with us. You will deal with the question while walking.” In the afternoon M. Thomas did not give us a moment’s respite. March and counter-march. Botany and march. On returning in the evening he said to us with an innocent air: “Well! and that question?” “We did not even have time to catch our breath.” “That,” he replied, “is what I call dealing with questions while walking, that is to say through walking. Our friends did not think about it any more than you. You will see that it is the only way to truly deal with questions.”
This M. Thomas was wrong. I would rather have truly dealt with this question. I woke up this morning very embarrassed, a little vexed. I am quite determined not to accept that our students read the abominations of this novel. But immediately what complications. And what contradictions. Not that I have a single remorse for the somewhat lively brutality with which I treated the author and his merchandise. But I am troubled by the contradiction. What speeches and what lectures have we not delivered on the freedom of the press, of writing, and of printing. Have we not hammered away enough at the ancien régime and the Bastille, at censorship and the Inquisition, at the pulping and the burning of books, and at the Holy Office and the Congregation of the Index. Have we not wittily enough mocked the Russians, who spread a thick black smear over forbidden passages. Have we not mocked enough Monsieur the Censor examining the books of the young scholars. And here at the first serious occasion my first impulse, a deep, irresistible impulse, is to send the book splashing to the back of the fireplace accompanied by my invectives. How are we made?
I am profoundly, invincibly determined not to accept that our students read the abominations of this novel. So we must burn! we must burn this novel! It is even more straightforward than the Russian smear. We must burn. I shall burn. I do not know very well why I am determined to do it. But I am determined to. My decision is irrevocable. So as not to have to burn the sequel, we shall cancel our subscription to the Revue Blanche, at least temporarily. What violence! What embarrassments of conscience. What exercises of authority. I am encumbered as in a traffic jam. Why must there be pigs? Everything would be so simple if everyone were clean.
It is also your fault, you journalists, if we are so embarrassed. Through cowardice or laziness, you never say anything that ought to be said. So the good people ruminate their anger and end up exploding. Assuredly I would not be so enraged against Mirbeau if you had calmly said in a cahier what everyone is repeating everywhere. I have no taste for scenes and it is in the end a disagreeable operation to unburden one’s conscience, as they used to say. Anyway I do not hold it too much against you. It is the profession rubbing off on you.
The abundance of these communications forces us to defer the rest to a forthcoming cahier.
DEMI-RÉPONSE A M. CYPRIEN LANTIER
Charles Péguy
We publish this response as it was ready to go out at the beginning of the holidays.
My dear Lantier,
It is easy for you to mock me pleasantly for not yet having produced my projected history of the decomposition of Dreyfusism in France. But we have time. Dreyfusism continues to decompose. You doubtless agree with me that all citizens who have become or are becoming partisans of a certain amnesty have renounced or are renouncing by that very fact the principles and methods that for us—and for everyone then—constituted the strength and rule of Dreyfusist action. By this reckoning, renunciations and abdications have multiplied and continue to multiply among our protagonists, among our chiefs and among our sub-chiefs. At the moment when the anti-Dreyfusist amnesty appeared before the Senate, citizen Jaurès renounced with a certain fanfare. M. Waldeck-Rousseau renounced with genuine eloquence. The entire government renounced. The Senate renounced. The Chamber did not even have to renounce. Nor did the voters. The National Congress of French Socialist Organizations had renounced amid indescribable enthusiasm.
Around us, among our friends and acquaintances, people have renounced, are renouncing, are going to renounce. Our comrade François Daveillans—a colleague and even a successor of mine, since he has become a fortnightly contributor to the Revue Blanche—who had so powerfully contributed to establishing the History of the Variations of the General Staff, has explained very well why he was renouncing. Our friend the Germanist came to see me expressly to remonstrate with me and to teach me that one must first have power. We used to think that one must first hold the truth. Finally I was able to chat for a few minutes with one of our best philosophy professors and he did not hide from me that we must more and more abandon to the necessities of action, to true solidarity, the rights of criticism and even the rights of thought. So I am waiting for the decomposition to be finished.
My dear Lantier, it is a great error you commit in the provinces to imagine that I am on good terms with the General Committee. Assuredly if I had presented your request myself to that venerable Committee, without any debate it would have passed to the order of the day, just as a simple district council passes over the petition of an obscure road-mender or an importunate telegraph operator. Happy still if it had not stigmatized me by and in a strongly motivated order of the day. But the great desire I had to give you an authentic response made me cunning. I went to find an independent, not one of those independents who depend, but an independent who did not depend. There are several. I shall not tell you his name, for he would be lost to socialist honor if it were known that he has communications with these cahiers. He was kind enough to present to the venerable Committee, of which he is a member, this request:
“What should we do with the Jews when the antisemites carry out the second Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre?” To this request he demanded a formal response.
Postponed from week to week, the request finally came up on Saturday, July 14th last. The session of the venerable Committee promised to be stormy. There were many ministerialists and many anti-ministerialists. But there were few true socialists and true revolutionaries. There were titular delegates and substitute delegates. The Guesdists had all come, substitutes or titulars, as always, and maneuvered with admirable discipline, often enough unintelligent and crude in detail, but always attentive and carefully envious. Vaillant was there. Guesde, ill, had sent a substitute. No one knows who. The Guesdists had a worried preoccupation, which was to annoy the ministry and diminish Jaurès. Happy precedents led them to think they were succeeding quite nicely. M. Lafargue continued to resemble M. le marquis de Rochefort. The Blanquists did the same thing as the Guesdists. The Allemanists wondered by what exactitude they might succeed in saving the old principles without playing into the hands of cunningly attentive demagoguery. The Broussists were not Broussists either. The ministerial independents did not care to let it be seen that they were ministerial. But the simple independents had much sadness and had no ulterior motives. Jaurès alone was thinking ardently of ways to further consolidate that socialist unity which appeared to him firmly established.
The most elementary prudence forbade me to let the unwelcome features of a disfavored and disfavoring face be seen in the vicinity of the august Assembly. I cannot therefore give you the description of the premises and surroundings that you rightly expected. I know nothing of this rue Portefoin, except what your sagacity may have guessed: that it has one of those old French names that delight us to the depths. I see on my map of Paris that joining the rue des Archives to the rue du Temple—another good old French name—it is situated almost in the very heart of the old Paris we love. There the brain of the Party has come to reside. There intercongressional command is exercised. Meetings were first held at number 17, premises the General Committee had inherited from its antecedent, the Committee of Understanding. It was at the back of a courtyard, the usual small meeting room. Many of those who came there, freshly invested by the Congress with sovereign authority, sincerely imagined they held in their feeble hands the destinies of the great Revolution. They deliberated seriously by the gleam of poorly lighting lights. They neglected to know, my friend, that social reaction is approximately equal to action, and that there is no formal agitation or combination that can replace the sincere tilling of consciences.
I am told that since those beginnings, those of the sovereigns who were in good faith have become modest.
Due to difficulties, the General Committee has been transferred across the street, to number 18, a shop on the street. The session of July 14th began as usual. Citizen Grados presided. At nine o’clock the minutes of the previous session were read. There were a few objections, followed by a few corrections, because citizen Dubreuilh’s drafting was a bit too intelligent. The request appeared at the threshold of the agenda. Although it had been placed there by common agreement at the end of the previous session, two ballots still had to be held: the first to determine whether the discussion of this request would really come today, and the second to determine whether the discussion of this request would really come at the beginning of today’s session. The secretary proclaimed that the first and second votes had yielded the following results: that the unanimity of the delegates present had decided the request would come today—and that the unanimity of the delegates present had decided the request would come at the beginning of today’s session. Indeed the Guesdists saw in the Semitic quarrel a good opportunity to annoy Jaurès. The Blanquists did the same thing as the Guesdists. The Allemanists were happy to affirm all that their Dreyfusism had had that was profoundly revolutionary. The Broussists were not displeased to pronounce what their Dreyfusism had had that was fruitfully republican. A third of the independents, radicals who were rather little socialist, above all did not want to displease the Guesdists, since they were their enemies. The revolutionary independents sympathized with the Allemanists. Above all there was a common desire to come to blows once and for all.
Jaurès spoke at length. Never was he more beautiful. He gave himself entirely, as if he had been speaking before the fifteen thousand men of an immense revolutionary assembly. Evidently he was unaware of the audience. He spoke for two hours, in that voice that issues from his whole being and that seizes the whole being beginning with the belly. Nourished by all the wine of human generosity, he spoke for two hours, and from time to time and gradually more and more urgent the rhythm of his oration led back to the gravity of this refrain: “the Jews are men like us.” The panting orator was reaching the threshold of his peroration when citizen Ebers, animated by a malicious negligence, let fall, in that grating and greasy Montmartre voice you do not know, you who have not had the happiness of attending the first General Congress of French Socialist Organizations, citizen Ebers let fall at the threshold of the admirable peroration these unwinged words: “Come now, no grandstanding.”
These incredibly envious words fell upon the orator like a bucket of cold water. He had that suffocation of the cold shower; his face was marked with an incredible sadness—and in his soul he thought that this day again he would have to please this citizen Ebers. Nivet smiled with that gentle smile we have known in him. Citizen Lucien Roland was happy.
Citizen Jaurès was already less unhappy to think that citizen Ebers had made several citizens happy. In a voice graver still, and, in a sense, more formidable, he began again to speak and breathe: “How, citizens,” he said, “how, at the very moment when in this Committee we are giving all our care to properly treating the capital questions that are proposed to us, how can there be among us citizens who have rashly imagined that we were preoccupied with the form our ideas were taking.” He continued thus, but neglected to give his first peroration. He felt, and one felt, that this had become impossible.
After citizen Jaurès, citizen François Desmarais asked for the floor. This young citizen, born in Beauce and named in civilian life James Hendaye, is a precious specimen of the university Guesdist, much more numerous than is commonly believed. A tutor at the lycée François Premier, James Hendaye resolved early on to give himself a pseudonym, as most of his Guesdist comrades had already done. And this false name of François Desmarais seemed to him sufficiently characteristic. The ambition of this François Desmarais is to be able to speak in public meetings as well as citizen Ebers. In a word, he would very much like to succeed in making grandstanding effects. The misfortune is that he is blocked by a savage natural timidity. So he had the ingenious idea of practicing in the sessions of the General Committee. However favorable the public of meetings may be, there always comes a moment when stammering becomes physically unbearable to them. At the General Committee one can stammer. Or rather a Guesdist can stammer there. For an anti-Guesdist would never have the audacity to tell him what he thinks of it.
Citizen François Desmarais asked for the floor after citizen Jaurès. For a good three-quarters of an hour he delivered on the class struggle a speech he knew rather well, not that this speech touched upon the request that had been presented, but because such was the electoral speech he had conceived the hope of delivering the following week in Nogent-le-Rotrou, a constituency where he would speak in public for the first time in his life, and where, as he said in moments of abandon, he was warming up the radical deputy’s seat. There was a vague expectation in the region that certain clerical elements would give the indispensable boost. Desmarais even knew a passage of a speech where one declared that anticlericalism is a purely bourgeois invention, imagined for the sole purpose of diverting workers from consideration of their true enemies. However, he did not judge it opportune to serve this passage to the General Committee.
All the rest was there. At the end the young orator felt the need to connect the electoral speech he had recited to the request. He succeeded in this by familiarly inveighing against Jaurès, who obligingly let him do so. It is a style and a tone that the young people of the Parisian Agglomeration, adherent to the French Workers’ Party, have recently adopted, to treat Jaurès like a little boy coming home from school. Allemane, disgusted, said nothing. Albert Richard was romantically dreaming of ways to achieve socialist unity.
After citizen François Desmarais, several delegates spoke on the class struggle. Midnight had passed, fatigue was about to set in when citizen Édouard Vaillant asked for the floor. Everyone fell silent, for he was the schoolmaster, and everyone respected his serious austerity as a patient teacher grown impatient. He began in full swing, treated the subject almost, and for more than an hour like an inexhaustible tap of lukewarm water he spoke, stammering a little and hasty. He rapidly affirmed that we must give all our efforts to the struggle of the working class against the capitalist class and repeated this expression sixty-seven times in the course of his speech.
Around one-thirty in the morning, the hour when the honest folk of our provinces have already been sleeping for five long hours, one felt a sort of general drowsiness complicated by irritation, impatience, and capitulation. It was the hour when every Committee evening Jaurès, a little tired from having given so much of his soul and body to revolutionary action for more than ten years, particularly exhausted by the two formidable efforts of the Carmaux strikes and the Dreyfus affair, finally broken at each session by the effort he has given fully in that session—finally it is the hour when Jaurès, overcome by fatigue and flooded with a reinforcement of the habitual tenderness he has for his enemies—it is therefore the hour when Jaurès begins to renounce the proposals he himself formulated at the beginning of the session. At the beginning of this memorable session, which alone concerns us, citizen Jaurès had thought to present for the approval of the General Committee this motion:
“Considering that already in bourgeois barbarism socialism has charge of humanity; Considering that all Jews are men while waiting for all Jews to be citizens; the General Committee decides that we must oppose with all our strength antisemitic barbarism and in any case save as many as we can all Jews threatened in their civil, political, or moral person and in their family.”
Such was the motion that citizen Jaurès was first to present for the approval of the General Committee. But while Vaillant was speaking, Jaurès had the impression that Ebers’s interruption had cracked his motion. Many reasons moreover militated, as they say, for Jaurès not to present the motion he had inconsiderately intended to present. The first of these reasons was that Jaurès was not unaware that his motion would be put in the minority, because it came from him and because the entire bloc of Guesdists would vote against it along with the bloc of Blanquists and several pieces of the independents. It was better therefore to spare the nascent Socialist Party the shame and dishonor of rejecting a simple motion of humanity; Jaurès was happy to think that it was so easy to spare it this dishonor by not presenting this motion to it. Besides which the humanity of the Party would later be diminished by the mere fact that the General Committee had thus rejected a simple motion of humanity. It was better therefore not to give it the occasion to reject it. Not to mention that he, Jaurès, was also not unaware that he was being diminished day by day because he was successively put in the minority on all questions. And he felt the need to remain less diminished, thinking that there would yet be days when the Social Revolution would still have need of him. The second main reason for which he would decidedly not present his motion was that if they went to a vote on this motion, the ballot would once again pit the two inevitable halves of the party against each other. In how many ballots already, coming at the same hour of the sessions, had the two inevitable halves of the Socialist Party, the demagogic half and the democratic half, not confronted each other like two blocs. Painful precedents. Obviously the best way to foment the expected unity was to avoid the regularity of these unfortunate votes. It was better therefore to rally to some enemy motion eventually capable of rallying the unanimity of votes. Later one would see about better guiding the unified party. But first the unity of the Party had to be achieved.
These two reasons, the divisions and subdivisions of these reasons, encumbered Jaurès’s mind, confusedly clear, but all the more formidable in the growth of fatigue. Just then citizen Vaillant was manifesting the intention of not crushing his adversaries, provided they surrendered unconditionally. So much kindness melted all resistance. Truly Jaurès could not show himself less kind than citizen Vaillant. The inexhaustible citizen Vaillant was rapidly explaining that the Party had to concern itself only with people who were of the Party, and that all the rest is contrary to the struggle of the working class against the capitalist class.
Now I must tell you that there are two Jews who are part of the General Committee and that both attended the session. One is a good fellow, not at all antisemitic, who does not want to know anything. His name is Jacob Isaac. He has a certain literary talent. A little before the beginning of the Dreyfus affair he had given the printers the copy of a volume, the well-known first volume of verse. He had preferred to sign with a pseudonym, and the printers had already set the name he had chosen: Jacques Delespinière—doubtless in memory of Spinoza whom he loved very much—for the title and for the first page of the cover. The Dreyfus affair came along, at about the same time that he was receiving the proofs of the page layout. People were beginning to cry in the streets “Death to the Jews.” The young Isaac did not hesitate. Without asking anyone’s advice he restored on his book, instead of the pseudonym, his name as a man and a citizen: Jacob Isaac, in rather large letters. He even added his first name Simon, which he neglected in ordinary usage.
Very different from young Isaac, the second Jew of the General Committee was antisemitic, as three-quarters of the high Jewish bourgeoisie have become, half of the middle bourgeoisie, and a third of the petty bourgeoisie. At the beginning of the Dreyfus affair he had rushed into the ranks of the French Workers’ Party. A profound instinct had taught him early on that the persecuted must conciliate their enemies, since they have nothing to fear from their friends. Without delaying a single instant, he set about giving himself a pseudonym, alleging that such was the custom in the French Workers’ Party. He innocently chose the name Roger Dumanoir. It is always better to have a very French name. And even it is always good to have a name that begins with a “du” or a “des.” Let us know how to foresee misfortunes from afar. Through the misfortune of the times it can always happen that one is forced to cut one’s signature in two and call oneself Roger du Manoir. Citizen Dumanoir had ended up totally forgetting his real name and his comrades had forgotten it with him.
Citizen Vaillant stopped as he had begun, abruptly, and without any reason. He only took care that the last sentence ended on the struggle of the working class against the capitalist class. As soon as he had finished, citizen Jacob Isaac said coldly: “I stand by the conclusion indicated by citizen Jaurès’s speech.”
Citizen Jaurès was distressed that someone had stood by the speech he himself had delivered at the beginning of the session. Fortunately citizen Roger Dumanoir came to his aid. Citizen Roger Dumanoir rose vigorously and somewhat vulgarly against the mania people had nowadays of always wanting to save everyone and their father. Here Nivet smiled gently, because it appears this was a very witty nastiness and one frequently used against citizen Jacob Isaac, whose father is known for not exactly having socialist opinions. Even that he has just disinherited his son with a certain fanfare.
Jaurès was breathing easier when the unexpected incident occurred. Citizen Charles Longuet, who for two hours had been grumbling and grousing in his corner, old Longuet asked for the floor. Happy the citizens whom their fellow citizens affectionately call old Longuet, old Fabérot. Happy the old men whom the young familiarly call Father Fabérot and Father Longuet. People had begun to say Father Vaillant too, when he abruptly arranged for them not to say it anymore.
For at least two hours old Longuet could not sit still. He grumbled aloud and argued with his neighbors. He is a man who does not much like sleights of hand. And he was struggling against a sleight of hand he felt coming. He had an indignation comparable to that we knew in him at the end of the National Congress, the second-to-last session, when he saw clearly that people would arrange by common agreement not to return to the Dreyfus affair. Like someone who wants to be done with it, old Longuet asked for the floor:
“I submit the following motion, you know very well why.” He had forgotten to draft his motion on a piece of paper. He was forced to improvise it while speaking. So it was more violent and more incoherent than he intended: “Considering that all citizens who do not march deliberately against antisemitism are playing the game of reaction; the General Committee decides that we must march resolutely against antisemitism.”
There was stupefaction. This motion was not one of those that are foreseen and made expressly for ballots. How could one vote on this? This innocent motion had formidable substructions. One could not vote against: one would thus have given reason to suppose that there were people in the General Committee who were not determined to march resolutely against antisemitism and reaction. But one could not vote for, because one would have appeared to be falling into step with citizen Longuet and because this formula: all citizens who do not march deliberately against antisemitism visibly applied to the signatories of the former famous manifesto. One could not abstain. Everyone was very embarrassed about himself, when citizen Viviani, well versed in parliamentary customs, asked for the floor. Before he had begun, everyone was relieved.
Citizen Viviani spoke calmly without displeasing anyone: “Before pronouncing,” he said, “on the motion of the honorable citizen Longuet, custom demands that we wait to see if some extreme proposal will not be produced. The rules of deliberative assemblies stipulate that one first puts to the vote the most distant proposals, the amendments most distant from the text proposed by the commission. We can send to the control commission—for it is fundamentally a matter of control to be exercised over the antisemites—or to whatever commission you please the motion of the honorable citizen Longuet. Or rather we may presume that we can consider the motion of the honorable citizen Longuet as being less distinctive, less distant from the text that would be brought to us by the commission, if it were consulted, than some motion that might be presented to us.”
The Dumanoir motion was not long in coming, for it had been drafted by several people while Viviani was beginning to speak. “I ask for the floor,” said this young citizen amid a favorable uproar. “I have the honor of submitting to the General Committee this motion for which I request priority.” “You have it by right,” said Viviani somewhat inconsiderately.
From then on the execution was rapid. “I have it by right, as citizen Viviani so rightly points out,” said citizen Dumanoir with a smile, “since this motion is so to speak external to the proposal of the honorable citizen Longuet.” He was intelligent, had a prodigious faculty of assimilation, liked to speak well, listened to himself speak well, and the Guesdists listened to him obligingly, happy to have an intellectual to annoy the intellectuals.
“Considering that the first duty of the unitarily constituted Socialist Party is to ensure the victory of the Proletariat in the struggle that the working class sustains against the capitalist class; Regretting that anyone dares propose to the Proletariat luxury duties when the people barely suffice for the beginning of execution of their necessary duties; Noting that modest and necessary duties must come before luxury duties—and pride;” (This last word was placed with irreproachable stagecraft.) “Considering finally that the General Committee is instituted not to seduce the Proletariat but to enlighten it on its true interests; The General Committee decides that aid and protection shall be given to any Jew who shall be of the Party; that is to say who—that is to say who—”
But he stopped, thinking, not without reason, that he had read enough to begin. In vain citizen Longuet, by a last effort, requested that they vote by division on each of the considerata and on the operative part. They noisily refused him the division. He forgot that it was his right. The whole was voted by show of hands. Only citizen Longuet raised his hand at the counter-proof.
“Let us not forget,” said citizen Desmarais, “that we must give the decision a restrictive sense, that is to say a limitative one.” Citizen Dumanoir had already drafted the phrase. He resumed for support: “Decides that aid and protection shall be given to any Jew who shall be of the Party;” A favorable murmur ran through. “But that the Party shall be forced to neglect Jews who are not of the Party.” A second favorable murmur ran through. The phrase was voted. They were hurrying.
“Let us not forget,” said citizen Desmarais, “that we must clearly explain who is of the Party, so that there are none who slip in.” “We have only,” replied citizen Dumanoir, “to stick to the formula that served us so well in the recent municipal elections, after having served as the basis for the convocation of the Paris congress. To this end we have only to insert, after the phrase: decides that aid and protection shall be given to any Jew who shall be of the Party; this explanation: ‘that is to say who makes an explicit adhesion to the program common to all fractions of the Socialist Party: International understanding and action of workers; political and economic organization of the proletariat for the conquest of power and the socialization of the means of production and exchange, that is to say the transformation of capitalist society into a collectivist or communist society.’”
“I propose,” said citizen Nivet, “that the General Committee replace the words ‘makes an explicit adhesion’ with the words ‘shall have made an explicit adhesion.’ It is not a matter of Jews giving their adhesion only at the very moment when they are in danger.” “It seems to me that this observation is very judicious,” said citizen Dumanoir. “Adopted.”
“But how shall we know,” said citizen Isambert, “how shall we know that such and such a Jew shall have made or shall not have made the explicit adhesion? And how shall we distinguish the explicit from the implicit?” “It seems to me indispensable that each Jew sign an attestation worded as follows: ‘I, the undersigned, … Jules Simon Weill, … born in Paris on January 9, 1867, … residing in said Paris, … 191, rue du Temple, declare that I make an explicit adhesion to the program common to all fractions of the French Socialist Party: International understanding and action of workers: political organization—’” Here citizen Dumanoir had the elegance, the supreme elegance of reciting in a loud and intelligible voice without consulting his text, like the schoolboy who knows his lesson admirably: ”‘—and economic of the proletariat for the conquest of power and the socialization of the means of production and exchange, that is to say the transformation of capitalist society into a collectivist or communist society. In witness whereof I have signed the present minutes.’ Jules Simon Weill.”
“I request,” repeated citizen Nivet, “I request that the date be put on these attestations and that it be clearly understood that they shall not be valid until six months after the beneficiary has signed them. There would be too many sudden attestations.” “Perfectly,” replied citizen Dumanoir. “‘Done in Paris, July 14, 1900, valid from January 14, 1901.’ It is easy and we shall avoid surprises.” The common deliberation had become an accommodating dialogue of several citizens.
“It does not seem to me,” began again citizen Desmarais, “that this attestation can have any value if it is not countersigned by someone who presents us with some guarantee.” “Perfectly,” replied citizen Dumanoir. “We shall have or rather we shall require that two signatures, that the signatures of two notable and noteworthy socialists guarantee the signature of the beneficiary.”
“It does not seem to me,” began again citizen Desmarais, “that this attestation can have the value we accord it if it is not official.” “Perfectly,” replied citizen Dumanoir, “perfectly. We shall require that this attestation bear the signature of a member of the General Committee.”
“If this attestation is guaranteed to us by the signature of a member of the General Committee, we have the right and duty to require that it be more explicit and that the authority of this General Committee be formally recognized therein.” “Perfectly. After the words: collectivist or communist society, we add this phrase: ‘Uncontested sovereign authority of the General Committee instituted by the Congresses, with power of appeal to the next Congress every year for several days.’”
“It seems to me,” said Desmarais, “that we can eliminate this appeal. National congresses will never have time to examine individual cases. They can barely touch on general questions.” Isambert intervened: “We are the emanation of the Congress. We do not have to diminish its sovereign authority. If it does not have time to judge individual cases, it will be its fault. We must accept that they be submitted to it in second instance. And besides, if it does not have time, it will command us to pronounce in cassation on the requests we shall have examined in the first instance.” “The Congress reigns three days and we reign twelve months,” said citizen Lafargue thoughtlessly.
“Then,” said Desmarais, “I request that the appeal be suspensive, that is to say that during all the time of the instance the beneficiary Jew not have the piece of paper.” “Perfectly,” replied Dumanoir. Isambert intervened: “It would be preferable that this attestation be sealed with an official seal. But we have no official seal.” “That’s true,” said the attendees, dismayed at the sudden thought that they had no official seal. “Perfectly,” said Dumanoir. “We put on the agenda of the next session the fabrication and choice of an official seal.”
“But how shall we be able to avoid false attestations,” said citizen Bracqueur. The latter had a dreadful fear of forgeries since he had learned that all the forgeries of the General Staff had served only to prop up Jaurès’s Proofs. “One of the best ways to avoid forgeries,” said Dumanoir, “is still to imagine a seal difficult to imitate, a stamp with a complicated impression, an inextricable symbol, paper of an unknown paste, a new grain, a mysterious appearance, and we shall have watermarked into this paper the seal of the General Committee of the French Socialist Party. We shall require that attestations be given on this paper.—No opposition? It is agreed.” They were leaving.
“Wait,” said citizen Dumanoir. “It is not enough to have decided. We must name. How shall we name in our minutes the citizens who shall have obtained the attestation?” “We have named them the beneficiary citizens,” said citizen Jacob Isaac coldly. “Good. The two citizens who shall guarantee to us the signature of the beneficiary citizen?” “The witness citizens?” “The witness citizens, good. The citizen member of the General Committee…” “We can also name them the godfather citizens,” said citizen Jacob Isaac coldly.
I must tell you that citizen Jacob Isaac had conceived the ingenious design of leading on, as they say, citizen Dumanoir. And citizen Dumanoir, intoxicated with success, listening to his own speech, hurried by the surrounding haste, marched on untiringly. “The godfather citizens, good. The citizen member of the General Committee…” “When there is a female citizen,” began again citizen Jacob Isaac coldly, “we shall have the godfather citizen and the godmother citizen.” “The godmother citizen. Agreed. The citizen member of the General Committee…” Isambert intervened: “It is better that it always be the same member of the General Committee who is assigned to the signing of attestations.” “Of course. How shall we name the citizen member of the General Committee who shall be assigned to the signing of attestations.” “We obviously name him the keeper of the seals citizen,” said Jacob Isaac. “The keeper of the seals citizen, good. How do we name the act itself, the document itself? In short the piece of paper, the certificate?” Isaac let them speak. “Attestation of profession of faith,” proposed Bracqueur, whose tongue was getting a bit tangled. “No,” said Dumanoir rapidly. “There are too many words in ‘tion’ in that. And the word ‘faith’ is a Catholic word, a clerical word. We cannot. We must also replace ‘attestation,’ which is heavy.” “Attestation of profession of socialist faith,” ventured citizen Bracqueur. “That only underlines the clerical relationship. We need a single word to replace profession of faith.” “Confession,” said citizen Jacob Isaac calmly. “We name the act a ‘certificate of confession.’”
Dumanoir suddenly paled with anger. He had just noticed that all the words adopted at Jacob Isaac’s instigation—beneficiaries, witnesses, godfather, godmother, keeper of the seals—were eminently bourgeois and clerical words. Profoundly humiliated at having been led along, he said quickly, stammering a little: “We refer to a later session the definitive choice of all these terms.”
They were leaving. Citizen Grados, who was no longer following the discussion, heard that one of our comrades of the French Workers’ Party had spoken of referring to a later session. Mechanically he was declaring the session adjourned, when citizen Loyal, a former bailiff, who was resting at the Committee from having evicted many tenants, not counting several landlords, including a certain M. Orgon, asked permission to say a few words. The citizen president consented. At the moment citizen Loyal began to speak, several attendees, less tired than their neighbors, noticed that citizen Isaac had played a nasty trick on them. They were very deeply vexed. They were also very deeply vexed, and sincerely surprised, that, to designate a bourgeois and clerical action, one had naturally been led to clerical and bourgeois expressions.
Citizen Loyal liked business well done. “Since we are entering into a contract with the Jews,” he said, “we must consider certain eventualities. The provisions you have adopted seem wise to me, but incomplete. You have neglected to fix the duration of the validity of this certificate. You will think with me that one year will suffice, that is to say that the beneficiaries will have to renew it every year. You have neglected to settle the question of duplicates. You will think with me that we cannot grant double issuance. That would encourage fraud. Especially since all Jews have the same name. Too bad for those who will have lost the certificate: you live, for example, in Castelréactionnaire. A Jew presents himself to you and asks you for aid and protection.—Have you the certificate?—Yes.—Show it to me.—I lost it at the Mauléon station buffet on my last trip to Bayonne. Or else: I lost it at the Hôtel de Notre-Dame du Bon-Secours on my last trip to Perpignan.—Very well. I do not know you. But make a proper application and in six months you will come back. Finally you have neglected to foresee the case of force majeure: A Jew is pursued in Versailles by a furious mob. It is inadmissible that a good citizen, that an honorable militant, precious to the Party, and whose loss would be irreparable, should risk getting his back broken to succor this Jew. Thus you will think with me that in the motion we have voted, after the phrase: ‘Uncontested sovereign authority of the General Committee instituted by the Congresses, with power of appeal to the next Congress every year for several days’; we must add: ‘subject to the intervention exercised in favor of the beneficiary being in conformity with the interests of the Socialist Party.’”
“I leave you, gentlemen, I leave you. But you have neglected to consider that the manufacture of these certificates would cost us a good price and that our finances are very encumbered. The citizen treasurer will not contradict me. The subscription we have opened in favor of the organization of the International Congress is not going well. The people are capricious. The workers, who gave more than two hundred thousand francs of their bread to the miners and glassworkers of Carmaux, give us nothing for our indispensable ceremonies. We shall not have a five-hundred-franc note. We need money. We cannot give to these Jews what will have cost us to manufacture.”
I must tell you here that this M. Loyal, known as an antisemite, had received and was receiving some money from the wealthy Jews, which encouraged him to ask them for more. “We cannot give to these Jews what will have cost us to manufacture. We are merchants like them. They must pay us at least the cost price, in which I count the overhead. They must finally pay us for the efficacy of the protection we accord them. Gentlemen,” he continued, carried away by old habit, “gentlemen, we need a sixty-centime stamp.”
Thus was instituted the socialist stamped paper.
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