A Girl Among the Anarchists

Isabel Meredith

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• Publié par: unfey
• Publié le: 01 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 31
• Langue: English

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by Isabel Meredith
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Title: A Girl Among the AnarchistsAuthor: Isabel Meredith
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7084]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of
schedule] [This file was first posted on March 8,
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Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG
EBOOK A GIRL AMONG THE ANARCHISTS ***
This eBook was produced by Nathan Harris, Eric
Eldred, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading TeamA GIRL AMONG THE
ANARCHISTS
By Isabel MeredithPREFACE
In spite of the fact that there are certain highly
respectable individualists of a rabid type who prefer
to call themselves Anarchists, it must be owned
that it requires some courage to write about
Anarchism even with the sympathy befitting a
clinical physician or the scientific detachment of a
pathologist. And yet it is certain that Anarchists are
curiously interesting, and not the less in need of
observation from the fact that apparently none of
the social quacks who prescribe seriously in
leading articles has the faintest insight into them as
a phenomenon, a portent, or a disease. This book,
if it is read with understanding, will, I feel assured,
do not a little to show how it comes about that
Anarchism is as truly endemic in Western
Civilisations as cholera is in India. Isabel Meredith,
whom I had the pleasure of knowing when she was
a more humble member of the staff of the Tocsin
than the editor, occupies, to my knowledge, a very
curious and unique position in the history of English
Anarchism. There is nothing whatever in "A Girl
among the Anarchists" which is invented, the whole
thing is an experience told very simply, but I think
convincingly. Nevertheless as such a human
document must seem incredible to the ordinary
reader, I have no little pleasure in saying that I
know what she has written to be true. I was myself
a contributor to the paper which is here known as
the Tocsin. I have handled the press and havediscussed details (which did not include bombs)
with the editor. I knew "Kosinski" and still have an
admiration for "Nekrovitch." And even now I do not
mind avowing that I am philosophically as much an
Anarchist as the late Dr. H. G. Sutton, who would
no doubt have been astounded to learn that he
belonged to the brotherhood.
Curiously enough I have found most Anarchists of
the mildest dispositions. I have met meek
Germans (there are meek Germans still extant)
who even in their wildest Anarchic indignation
seemed as little capable of hurting a living soul as
of setting the Elbe on fire. For it must be
understood that the "red wing" of the Anarchists is
a very small section of the body of philosophers
known as Anarchists. There is no doubt that those
of the dynamite section are practically insane. They
are "impulsives"; they were outraged and they
revolted before birth. Most of the proletariat take
their thrashing lying down. There are some who
cannot do that. It is out of these who are not meek
and do not inherit even standing-room on the earth
that such as "Matthieu" comes. Perhaps it may not
be out of place to suggest that a little investigation
might be better than denunciation, which is always
wide of the mark, and that, as Anarchism is
created by the social system of repression, more
repression will only create more Anarchism.
However, I am perfectly aware that the next time a
wild-eyed philosopher, who ought to be under
restraint in an asylum, throws a bomb, all the
newspapers in Europe will advocate measures for
turning all the meeker Anarchists into outrage-mongers. For of the Anarchists it is certainly true
that repression does not repress. Anarchism is a
creed and a philosophy, but neither as creed nor
philosophy does it advocate violence. It only
justifies resistance to violence. So much, I think,
will be discovered in this book even by a leader-
writer.
In conclusion I cannot do better than quote from
Spinoza's Tractatus
Politicus:—
"In order that I might inquire better into the matter
of this science with the same freedom of mind with
which we are wont to treat lines and surfaces in
mathematics, I determined not to laugh or weep
over the actions of men but simply to understand
them, and to contemplate their affections and
passions such as love, hate, anger, envy,
arrogance, pity, and all other disturbances of soul
not as vices of human nature, but as properties
pertaining to it in the same way as heat, cold,
storm, thunder pertain to the nature of the
atmosphere. For these, though troublesome, are
yet necessary and have certain causes through
which we may come to understand them, and thus
by contemplating them in their truth, gain for our
minds as much joy as by the knowledge of things
which are pleasing to the senses."
I think that Isabel Meredith, so far as the outlook of
her book extends, is a disciple of Spinoza. But she
can speak for herself.MORLEY ROBERTS.CONTENTS
I. A STRANGE CHILDHOOD
II. A GATHERING IN CHISWICK
III. AN ABORTIVE GROUP-MEETING.
IV. A POLICE SCARE
V. TO THE RESCUE
VI. A FOREIGN INVASION
VII. THE OFFICE OF THE T O C S I N
VIII. THE DYNAMITARD'S ESCAPE
IX. SOME ANARCHIST PERSONALITIES
X. A FLIGHT
XI. A CRISIS
XII. THE T O C S I N ' S LAST TOLL.