Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/656

 :—Understand, then, that they exist only by your credulity! Your brutalization, they exploit it as a farm—your servitude, they treat it as an income. They grow fat upon your poverty and your ignorance, while you are living; and when you are dead they make a pedestal of your corpses! Is that what you want?


 * —No, no. He is right!

You have him before you—you speak to him—you make him angry—you threaten him—you kill him. At least he has a face, a breast into which you can thrust a knife! But go now, and move that being without a face that is called a politician! Go kill that thing that is known as politics! That slippery and fugitive thing, that you think you have, and that always escapes you—that you believe is dead, and it begins once again—that abominable thing by which all has been made vile, all corrupted, all bought, all sold—justice, love, beauty! Which has made of the venality of conscience a national institution of France—which has done worse yet, since with its foul slime it has soiled the august face of the poor—worse yet, since it has destroyed in you the last ideal—the faith in the Revolution! Do you understand what I have desired of you—that which I still demand of your energy, your dignity, your intelligence? I have desired, and I desire, that you shall show for once, to the world of political parasites, that new example, fecund and terrible, of a strike made, at last, by yourselves, for yourselves! And if once more you have to die, in this struggle which you have undertaken, know how to die—one time—for yourselves, for your sons, for those who will be born of your sons—and no more for those who trade upon your suffering. as always!
 * —The master is at least a man like yourselves!