Translation:Anarchist Drumont
ANARCHIST DRUMONT
MEMORIES OF SAINTE-PÉLAGIE
Under the title "Call to Anarchists", the companion Martinet posted a placard in which he shows us a most unexpected Drumont.
Who would have believed it? The great leader of antisemitism, the protégé of the Jesuits, was for some time a theorist, and one of the most ardent, of anarchy.
It was after a trial that earned him a few months in prison that Drumont, who was not yet the defender of the General Staff and of res judicata, turned revolutionary.
Martinet, who was his companion at Sainte-Pélagie, makes some pointed revelations on this subject:
"At Sainte-Pélagie, he said, the anarchists endeavored to make his imprisonment less desolate. As for me, I can say that there, I saved him from madness. His cell was above mine. Every night, he would knock on my ceiling with the handle of his broom, shouting to me:
"— You, whose windows face the street, do you not see Jews coming to burn the jail?
"— Rest assured, I replied, I see only the sentinel who watches over us.
"— I was comforting him, persuading him to take a little rest; he begged me to wake him if an alert were to occur.
"And every following day, the other companions, with a thousand solicitudes, exhortations, and by their example, endeavored to reassure his timid mind, to banish his fear.
"In order to continue being cherished by us, he sang Dame Dynamite, he donated money to spread the love of the bomb. He paid for an attempt to publish the ode of Père la Purgo, which begins with this stanza:
Since the blood of Christ, the tears
Have failed to close your eyes, tyrants
From the sentiments of the dove,
Beware the bomb!
Yes, he tried to present himself as a fervent advocate of nitroglycerin. And how many times did he insinuate that it was not in private homes that devices should be deployed, but rather in one of the two caverns of the Senate and the Palais-Bourbon! You know how disillusioned he became when his desires were followed by Vaillant. He seemed to write for Vaillant’s sake, yet on twenty occasions he insisted that our friend’s act was an horrendous bombing.
"From that day, you had understood the man and no longer wished to know him.
"Then, the vileness of the one who, without us, could not have borne prison, was revealed. His scribes, who had courted you, switched their inkwell, called you feds and declared you sold out to the Jews."
Let us stop our quotation here: it shows us the cowardice of Drumont that drove him to seek protection among the anarchists, his jail companions. It is unfortunate that they did not let him completely spiral into a delusion of persecution. They would thus have spared us the spectacle of further palinodies.
However, although Drumont abandoned his former friends and renounced the bomb he advocated, he carried out anarchy in his own way by organizing, in Algeria for months, the looting and the assassination. And that, as in Sainte-Pélagie, for personal gain, to gain entry into that Palais-Bourbon which he dreamed of blowing up.
After recalling his memories of prison, Martinet asserts that the clericals for whom Drumont is the standard-bearer are far more dangerous to the fortune of France and the future of liberty than the working Jews, while the priests, doing nothing, rummage through and empty our pockets.
In conclusion, he invites the companions to go to the station on the day of Drumont's return in order to give this new African Scipio an ovation that does not in the least resemble those of the Algerian, Maltese or Levantine rabble hired by the Italian Louis Régis.
L. Ravaille.