SOCIALISTS IN LONDON.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 139, 13 June 1881, Page 1

SOCIALISTS IN LONDON.

i (The World.) The Socialist meeting recently was a ; somewhat notable demonstration. Thei hall was crowded with men, mostly Germans of the skilled wqrjanan type, 'and the more violent and sanguinary , the speeches the more frantically were ithey cheered. The Paris Commune land the " execution " of the Czar were held up as examples to the " proletariat " of all countries, who were told, in 1 the words of the first resolution, that, las a preliminary step towards reform, jail " capitalists, aristocrats, and priests" I were to be exterminated (dusgerottet), land that, therefore, those who, as in Paris and St. Petersburg, had made so good a beginning, "had earned the ; thanks of all really civilised men." j This keynote being struck at the opening, the pitch was well kept up by a series of orations in English, French, and German — miserable stuff most of them — with neither style nor substance to recommend them to any but the wildest anarchists. One exception must be made. Under the red flag, the single significant sign of the " platform " of the gathering, there had been sitting during the first half of the proceedings a young man, shabbily diessetl, wearing a billy-cock hat, and smoking persistently a clay pipe. When the second resolution was read he was called to the front of the platform, and, in a clear flexible voice, with the easy confident manner that showed the practised speaker, he began what turned out to be the great speech of the It was Johann Most, formerly member of the Imperial Reichstag, now an exile, and editor of *' Freiheit," the organ of the extremest section of the German Socialists. Most has had a chequered career. A Bavarian, bookbinder by trade, he came up while very young* to Berlin, and soon became a leader at the workmen's agitation, that was then, with the concurrence of Prince Bismarck who chuckled over the split in the Radical ranks, spreading like wildfire in all the large towns. His eloquence was of a sort altogether different from the usual cumbrous and involved reasoning of the North-German leaders j and his fiery southern style of striking to the heart of a question and reaching it down to his hearers in the form of some easilyremembered phrase-— in short, that don dps formules which Gambetta's admirers claim as his exclusive possession— made Him the idol of the Berliners, who soon chose him one of their members. The same trick of the tongue, however, got him notice from the police ; and before his final expulsion he had been summoned over forty times before the Courts, and had spent the bulk of his few years of dignity in the Pldtzen-See jail. His exile appears to have made him fiercer and more extreme than ever ; for since coming to London he has altogether broken with the old. German Socialist party, and is now* the most prominent, of the. extreme anarchist party of ftakuriinpr BlanquXtype: "' His. 1 speech on Wednesday night was a master piece > of invective, and brought t^e meeting io boiiing-pomt; The " pro-' letariat V had good cause , to, celebrate the. stormy month; for those who had striven and suffered for tbjein. had hallowed it. In 1848 ! iti was Berlin that ran with their blood. " briiey cried; for bread, and for that they | fought" ; but the reaction was upon them till, in 1871, in Paris!, March again saw th;e "proletariat" grasping at its "so long kept back rights." But Bismarck *- and Thiers embraced, and again they were trodden down, and the bourgeoisie all over the world rejoiced at the news of* the massacre of " hundreds of thous--1 ands," whereas now it pretended to be horrified at the fate of- "Alexander Romano w." The time was pnst for theoretical Socialism j and their duty was now to. use every weapon, "sword, dagger, poison, or bomb," to rid the earth ofjtyrants, whether these call themselves kaiser, king, or president. "We liope and wish," said he, with deliberate emphasis, " that similar deeds shall r quickly follow, both in Russia and in all other laijids." If SU 1 William Harcourt had not become so unnaturally mild after his 1 late outburst,.'he might find an opportunity for 'stamping out' some i ( *vipers '■ ' nearer hpip§; than, ,#e. w JqvU.GV even.