themselves simply into an accumulation of Parliamentary papers. Neither one nor the other know anything about production, and yet they manage to obtain control over it, to misdirect and exploit it shamelessly; they are dazzled by the marvels of modern industry, and it is. their private opinion that the world is so rich that they can rob it on a large scale without causing any great outcry among the producers; the great art of the financier and the politician is to be able to bleed the taxpayer without bringing him to the point of revolt. Democrats and business men have quite a special science for the purpose of making the deliberative assemblies approve of their swindling; the Parliaments are as packed as shareholders' meetings. It is probable that they both understand each other as perfectly as they do because of profound psychological affinities resulting from these methods of operation; democracy is the paradise of which unscrupulous financiers dream.
The disheartening spectacle presented to the world by these financial and political parasites[1] explains the success which anarchist writers have had for so long; these latter founded their hopes of the regeneration of the world on the intellectual progress of individuals; they never ceased urging the workmen to educate themselves, to realise more fully their dignity as men, and to show their devotion to their comrades. This attitude
- ↑ I am pleased here to be able to support myself in the incontestable authority of Gérault-Richard who in the Petite République on March 19, 1903, denounced the "intriguers, people who wish to get on at all costs, starvelings and ladies' men (who) are only after the spoils" and who at that time were trying to bring about the fall of the Combes ministry. From the following number we see that he is speaking of Waldeck-Rousseau's friends, who, like him, were opposed to the destruction of the congregations.
acted as "a statesman nor even as a responsible person." Millerand's reply is quite characteristic of the pride of the political parvenu: "Don't talk about things that you know nothing about." Of what then does he himself speak?
