period of stress, they will demand what they have always demanded in such cases—communisation of supplies—the giving of rations.
It will be in vain to preach patience. The people will be patient no longer, and if food is not put in common they will plunder the bakeries.
If the people are not strong enough to carry all before them, they will be shot down to give Collectivism a fair field for experiment. To this end "order" must be maintained at any price—order, discipline, obedience! And as the capitalists will soon realise that when the people are shot down by those who call themselves Revolutionists the Revolution itself will become hateful in the eyes of the masses, they will certainly lend their support to the champions of order—even though they are Collectivists. In such a line of conduct, the capitalists will see a means of hereafter crushing the Collectivists in their turn. If "order is established" in this fashion, the consequences are easy to foresee. Not content with shooting down the "marauders," the faction of "order" will search out the "ringleaders of the mob." They will set up again the law courts and reinstate the hangman. The most ardent Revolutionists will be sent to the scaffold. It will be 1793 over again.
Do not let us forget how reaction triumphed in the last century. First the "Hébertists," "the madmen," were guillotined—those whom Mignet, with the memory of the struggle fresh upon him, still called "Anarchists." The Dantonists soon followed them; and when the party of Robespierre had guillotined these Revolutionaries, they in their turn had to mount the scaffold; whereupon the people, sick of bloodshed, and seeing the Revolution lost, threw up the sponge, and let the reactionaries do their worst.
If "order is restored," we say, the Social Democrats will hang the Anarchists; the Fabians will hang the Social Democrats, and will in their turn be hanged by the reactionaries, and the Revolution will have to be begun all over again.
But everything confirms us in the belief that the energy of the people will carry them far enough, and that, when the Revolution takes place, the idea of Anarchist Communism will have gained ground. It is not an artificial idea. The people themselves have breathed it in our ear, and the number of Communists is ever increasing as the impossibility of any other solution becomes more and more evident.
And if the impetus of the people is strong enough affairs will take a very different turn. Instead of plundering the bakers' shops one day and starving the next, the people of the insurgent cities will take possession of the warehouses, the cattle markets, in fact of all the provision stores and of all the food to be had. The well-intentioned citizens,
