more, are not merely my personal ideas—form a solid body of doctrine which has behind it as its supporters men who are not lacking in courage, and who are more than a mere handful. It is not, as you tried to make out, Mr. Advocate-General, an individual opinion: it is the opinion of labor organizations which number thousands of militant workers, some of whom you have seen here as witnesses for the defense. For instance, it was on behalf of 85,000 organized woodsmen, the serfs of the forest, that our comrade Veuillat, secretary of the National Federation of France, spoke yesterday.
In spite of the somewhat offensive bluntness of my declarations, I count on an acquittal. Oh! you will need all your courage to acquit us. You will have to fight hard against the prejudice which your daily newspapers have instilled into you, and which has made you look on us as a lot of demoniacs who pass their time in insulting the officers of the army and in planting the national flag on the dunghill.
You will have to resist the temptation to strike down the adversaries who have fallen into your hands.
You will expose yourselves to the reproaches and the jeers of your friends, who will never forgive you for having acquitted the man of "the flag on the dunghill" fame.
To those who would reproach you for our acquittal, you will say first of all: "It was impossible for us to condemn people for their opinions, however freely, and even brutally, they may have expressed them; and we could not, in the twentieth century, incur the ridicule and odium of sending men to prison on the pretext that they were heretics, and that their doctrines seemed to us to be dangerous."
And you will add: "Besides, you did not hear, as we did, the evidence of the witnesses. If you had heard, as we did, the witnesses who described on oath how the cavalry officers had horsewhipped the strikers at Longwy, and how certain employers treat the workers, you would
