Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/78

 72 youths and others to feebly emulate the exploits of Thiers and the miscreants of Versailles in the line of cold-blooded murder (e.g,, at the Liceo theatre and the Café Terminus) we might have imagined would have been animated at the very least to some energetic remonstrances. Such an expectation would have shown an ingenuous ignorance of the ways and the manners of a class public opinion, and its hired press lackeys. Not only was there no remonstrance, but as if by a concerted action, "Society" and its press began, not in France alone, but equally throughout the "civilised world," to pour forth abuse, not on the murdering Versaillese, but on the murdered Communards.

The orgy of carnage perpetrated by the Versailles troops was everywhere hailed as a glorious victory of "order." The "Commune" was at once stamped as a bye-word of breath-baiting unutterable horror. The execution of a handful of hostages out of some hundreds, the single act of retributive justice exercised by the adherents of the Commune was a godsend to the bourgeois classes, as they wanted something to hang their vituperation upon, and otherwise they would have had to go on ranting anent the execution of their sainted heroes Lecomte and Clément Thomas, or else on the wickedness of the National Guards in the Rue de la Paix in daring to resent being prodded with sword-sticks, and riddled with the revolvers of the "respectable" mob which attacked them, both of which incidents were getting rather worn. It is true it did not much matter, as the "respectable" world was prepared to swallow anything against the Commune, and with or without the hostage business the villany of the Commune would have been equally great in its eyes. But still, the death of the hostages came as a good "stalking horse" for the sham "horror" and bogus "indignation" so extensively