Page:An Appeal to the Young by Kropotkin.djvu/11

 What a ceaseless struggle! What labour, constantly requiring to be recommenced; sometimes to fill the gaps made by desertion—the result of lassitude, of corruption, of persecutions—sometimes to re-organise the ranks decimated by fusilades and grape shot, sometimes to resume studies suddenly cut short by wholesale massacres.

The papers are conducted by men who have had to snatch from society scraps of knowledge by depriving themselves of food and sleep; the agitation is supported with the halfpence of the workers saved from the strict necessaries of life, often on dry bread itself; and all this is done, shadowed by the continual apprehension of seeing their families plunged into destitution as soon as the master perceives that his worker, his slave, is a socialist.

These are the things you will see if you go amongst the people.

And in this ceaseless struggle how often has the worker, sinking under the weight of difficulties, exclaimed in vain:

"Where then are those young men who have heen educated at our expense? whom we have clothed and fed whilst they studied? For whom, with backs bowed down under heavy loads, and with empty stomachs, we have built these houses, these academies, these museums? For whom we, with pallid faces, have printed those fine books we cannot so much as read? Where are they, those professors who claim to possess the science of humanity, and in whose eyes mankind is not worth a rare species of caterpillar? Where are those men who preach of liberty and who never rise to defend ours, daily trodden under foot? These writers, these poets, these painters, all this band of hypocrites, in short, who speak of the people with tears in their eyes, and who nevertheless never come among us to help us in our work?"

Some complacently enjoy their condition of cowardly indifference, others, the majority, despise the "rabble" and are ever ready to pounce down on it if it dare to attack their privileges.

From time to time, it is true, a young man appears on the scene who dreams of drums and barricades, and who is in search of sensational scenes and situations, but who deserts the cause of the people as soon as he perceives that the road to the barricades is long, that the laurels he counts on winning on the way are mixed with thorns. Generally these men are ambitious adventurers, who after failing in their first attempts, seek to obtain the votes of the people, but who later on will be the first to denounce it, if it dare to try and put into practice the principles they themselves advocated, and who perhaps will even point the cannon at the proletariat it it dare move before they, the leaders, have given the word of command.

Add to this stupid insults, haughty contempt, and cowardly calumny on the part of a great number, and you have all the help that the middle-class youth give the people in their powerful social evolution.

But then you ask, "What shall we do?" When there is everything to be done! When a whole army of young people would find plenty to employ the entire vigour of their youthful energy, the full force of their intelligence and their talents to help the people in the vast enterprise they have undertaken!

What shall we do? Listen.

You lovers of pure science, if you are imbued with the principles of