Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/82

 76 too thin. Every sphere of life has its dangers, the chief danger attending the headship of a Government being assassination. The aspirant to this lucrative and "honourable" office and his friends should recognise this fact beforehand, and discount the risk in the general average, just as the soldier or the sailor discounts the risks attending his calling. As it is, the heads of States cannot be congratulated on the courage, either moral or physical, with which they face this comparatively slight danger.

The foregoing remarks are necessary as the thrill of horror in its varied forms is one of the stock properties of Reaction, by which it seeks to thimblerig public opinion, and hitherto unfortunately with only too much success. People are told by their papers that they are feeling "thrills of horror" till they really think they are, the journalist who pens the gasping leaders meanwhile laughing up his sleeve, knowing it is all "business." These observations are specially appropriate to the subject in hand, as never was there a more barefaced or more successful attempt made by the governing classes of the world to bluff their own hideous crime by trumping up a sham horror at their victims than in the "civilised world's" verdict on the Commune of Paris.