Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/229

 greater degree of communal and individual freedom than the French institutions and traditions ever permitted.

If we watch the present movement in Paris (the Commune), we shall find, what is true of every movement possessing the least endurance, that it contains at bottom a grain of sense in spite of all the unreasonable motives which attach to it, influencing its individual partisans. Without this no movement can attain even that degree of force which the Commune exercises at present. This grain of sense—I do not know how many people believe in it, but surely the most intelligent and best who at present are fighting against their countrymen do believe in it—is, to put it briefly, the German municipal government. If the Commune possessed this, then the better element of its supporters—I do not say all—would be satisfied. We must differentiate according to the facts. The militia of the usurpers consists largely of people who have nothing to lose. There are in a city of two million inhabitants many so-called "repris de justice," or as we should say "people under police supervision," who are spending in Paris the interval between two terms in prison. They are congregating in the city in considerable numbers and are ready to serve disorder and pillage wherever it may be. It is these people who gave to the movement, before we had scrutinized its theoretical aims, the occasionally prominent character which seemed to threaten civilization, and which, in the interest of humanity, I now hope has been overcome. It is, of course, quite possible that it may recur.

In addition to this flotsam, which is found in large masses in every big city, the militia which I mentioned consists of many adherents of an international European republic. I have been told the figures with which the foreign nations are there represented, but I remember only that almost eight thousand Englishmen are said to be in Paris for the sake of seeing the realization of their plans. I assume that these so-called Englishmen are largely Irish Fenians. And then there are many Belgians, Poles, adherents of