Intellectuels et socialisme

Intellectuals and Socialism

Paul Mantoux, Charles Guieysse

Lagardelle’s cahier has stirred a serious movement among our subscribers. We are publishing today the communications sent to us on this subject by M. Paul Mantoux, agrege professor of history, and M. Charles Guieysse, manager of Pages libres. Lagardelle will no doubt reply. I too shall return to this as soon as I can. M. Mantoux writes to us:

Paris, February 1, 1901

My dear Péguy,

I had not heard Lagardelle’s lecture — work first, lectures after. I am glad you gave it to us in the Cahiers. Nothing is so useful as the vigorous expression of sound and solid thought. It forces us to think, we too, as best we can, and to answer for ourselves certain questions. There is one on which we ought to explain ourselves once and for all: the question of the relationship of socialism to science. In more precise terms, one might put it thus: Should one become a socialist for reasons of a scientific order?

I believe I know what a scientific truth is. Here are a few examples: Two triangles are equal when they have an equal angle contained between two sides equal to each other. — The distances traversed by a body subjected to the action of gravity are proportional to the square of the elapsed times. — Manganese dioxide in contact with hydrochloric acid yields water, chlorine, and manganese chloride: MnO2 + 4HCl = MnCl2 + Cl2 + 2H2O. — Infectious diseases are caused by the presence in the organism of microscopic bacteria. — I have followed, note well, the order established by Auguste Comte in his classification of the sciences. I come now to sociology. Am I entitled to accept as scientific, purely scientific, and valid on the same basis as the preceding propositions, a proposition thus stated: The evolution of modern societies organized under the regime of large-scale industry naturally leads them to the collective ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange? That is the question.

I do not want there to be any doubt about my opinion. I rally to the proposition above. I believe it probable and even likely. But I deny that it has scientific certainty. Our Credo must exclude deception. We do not make people believe that we hold truth from a revelation on high. Neither should we lean upon an unverified science that, in fact, does not exist. The word sociology is very useful for designating the necessary extension of the rational method into the human and social domain, as into all others. But this extension is very little advanced. Sociology will be: it is not yet. Lagardelle puts it very well: Marx is not the Bible and the Prophets. I would gladly add: Marx is not Laplace nor Claude Bernard. He also says: Philosophy and art are one thing, and socialism another. — The same goes for science. Collectivism rests on an attentive, serious study, pursued at every moment of the present time, of economic reality. Its vision of the future is a reasonable hypothesis, supported by scientific elements. But that is all, that is all. For mercy’s sake, let us not resurrect orthodox political economy.

There are gentlemen in black coats and white cravats — they are called MM. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul Beauregard — grand as you please — who repeat from the height of more or less official chairs that science proclaims the eternity of unlimited competition, that science condemns state intervention in the labor contract, that science demonstrates the impossibility of the collectivist regime. To tell the truth, they speak like the hypnotized corpse in Edgar Poe, in the case of M. Valdemar. They have ceased to exist for many years without noticing it. And it is socialist criticism that killed them. It proved that their supposed axioms are merely the result of more or less plausible reasoning, often specious or purely sophistical. Science has nothing to do with their case: socialist criticism has shown us this; it has rendered us that great service. Let us not, we socialists, fall back into their rut. Let us reason as justly as we can — that is better than replacing the charlatanism of a false science with the fetishism of a science yet to be born.

But all this is only the trifle at the door: I come to what truly matters to me. Were the necessary advent of the collectivist society a certain truth, such as the calculation of eclipses gives us, is it for that reason that we would be socialists, that we ought to be socialists? Well, no! This, for a reason that is not scientific, if you will, but humbly psychological. There is no action without a motive for action. And every motive for action is essentially affective. Let me explain. I am told — with certainty, according to our hypothesis — the socialist regime will come to be. Very well. It is a fact. And then what? We have sometimes found ourselves in a crowd that was carrying us along, ineluctably, in a direction that was not ours. We were carried along, but very much against our will. Thus we might know ourselves to be borne toward the collectivist city, but revolt in advance against its laws, far from preparing its reign. — Is the biologist who knows the Pasteurian methods in any way obliged, by the certainty of those methods, to cure the sick? It is still necessary that he wish to apply them to their cure, that he be moved by some desire. A desire to know more, a desire to earn money, a desire for philanthropic action — it matters little. In every case, desire: that is something other than a theoretical statement, and without it one would not act at all. To be a socialist is to desire that the socialist ideal be realized as soon as possible and as well as possible. Why would we desire it?

I know what I shall be told. Be a socialist or not, I shall be told — what can that possibly matter to us? If it is in your interest to be one, you will be. The working class is, or will be, because it is in its interest. And its irresistible thrust will determine the future of socialism, without your very null and very vain assistance. — Under those conditions, one would have to begin by suppressing your Cahiers, my dear Péguy, and Lagardelle’s Mouvement socialiste, and the Group of Collectivist Students to which he addressed his lecture. But it is the enemies of socialism who give this narrow and false meaning to the idea of the class struggle. It is they who represent the party to us as a syndicate of greed and hatred, grouping the workers of the cities in their sole interest, against all others. Lagardelle admits that intellectuals can and should collaborate in the socialist work. He insists moreover that this collaboration be disinterested, that one not make an imprudent appeal “to the supposed class interests of poor students.” In truth, if it were only a matter of proclaiming once more that man is a wolf to man, and of voting labor laws as sugar refiners have sugar laws voted to sell their sugar at a higher price, in the name of what science could we be asked to be socialists?

Why not say: we are socialists because it is just? Quite simply. And that is enough. That is a motive for action, more than all scientific or so-called scientific propositions. The proletarian ought not to be a socialist because his condition is bad, but because it is bad contrary to justice. We criticize and attack present social forms because they are unjust. Because it is unjust that human labor can be sold and exploited like a commodity. Because it is unjust that a man can enrich himself by this kind of exploitation, and reduce workers to the strict necessities of life. Because it is just that all men have access to thought, and not be reduced to the condition of machines supplying the leisure and pleasures of a master. Because it is just to substitute, for the animal fierceness of natural competition, the fraternal emulation of common social labor. From the day I clearly saw all this, I was a socialist. I would not be one if I did not believe it my duty to be one. Shall we shrink before that word — duty? Shall we leave it as the prerogative of religions and hazardous metaphysics? Let us claim it loud and clear, it is ours. Mathematics itself, even if it came to impose socialist theorems upon us, would not replace it.

Lagardelle displays, for what he calls sentimentalism, a little indulgence and much disdain. I agree with him if by sentimentalism he means a vague and little-considered sympathy, made chiefly of instinctive pity for the wretched and of semi-literary admiration for the eloquence of Jaures. Indeed, that is only a first orientation, a starting point. But the clear and imperative notion of duty in the face of social iniquity — shall we call that sentimentalism and ideology? “The socialist conclusions impose themselves upon minds that are willing to apply themselves to the study of social relations.” It is not only minds, it is consciences that must be won. Consciences in the moral sense of the word. As for scientific conscience, I do not know what that is, unless a pure state of mind, entirely abstract and speculative, which can only furnish elements of active conviction. The economic forces will make the Social Revolution, granted: but the moral conscience of men will direct it on its path and proclaim in advance its legitimacy.

Once again, what would remain of the socialist movement, of this immense and profound movement that we believe destined to renew humanity, so to speak, if the idea of the just and the unjust were withdrawn from it? I confess that I would no longer even dare believe in its success: for evolution is the product of determinism, not of fatality, and the absence of so powerful a cause would not fail to make itself felt. If we seek to propagate it, it is not chiefly science that will help us. We shall tell those who listen to us to study social facts more closely; we shall give them the example, if we can, of that scrupulous and patient study. But above all we shall try to demonstrate to them that justice commands them to work with us to build the new society. We shall consider ourselves satisfied if, having joined us, they think they have done their duty and believe themselves bound by duty to persevere. Let duty ring like a tocsin in the ears of all those whom it is a matter of converting to socialism. If they remain deaf and are crushed by the collapse of the city of injustice, they will have deserved their fate.

I did not mean to contradict Lagardelle, whom I regret not knowing. It seems to me that I think much as he does. His preoccupations are, I believe, very close to mine. The way he defines the role of intellectuals and rises up against those who traffic in socialism is the best guarantee of this. But certain confusions and certain illusions, which have their danger, must be avoided. For my part, I prefer to appeal to a certain duty rather than to a hypothetical and incomplete science. And I cannot be suspected of maliciously speaking ill of this so-called science: that would be like a cobbler decrying the use of shoes. Yours cordially,

Paul Mantoux

M. Charles Guieysse writes to us:

My dear Péguy,

I readily accept the conclusions of Lagardelle’s Talk, taken as a whole: an intellectual must put his knowledge, his power of thought, at the service of the proletariat. But alongside the precautions that socialist proletarians must take against intellectuals, should we not also consider the precautions that intellectuals must take against socialists organized as a political party?

And then there is another question that seems to me to need asking, one that in my view dominates all the others.

Lagardelle says that socialism is a workers’ movement at the first level and a human movement at the second level; the humanity of socialism being the simple natural development of its proletarian character. Agreed, but should this distinction be purely theoretical? Should it not appear in the very organization of socialism? Should we not draw practical conclusions from it? It seems to me that we should.

For a long time intellectuals said to the proletarians: “Trust us to change your condition,” and almost nothing changed. Then new intellectuals said: “Throw out the bourgeois politicians, proclaim the class struggle,” and they placed themselves at the head of the proletarian class to lead the class struggle. And almost nothing has changed still.

I fear that for a long time nothing will ever change, if it is intellectuals, socialist or not, who want to manage the interests of the proletarian class. And I adopt the formula: “the emancipation of the workers by the workers themselves.”

The problem seems to me solvable only by solving separately the two following problems:

1. How will the proletarian class organize itself to emancipate itself?

2. In what way will intellectuals be able to help it emancipate itself?

And then we may ask ourselves how the workers’ movement and the intellectual movement will coordinate themselves, compose themselves, merge, in what I very willingly call the socialist city.

Note well that in saying this I am saying that the socialist movement is not a new movement, that it is simply a new form of the republican movement, and that it is history, the study of political events, that legitimizes this new form. It is the abandonment of the authoritarian conception of the Jacobin idealists who — by the force of law or by brute force, it matters little here — want to pass abruptly from the bad society to the perfect society, and who until now have worn themselves out, dashed themselves against conservative forces. Today, we, non-proletarian socialists or liberal idealists, who dream of a better society, end by recognizing our creative impotence, and we say to the proletarians: “It is you yourselves who will emancipate yourselves; we are powerless.”

To win its emancipation, its freedom, the proletariat must, clearly, organize itself very strongly, concentrate its forces, unify itself. And it can fearlessly give itself a discipline, create a hierarchy of committees, complicate its organizations as much as it likes, for of this discipline, this hierarchy, these organizations it is the master; they will not stifle it; its work, it can constantly destroy and remake, no conservative force exists to maintain it.

And this unceasing labor of organization and reorganization, of hierarchies established, broken, and reestablished, this constant search for a discipline without authority, will be particularly educative. When the working class has managed to organize itself, to unify itself, then it will be on the eve of winning victory, and this victory will not cost a single human life, will bring no misery, will render all reaction impossible; it is the new society, founded on creative labor and no longer on conservative property, that will be morally established.

It is too readily believed — and this is in my view the formidable initial error of the Guesdists — that the whole socialist problem lies in the “transformation of capitalist society into collectivist or communist society.” There is much more to it! In collectivist industrial, agricultural, and commercial enterprises, the division of labor will be even greater than today, and consequently the hierarchy of functions will be infinitely more extensive and complex than it is today. General interests will diminish particular interests, the regulation of production and the ease of consumption will kill competition, abolish the struggle for existence, and then individual freedom will exist, or more exactly will be able to exist. But with freedom will come responsibility; who concerns himself with that today? Such-and-such a factory superintendent, such-and-such a company director, instead of answering to a group of shareholders, will find himself responsible before the collectivity, and in particular before his employees and workers; having the responsibility, having considerable duties, what will be his rights? What will be the rights and duties of the employees and workers? How will the technical chiefs, the capable directors, be appointed? What sanctions, moral or legal, will exist to realize those rights and duties?

Here is a set of problems that should preoccupy socialists as much as the socialization of the means of production; one must arrive at a transformation of the moral laws of labor, and that is perhaps more difficult to achieve than the change of ownership of the instruments of labor.

And see that if intellectuals, simply supported by the working masses, can one day impose the socialization of the means of production, they are incapable of carrying out themselves the transformation of the moral laws of labor, of determining discipline in free labor.

To the working class therefore belongs a formidable task, and it is alone that it must and can carry it through; it is to workers alone that it belongs to liberate themselves, to create their freedom and their discipline.

Currently, the elements of workers’ organization are the following: 1. political groups and social study groups; 2. professional unions and production cooperatives; 3. consumer cooperatives; 4. popular universities. And one can see that these elements federate in two main ways: elements of the same kind existing in different places (all the cooperatives, all the political groups, all the unions, etc.), or different elements existing in the same place (cooperatives, political groups, unions, popular universities of the same city). All combinations are possible, and I do not discuss their value; I only point out the possibility of a general organization of the working class, regularizing the workers’ movement, concentrating workers’ forces.

In this organization that is in the process of forming, what is the role of the political element? It dominates everything, if one understands the word political in its broad sense; but if one understands it in its narrow sense of electoral and parliamentary action, it should not in my view dominate the other elements, on pain of the same deceptions being eternally repeated, on pain of keeping the politicians in power, or better, if you wish, on pain of seeing always generous but authoritarian and impotent idealists retain the direction of the socialist movement.

It would even be shrewd and prudent to place the political element (in the narrow sense of the word) below the other elements of workers’ strength. Faced with the difficulties the proletariat encounters in organizing and emancipating itself, it will constantly be tempted to intoxicate itself with fine speeches and to appeal to revolutionary laws, to transform unconscious dreams into clumsy realities; and thus it can deceive itself.

I know of a suburb of Paris where there is a large factory; they call it the penal colony, and it employs 1,200 workers. All these workers are revolutionary socialists, and the employer could not care less; they have not yet created a union, because the employer forbids it. They are deceiving themselves and letting themselves be deceived by hollow declamations; they vote in a revolutionary manner — with unity, and they quarrel among themselves continually to maintain unity. They are free to act in this way, if that is what acting means; but do they truly have awareness of socialist action? Would not a little less verbal energy and a little more practical will be better for them? Which would be better for them: to send delegates to congresses to ensure the triumph of Jaures or Guesde, or to be able to send delegates to the factory owner?

Electoral political action — essentially revolutionary, and even brutal today, since a party triumphs when it has a majority of one vote — and parliamentary political action — essentially revolutionary too, because a law destroys in a day something that exists and gives birth in a day to something new — must be subordinated to the inner work of the working masses, appearing only to obtain laws of general interest, taking inspiration from the experience of proletarian life and from the observation of economic phenomena.

And this conception of the workers’ movement is independent of socialist doctrines; it is a simple conception of democratic politics with a universal suffrage that no longer consists in freely choosing masters for oneself, but that names delegates with a precise and determined mandate: legislation on unions, workers’ pensions, two-year military service or militia, etc., etc. — and even later, when the proletarian electors know what collectivism is, have adopted the doctrine and are capable of applying it: the transformation of the regime of capitalist property into a collectivist regime.

Now, intellectuals, whoever they may be, do not know workers’ life, because they do not live workers’ life; they cannot therefore normally find their place in workers’ organizations, or at the very least they cannot normally aspire to effectively direct the workers’ movement.

As Lagardelle very well says, intellectuals do not form a class. From their whole, a force emerges — the force of ideas — but they can realize something only in themselves; they can realize nothing for others. They can individually perfect themselves and perfect individuals in contact with them, but not directly improve society itself. Intellectuals, when they work socially, work in isolation; they do not form a bloc.

While the workers’ movement is essentially socialist (that is, tends to change society), the intellectual movement is essentially individualist (that is, tends to change the individual). And while the workers’ movement will find its power in unity, in the concentration of forces, in discipline, in organization, the intellectual movement would come to a halt if its individual forces were unified.

Any attempt by the proletariat to take effective direction of the intellectual movement would be as deplorable as the attempts of intellectuals have been deplorable in taking the direction of the workers’ movement.

And that is why one can perfectly well not join the Socialist Party, while adhering to the principle of the class struggle and the international organization of the proletariat, and while adopting collectivist doctrines: the French Socialist Party today shows too many tendencies to take direction of both the intellectual movement and the workers’ movement at once, and in so doing it harms, in my view, both the intellectual movement and the workers’ movement.

Socialism wants, with good reason, to substitute the administration of things for the government of men, to ensure economic independence in order to ensure freedom of thought. The French Socialist Party, as it is today, seems to me to be moving away from this ideal; always it wants to govern and not to administer, it concerns itself with questions of persons more than with economic problems, or else it debates abstract ideas and does not organize realities. When the unions have obtained something, it is almost always outside of it; and when recently it championed cooperatives, it was chiefly to fight, not against small business, but against the small Parisian shopkeepers, who are nationalists.

I received a few days ago a small paper headed: Socialist Action Committee against the China War. What the devil does socialism have to do with that directly and exclusively? Must one join the party to protest against the massacres of the Chinese and the ruin of China? Is it in the name of the class struggle that one protests against militarism? To be part of this committee, must one show a diploma of collectivist studies?

Lagardelle observes that the socialists currently take the lead in generous protests; certainly that is true; but is it as socialists, or as men inspired by a noble personal ideal?

I fear the General Committee and the local committees; instead of waging the difficult economic struggle, they campaign against those who do not think according to the principles; to declare that a man thinks wrongly is so much easier than to remake society on new principles!

So long as organized socialism lacks the moral power to concentrate its forces on economic questions, it will not act usefully in accordance with the workers’ movement, and it will harm the intellectual movement.

I do not, however, mean to say that the workers’ movement and the intellectual movement must be isolated from one another, that intellectuals as a whole must keep apart from the working class. That would be absurd, profoundly absurd. The workers’ movement, a real force, alone can today create intellectual freedom, ensure the free development of human thought; an intellectual who does not ask a new social organization to give all men the satisfaction of material needs in order to allow all men intellectual joys is, unconsciously or consciously, an aristocrat and also an egoist. And, on the other hand, intellectuals are necessary to workers in their struggle to build a society founded on Labor and not on Property, to acquaint them with economic phenomena, to give them awareness of all the human labor of dead generations, to add to their experience the experience of centuries lived, and also to draft what Lagardelle calls “new juridical and moral systems.”

The friendly, affectionate alliance between Intellectuals and Workers is indispensable; but alliance does not mean submission of one to the other — allies are voluntary equals; alliance does not mean unification.

Intellectuals and proletarians must mingle, rub shoulders, discuss together both ideas and realities, intellectuals must influence the workers’ movement, workers must influence the intellectual movement; but having influence does not mean taking direction.

From the economic point of view, there is a class struggle; from the intellectual point of view, the class struggle does not exist, and from now on workers must receive, insofar as the conditions of their economic life permit, the intellectual culture to which they have a right. And on the other hand, since abstractions have value only insofar as they rest upon realities and can one day be realized, intellectuals, in order not to build empty systems, in order not to lose themselves in dreams, must continually penetrate the people, know the worker and the peasant, study man.

This reciprocal penetration of intellectuals and workers cannot be regulated exactly; it cannot be organized in a uniform way; not only does it not require laws, but it even fears laws; it must be free. And it must be free later too, when Socialism is truly organized, unified for the study of the moral and economic laws of Labor. That is why I somewhat criticize Lagardelle’s expression of employees, and I prefer to say that intellectuals have the duty to place themselves at the service of the working class; it seems to me that thus I am saying not only that they are no longer aristocrats, but also that it is freely, through awareness of their true dignity, that they render services to workers, that they instruct them, that they help them educate themselves.

And it is because this penetration will be free, because bonds of friendship will be freely established and can be broken without hatred, because in the intellectual domain men of unequal worth do not however rank themselves in a hierarchy, it is for all these reasons that, without danger either to the workers’ movement or to the intellectual movement, certain intellectuals may be chosen by the workers and temporarily enter the workers’ movement — and that, on the other hand, certain workers may, without breaking with their class, become intellectuals.

It is out of political concern that I thus wish to separate in a certain way the workers’ movement and the intellectual movement.

From armed revolution, we have now arrived at revolution by the ballot. That is still insufficient to found peace. If the ballot made the transformation of capitalist society into collectivist or communist society in a revolutionary way, the workers would immediately destroy their own work through moral incapacity; if the intellectuals are capable of constructing the socialist city, the working masses could not inhabit it.

I do not therefore ask for the individual education of workers — that is rendered almost impossible by current economic conditions; but I ask the workers to pursue themselves their collective education, their class education. To help them to the extent of my means, I am ready for anything — except to let a Committee, whatever it may be, tell me what truths I must believe and take direction of my thought. No party will ever hold science, art, and morality, any more than any Church.

I do not like formulas; ideas cannot be exactly contained in a few words; but if it were absolutely necessary to give one to sum up what I think, I would say that the socialist movement should define itself thus: methodical economic organization, absolute intellectual freedom.

CHARLES GUIEYSSE

BOOKSHOP OF THE CAHIERS

Given that from the seventh cahier onward we have ceased sending our cahiers to all those of our former subscribers who had not accepted our renewal receipts, Andre Bourgeois has since made the following mailings:

Seventh cahier / Eighth cahier: Paris and the Seine: 430 / 630. Seine-et-Oise and Seine-et-Marne: 70 / 70. Others: 35 / 35. Belgium and other countries: 67 / 67.

We did in fact send the seventh and eighth cahiers under the same cover.

We earnestly ask our subscribers in Belgium and other countries to be good enough to send at least a postcard to M. Andre Bourgeois. The collection by foreign post offices of French money orders is so organized that we cannot know who has paid. It is therefore up to our subscribers to tell us. Whenever there is any doubt we shall be forced to interrupt delivery.

In the numbers given above are counted several prospective subscribers. We survey in the Aurore the citizens who formerly encouraged Vaughan and we send them our cahiers on a trial basis. No doubt they wish that genuine propaganda not die of starvation. We ask these last prospective subscribers to be good enough to let us know their intentions without delay.

We have rigorously cut off delivery of the cahiers to all those of our former subscribers who, not having accepted our renewal receipts, have not at least written to us to indicate their intentions.

Many Parisians have not renewed their subscriptions. But many more provincials are subscribing. A happy change.

The few snobs, frivolous persons, sycophants, authoritarians, and sectarians who had come to us by mistake have gone. The boycott has nearly exhausted its effects. Among the deliberate cancellations by serious subscribers, only one was truly painful to us: that of M. Charles Seignobos. M. Seignobos knew us in hard times. We were at his side when most of our boycotters were slinking away. M. Seignobos, as a historian, must love truth: at what date and for what region does he wish the manifestation of truth to be suspended? Finally, M. Seignobos wishes to declare to his socialist friends that he is not a socialist: a precious freedom of speech, but one that could cost him dearly the day after the libertarian socialists were crushed by the dominators.

We do not want there to be any misunderstanding about the urgent appeal we addressed to our friends. One of my old, intimate friends, having read that I was asking for money, sent me advice. I always feel a singular pain when a friend, instead of subscriptions, sends me regular monthly anti-Dreyfusard advice. But this suffering becomes bitter anxiety when, as an exception, that friend is Jewish. If then I were to believe this old friend, our cahiers would not tell the truth, but would say what, according to the choice of reactionary newspapers, would be favorable to the nationally constituted socialist party.

We do not want there to be any misunderstanding: we are not asking for advice on political immorality; we are asking for regular monthly subscriptions. We repeat that we are — with Pages libres — the first of the republican, liberal, socialist, revolutionary, libertarian publications in number of subscriptions and in effective action. To let us fall would serve no one’s interests. I have good reason to believe on the contrary that the fate of several friendly publications is linked to the fate of the cahiers. If the inertia of the public crushes us, it will not crush us alone.

Our friends have not spoiled us. Neither Zola, nor Picquart, nor Labori, nor Havet subscribes to the sole publication that represents exactly — with Pages libres — their method and their spirit. Must we become beggars? The Journaux pour tous would very usefully send the Danton to addresses they have ready. But for this mailing no one has yet been willing to buy a batch of Danton.

Our allied or sympathetic groups have not spoiled us. For two months since we published Lagardelle’s cahier, not a single study or student group has requested a copy. The Group of Collectivist Students of Paris, which went to extraordinary lengths for a certain begging citizen, has not requested a single copy of this pamphlet.

This indifference to printed work is general. Whether it is a matter of organizing a performance, a lecture, a meeting, a punch party, a banquet, one more or less finds money for talking, eating, and drinking. But newspapers, pamphlets, reviews, and books are neglected. It will nevertheless have to be recognized someday that what belongs to the book is of more profoundly effective action than what belongs to the speaking hall.

Our elders have not spoiled us. No doubt Gerault-Richard had the good idea of announcing the Danton. But if Clemenceau had produced in the Bloc a contribution to the Proofs as serious as the one Pierre Felix published in our cahiers, it is obvious that Jaures would have at least discussed that contribution.

Let us then count on ourselves, while waiting for public morals to be restored. Poor, let us count on ourselves, the poor. Let our poor friends send us regularly one or two francs per month. Several have already begun. Let our poorer friends band together and take out collective subscriptions or collective monthly subscriptions. We are told that our cahiers circulate widely. Simple honesty demands that all who read us contribute somewhat to remunerating us. One cannot ask that our cahiers work for a starvation wage. Whenever in the countryside and in provincial towns our cahiers are read in common, let our readers arrange to subscribe and contribute in common, without any formalities.

Besides producing much more, the regular monthly subscription has the incomparable moral advantage of demanding of the subscriber a constant attention, a sustained activity, a continuing effort. The worker, the clerk, the professor, the tutor, the schoolteacher who thinks of us at the beginning of each month consoles us more than anything for the vulgar desertions.

Address letters and money orders to M. Andre Bourgeois, administrator of the cahiers. I am overworked. It is strictly impossible for me to reply personally to the letters sent to me.

We call the attention of those persons to whom we present receipts or drafts to the fact that we present them only by post and that it is impossible to give the postman a sum greater than that indicated on the instrument.

We ask our friends and subscribers to be good enough to buy all their books at the bookshop of the cahiers.

This arrangement is entirely to our advantage. We already have staff and overhead for our cahiers. Without increasing either this staff or these overheads, we can handle the ordering of all books for all our subscribers. The staff on duty is freely and entirely devoted to the cahiers. The punctual administrator who has so perfectly organized the administration of our publications organizes no less punctually the administration of the bookshop.

We offer in our offices the largest customary discounts, that is, we sell books there at exactly the prices of the Odeon.

We deliver free of charge to Parisian addresses under the same conditions.

We deliver free of charge to provincial and foreign addresses at the marked prices for any order under eleven francs. We deliver free of charge to provincial and foreign addresses with the largest customary discounts, that is, at exactly the prices of the Odeon, for any order of eleven francs or more.

Our bookshop service is strictly reserved for our subscribers and the subscribers of Pages libres.

Having no capital in advance, we can operate only on a cash or deposit basis.

Those of our subscribers in Paris, the provinces, or abroad who wish to receive their books free at their address need only send M. Andre Bourgeois the list of their order and the corresponding money order. French books will be dispatched by the same day’s post. Foreign books will be dispatched within the same week. A money-order card advantageously replaces the letter and money order.

Those of our subscribers who intend to place large orders with us may deposit with M. Andre Bourgeois sums that will thus be held in a current account. They will then only need to send us their orders by postcard. Our invoices will carry the statement of account with each shipment.

To facilitate our work, we ask our subscribers to send us clearly itemized order sheets or cards.

To facilitate certain of their choices, we shall announce new publications. We cannot think of announcing specialized new publications. But among the thousands of books published each year, there are at most fifty that every honest man and every honest society ought to have in its library. We shall announce these honest books, not by judging and absolving them, but by saying briefly, as best we can, whenever we can, what is in them. Which is to say that we shall most often proceed by way of quotations, tables, and summaries.

We call the attention of our subscribers to the parasitical character of ordering from elsewhere the books they would have known of only through us.

As the best books are not the best known, we earnestly ask those of our subscribers who discover books to be good enough to share their discoveries with us.

We have in advance in our offices all the books we announce. We have French books within two hours. We have foreign books within the week.

Those of our subscribers who live in Paris will give us pleasure by coming to buy their books at our offices. Our location is central, in the sense that we are within five minutes, and less, of the Odeon.

During the Easter holidays I shall receive our friends from the provinces passing through Paris — at the offices of the cahiers, Thursdays April 4 and 11, from eight o’clock to eleven o’clock and from noon to seven o’clock.

We shall be especially happy to supply libraries. We cannot too strongly urge our friends lost in the countryside and small towns to found libraries without formalities. As much as groups with parliamentary debating rooms are vain, so much are study and reading societies effective, provided one reads there.

We supply all kinds of books, not only literature but sciences, law, medicine, and so on.

The profits of the bookshop will be paid in full to the cahiers. We shall publish in the cahiers the monthly balance sheets of the bookshop.

We ask our friends and subscribers to buy all their books from us.

Of our friends who are shared between the Societe Nouvelle and our cahiers, we do not ask that they leave the Societe to come to us. We ask only that they divide their custom exactly. We do not wish to kill anyone in the neighborhood. We only wish not to be killed ourselves. And above all we do not wish to contribute our funds, our labors, and our care for the sole purpose of getting ourselves killed.

It is indispensable that one of our friends, who speaks and writes French, Russian, Polish, and German, free until five o’clock in the evening, find a literary or commercial position for his day. — Write to M. Andre Bourgeois.

We are happy to reproduce the notes that M. Andre Bourgeois, sent to Montceau by the administration of Pages libres, has brought back from his trip. M. Bourgeois also took twenty-four photographs, four of which appeared in Pages libres.

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