Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/91

 Rh the rebel power, to be crushed in the most expeditious manner possible. The Assembly and the ministers were rebels not to be parleyed with but suppressed. The committee instead of negociating should have at once thrown the whole force of the National Guard upon Versailles, then weak in resources, and dispersed the Assembly. This was the only reasonable tactics after having made the initial blunder of letting the ministers escape, followed by the elements of an army. Instead, they allowed a whole fortnight to be frittered away in abortive attempts at negociations which the Versaillese gladly protracted till they had organised their military forces, and made their arrangements with the German authorities for the rapid delivery of the prisoners of war. Of the later blunders we have already said enough in describing the course of the defence.

One of the most unfortunate characteristics of the leaders of the Commune was their sensitiveness to bourgeois public opinion. The first thing for the leader of a revolutionary movement to learn is a healthy contempt for the official public opinion of the "civilised world." He must resolutely harden his heart against its "thrills of horror," its "indignation," its "abomination," and its "detestation," and he must learn to smile at all the names it will liberally shower upon him and his cause.

To aid in breaking the force of the representatives of the established order in press and on platform, it is necessary to have a vigorous party press which will place matters in their true light before that mixed and nebulous section of public opinion possessed of wavering or of no definite principles, but which, in default of thinking and examining into facts for itself, takes the impress of any