here is
plenty of good-will and a keen desire to make victory certain. It is a
time when acts of supreme devotion are occurring. The masses of the
people are full of the desire of going forward.

All this is splendid, sublime; but still, it is not a revolution. Nay,
it is only now that the work of the revolutionist begins.

Doubtless there will be acts of vengeance. The Watrins and the Thomases
will pay the penalty of their unpopularity; but these are mere incidents
of the struggle--not the revolution.

Socialist politicians, radicals, neglected geniuses of journalism, stump
orators--both middle-class people and workmen--will hurry to the Town
Hall, to the Government offices, to take possession of the vacant seats.
Some will decorate themselves with gold and silver lace to their hearts'
content, admire themselves in ministerial mirrors, and study to give
orders with an air of importance appropriate to their new position. How
could they impress their comrades of the office or the workshop without
having a red sash, an embroidered cap, and magisterial gestures! Others
will bury themselves in official papers, trying, with the best of
wills, to make head or tail of them. They will indite laws and issue
high-flown worded decrees that nobody will take the trouble to carry
out--because revolution has come.

To give themselves an authority which they have not they will seek the
sanction of old forms of Government. They will take the names of
"Provisional Government," "Committee of Public Safety," "Mayor,"
"Governor of the Town Hall," "Commissioner of Public Safety," and what
not. Elected or acclaimed, they will assemble in Boards or in Communal
Councils, where men of ten or twenty different schools will come
together, representing--not as many "private chapels," as it is often
said, but as many different conceptions regarding the scope, the
bearing, and the goal of the revolution. Possibilists, Collectivists,
Radicals, Jacobins, Blanquists, will be thrust together, and waste time
in wordy warfare. Honest men will be huddled together with the ambitious
ones, whose only dream is power and who spurn the crowd whence they are
sprung. All coming together with diametrically opposed views,
all--forced to enter into ephemeral alliances, in order to create
majorities that can but last a day. Wrangling, calling each other
reactionaries, authoritarians, and rascals, incapable of coming to an
understanding on any serious measure, dragg