Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/55

 Rh and social reconstruction; but, contrary to its notions, we claim the right to be solely responsible for our acts before our electors without sheltering ourselves behind a supreme dictatorship which our mandate permits us neither to accept nor to recognise." The manifesto further went on to state that the signatories, in order not to give rise to further dissension in the Council room, proposed retiring into their arrondissements there to organise the resistance to the common enemy. The manifesto concluded with a generous expression of the conviction that "we all, majority or minority, notwithstanding our divergences as to policy, pursue the same object, political liberty, and the emancipation of the workers." "Long live the Social Republic! Long live the Commune!"

The manifesto bore the signatures of Beslay, Jourde, Theisz, Lefrancais, Girardin, Vermorel, Clémence, Andrieu, Serrailler, Longuet, Arthur Arnould, Clement Victor, Aurial, Ostyn, Franckel, Pindy, Arnold, Vallés, Tridon, Varlin, and Courbet. Malon subsequently gave in his adhesion.

The conduct of the minority in withdrawing at this critical juncture deserves the severest censure. The reason given was absurd. They had themselves voted for the second committee. This pedantic Parliamentarism and horror of dictatorship moreover was utterly ridiculous in the crisis through which the movement was passing. The composition of the Committee may have been open to objection, and, as a matter of fact, it proved itself sufciently incapable. But in principle there is no doubt whatever, that a strong dictatorship was just what the situation demanded. The Committee failed, if for no other reason than because it contained no man strong enough to "dictate." There is no gainsaying that this action of the minority in allowing their personal spleen