THE HARE AND THE HUNTER

When one is found, among the little phalanx of those who carry themselves bravely, among those whom the idea of liberty has touched with its wing, who, thanks to individual circumstances, feels, at some moment, the sentiments of human dignity stir powerfully within them, rebelling against the cowardice imposed by society on the individual; when, rid of age-old prejudices arising from a contemptible education, which teach men to idolize strength and success, one of them rises up to threaten power and wealth; when, finally weary of being a tacit accomplice in injustices, he strikes at the head or at the belly of the social body; and when, separating from those who perform or support these iniquities, he haughtily hurls himself, like a bloody challenge, head-first at society, then the careless, spineless crowd, forced to think, bays stupidly.

Each time that one of these great rebels, feeling every sort of wrath seethe within them like lava, has struck those who represent Authority, who exert it by subsidizing it, the sheepish herd of the proletarians, joining the chorus with its masters and educators, has almost always cast the anathema on them.

The recent execution of Canovas has provoked this phenomenon. The unconscious multitude, whose intellect remains stuck in the inescapable snares of morality and which cannot free itself from ancestral instincts, has once again trotted out the platitudes always used in such cases.

Accordin to them, the anarchists are monsters, who strike the “inncent” and the “guilty” at random, without regard for station, age or sex.

We are commonly accused of not respecting the neutrality of those who do not want to take part in the age-old quarrel between liberty and authority.

But who do you consider innocent? What do mean by neutrality?

I beg your pardon! You—the voters, slavish souls who feel the need of fetters and chains—not content to choose masters for yourselves, claim the right to impose them on us, are you innocent and neutral?

If you renounce your own rights, your own liberty, your own happiness, so be it; but if, not content to be wretched and unhappy, you claim to claim to the right to make us equally so, do not say to us that you are neutral!

And all you taxpayers who pay the informers who spy on us, the police and gendarmes who waylay and arrest us, the judges who condemn us, the executioner who executes us, is that neutrality? Excuse me? You bribe people to rob us of our life and liberty, and you say that you are innocents?

I know well that you will perhaps say that the Government forces you to pay taxes. But if you want to be able to plead your neutrality, then why don’t you make the Government respect that neutrality?

The Government does not recognize your neutrality. It strikes those who do not wish to support it without pity. And if we sometimes do as much, why condemn us and absolve it?

You must be for us or against us, for liberty or for authority. And if you choose the latter party, as you have up to the present, don’t come to complain anymore when you receive some blows in the struggle.

Before there were anarchists, before there were men conscious of their rights and resolved to make them respected, there was an authority that degraded and enslaved men.

It is thus authority and its more or less conscious disciples “who started” the struggle by violating the imperishable rights of individuals, and when one of them finally rises up to enforce them, his act, whatever it may be, has not been an attack, but a legitimate defense.

Yes. Whatever is said by the sinister hunters that are called “directors” and the imbeciles who echo them, it is not the anarchist hare who started it.

G. ETIEVANT.

[1] Spanish prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, killed by Michele Angiolillo.—Translator.