When Mr. Ettor and his friends were released at Salem, he immediately told the thronging crowd met to greet him, that they and such as they, were his real deliverers. He had been rather complimentary to the court and did not think ill of it, but for his freedom, he thanked the enthusiasm and devotion of the workers. These had sent money and lawyers but, more than all, had roused a sustaining pressure of public opinion that was irresistible. In Victor Griffuehle's exposition of syndicalist action is found the same explanation of the freeing of Dreyfus.[1] "This wronged man was not let off by the courts—they would have killed him or banished him fast enough—but by noisy volcanic agitation in the street, press, parlor—even by scenes of rank violence," according to the trade union secretary, this electric atmosphere was behind the timid legalities, forcing them to take account of it. In the light of this reasoning, Syndicalists now go to their new tasks. If it is asked, why labor does not also appeal to politics; why, with its overwhelming numbers, it does not organize to elect its own representatives and thus create a new legal order in its own favor, it has this answer: "We have been watching that fatuous game for a generation. Political democracy and all 'reformist' socialism have tried that so long and in so many parts of the world, that we see its uselessness. The best fellows we send to legislatures, to mayor's chairs, or to ministries, lose their heads. Not one of them who breathes that atmosphere two years but comes back to us a changed man. It is a crooked road that makes crooked men.
- ↑ L'Action Syndicaliste, p. 23.
