proudly asserted itself, and accomplished a
counter-revolutionary stroke. The Revolution dead, nothing remained but
to trample its corpse under foot.

The White Terror began. Blood flowed like water, the guillotine was
never idle, the prisons were crowded, while the pageant of rank and
fashion resumed its old course, and went on as merrily as before.

This picture is typical of all our revolutions. In 1848 the workers of
Paris placed "three months of starvation" at the service of the
Republic, and then, having reached the limit of their powers, they made,
in June, one last desperate effort--an effort which was drowned in
blood. In 1871 the Commune perished for lack of combatants. It had taken
measures for the separation of Church and State, but it neglected, alas,
until too late, to take measures for providing the people with bread.
And so it came to pass in Paris that _elegantes_ and fine gentlemen
could spurn the confederates, and bid them go sell their lives for a
miserable pittance, and leave their "betters" to feast at their ease in
fashionable restaurants.

At last the Commune saw its mistake, and opened communal kitchens. But
it was too late. Its days were already numbered, and the troops of
Versailles were on the ramparts.

"Bread, it is bread that the Revolution needs!"

Let others spend their time in issuing pompous proclamations, in
decorating themselves lavishly with official gold lace, and in talking
about political liberty!...

Be it ours to see, from the first day of the Revolution to the last, in
all the provinces fighting for freedom, that there is not a single man
who lacks bread, not a single woman compelled to stand with the wearied
crowd outside the bakehouse-door, that haply a coarse loaf may be
thrown to her in charity, not a single child pining for want of food.

It has always been the middle-class idea to harangue about "great
principles"--great lies rather!

The idea of the people will be to provide bread for all. And while
middle-class citizens, and workmen infested with middle-class ideas
admire their own rhetoric in the "Talking Shops," and "practical people"
are engaged in endless discussions on forms of government, we, the
"Utopian dreamers"--we shall have to consider the question of daily
bread.

We have the temerity to declare that all have a right to bread, that
there is bread enough for all, and that with this watchword of _Bread
for All_ the Revolution will triumph.