By letting the trial close, while you were still under the impression produced by his speech, we should have seemed to be retreating, to be screening ourselves behind Gohier. There have been enough calumnies flung at us already; we do not want to lay ourselves open to that one.
And, besides, we have another reason for speaking. It is not every day that the government furnishes us with such a sounding-board as this trial affords. In the ordinary way, our public speeches are deformed and unrecognizable when they reach you. Here we speak before the pick of the reporters on the Paris press. We could never forgive ourselves if we let slip by such a chance of making known to the general public our exact ideas.
I leave to my friend and advocate, Lafont, the task of defending my person; a necessary task, for my bad reputation must not be allowed to cause prejudice to my fellow-culprits, but also a difficult task. For the last four years you have been reading in your papers every morning that I pass my time in planting the national flag on the dunghill, or in calling army officers, in the lump and without distinction, blackguards in gold-laced uniforms; as if among the great body of officers, as in all professions, there were not honest men as well as black sheep. An error, or a falsehood, which you hear repeated day after day for four years, is likely, I fear, to have become for you an indisputable fact.
I have reserved for myself the more interesting task of presenting to you our anti-patriotic conception, incorrectly called "Herveism," as if propagandists like Yvetot, and other militant syndicalists[1] who stand by my side, had waited for me to throw myself into the fight before starting their propaganda. I say this not to diminish my share of the responsibility, but in order to pay homage to the truth. My role has been limited to interpreting the ideas and sentiments which I have seen spring up among the proletarian and peasant class, and of which I
- ↑ Syndicalists is the name given in France and on the continent to the revolutionary unionists; represented in America, Great Britain, South Africa, and Australia by the industrial unionists.
