, 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 realize 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. And 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 "Hebertists" and "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 come
to an end.

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-in