Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/107

 what Emile de Girardin said in 1848 to the orators of the Socialist School and to Louis Blanc: "You are agitators, but will never be reformers."

A Central Sub-Committee was formed at the Hotel de Ville, on the proposal of Assi, and was composed of himself and eleven other members, viz., Cluseret, Bergeret, Henry, Gasnier, Babick, Avoine, Jr., Avrial, Maljournal, Duval, Géresme, and General Garibaldi as honorary president. That body took the direction of the National Guard, the elections of which it prepared, and was charged with the protection of the Municipal Council, the maintenance of order in the city, and the payment of the civic force. All accusations of treason against the Republic were also referred to it.

As the Central Committee had, and the Commune was making, considerable capital by invariably associating the name of Garibaldi with the insurgent National Guards, M. Jules de Précy, editor of the Liberté, published the following, for which and other articles in opposition to the Commune that journal was suppressed:

"The journal official of the Commune has confided the military powers to three delegates, 'in awaiting the arrival of General Garibaldi, proclaimed General-in-Chief.' Now, men of the Committee, we say to you, Never—Never! Do you hear? Garibaldi will never associate himself with this civil war, of which you are the authors.

"We, who know him—we, who have on so many occasions admired his resignation, his patriotism, his abnegation, his tolerance—we proclaim it before the world that he execrates as much as we your bloody dictatorship. The great citizen, whom you trumpet in all your faubourgs, marching on Rome, found himself at Aspromonte, in the midst of inaccessible mountains, surrounded by 10,000 volunteers ready to the last man to die for their beloved