Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1886-07-04
TRIBUTE TO TRUTH
BY AN AMERICAN CAPITALIST
EDITOR.
Experiences of 1S7l-The Paris Com.
une-OrganizatiOn and Order
Brave and Honest Citizens.
Government Brutal.
ity and Murder.

Illotol outIl ~ pit'ut
ed the citizens of Paris, but the his
tory that is written to please an aris-
tocracy is not u reliable history. 1t
might be urged, on the other hand,
that history written to please the
people of Paris was equally unrelia-
BILE. The following tribute to truth
from the pen of Frank Piyley, an
American, editor of the San Francis
co ArgonaoH, which is not by any
means biased in favor of the organ
lied workers, will therefore be read
with peculiar interest, and it will, no
doubt, be gathered up for history"
in the true account of the gallant
struggle for rational municipal ad-
ministration of affairs made by the
workingmen of Paris. Says Mr..
Pixley:
The commune is held up as the
personitication of misrule and des-
truction. Communists are repre-
sented as the worst element of city
life that delight in bloodshed and
conhagration, and Paris of 1871 is
described as a scene of frightful dis
order, submitting to anarchy and
murder.
| was present in the city of Paris
during the entire period that the
commune held sway. ! was there
from the day of the entry of the Ger
mans till the arms of Versailles des-
troyed the commune, and the eXper-
iment of communal government was
wiped out of existence by the death
of forty thousand citizens who fell i'll
battle in the streets of the capital of
France.
| saw that great city of central
Europe held for five weeks by the
men of Vilette, Montmartre and the
Faubourg st. Antoine; by the arti-
sans and laborers who, for the first
time in seventeen years, had the OPP
portunity to bear arms. There was
the Bank of France, with it's hoard
ed wealth of coin, the house of
Rothschild, the Bank of the Hopes
of Amsterdam; there were the great
magazines and the storehouses filled
with costly fabrics; shops with jew
els of untold value; palaces with
costliest gems of art; pictures and
marbles of inestimable price. There
was vast population, which for
months had endured privation, hun-
ger and distress. The gendmmerie
had been driven out, and there was
no other government but that of the
commune.
And yet during five weeks-wecks
of menace from without and suffer-
ing Within saw and heard of no
single act of pillage and murder.
For five weeks the great forts of
the eaciente sent their destructive
missiles to the heart of the city.
From the Trocadero, on a Sunday
afternoon, to Pere la Chaise, the
commune soldiers contested against
the Versailles troops. From barri
cade to barricade, from one open
space to another, fighting inch by
inch, the soldiers of the commune,
with their wives fighting 10y their
sides, sullenly disputlng every stone,
block and curbstone, rctreated to the
cemetery, and there, amid the graves
of the dead, the last of the commun-
lists laid down their lives in hopeless,
desperate yalor.
They may have been wrong and
misguided, but that they were
thieves, murderers and incendiaries,
| most Indignantly deny.
During the five weeks saw no act
of vandalism; | saw no plunder; |
saw organization and order.
During the week of government
victory saw scenes of unparalleled
brutality. saw hundred inexcu-
sable bloody acts. ! saw we'll
dressed matron stabbed to death in
the back and her body flung like q