The Bee-Hive. — 1871-04-15 (London, England)

PAPER,  FRIENDLY, CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES, WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATIONS OF THE INDUSTRIAL CLASSES. ESTABLISHED 1861.  SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1871.  respectable classes of Paris, we have been frequently assured, abhor the Communal movement. They were all armed with °hassepots ; they had plenty of time to organise resistance ; did they fire a shot? Is it a middle-class force which is now besieging Paris? No; but sailors, yens d'armes (the military police—wretches who were the instruments of Imperial rule), Breton peasants who cannot speak French, Pontifical Zouaves, nay, even a foreign legion. The well-dressed "friends of order," the men " with shiny silk hats and delicately gloved hands," are not storming the barricade on the Neuilly bridge, but sitting safely at Versailles, and hounding on these poor mercenaries against their own class. The less said about cowardice the better.  Come what will of this terrible struggle, the. workmen of Paris have saved their honour and re-established the claim of .their city to the primary of Europe. In vain have the princes and nobles of Germany crushed the armies of France, She wants no armies. The Commune has proclaimed the programme of the future for France, aye, for Germany too, let Btsmiucir and AlovrKE think what they will of it. "The standing army is abolished.." Paris is in the van. as of old, and she vindicates to herself the prerogative of martyrdom. There are thousands of workmen in Germany Who are watching with painful anxiety this contest at Paris, on which the interests of labour are staked for this generation. For more truly is that noble city. the heart of Europe in her present agony, than when the foul BONAPARTE throned at the Tuileries shook kingdoms with his pod. And now, on the other hand, consider the humanity and moderation which these poor workmen have shown in the day of their mastery. For . a full month Paris has been, as the newspapers phrase it, "at the morby of the roughs." On the first day of the insurrection, before any authority was established, two captives were slaughtered. Since then there hai been just one execution, and. that was for the crime of murder. We were told over and over again that the Guillotine was on the point of being brought out. The Commune did bring it out—to burn it. And all this time Paris is swarming with enemies of the movement, .men, as one of the correspondents admits, who; if the reaetionist troops enter the city, will probably follow in their rear and sheik down every man they see with a dirty face and hard hands. Even the infamous ,cruelty of the Versailles Government to its captives has ,not, as yet, provoked retaliation. Even the Times and the Pall Malt Gazette are shocked by the wholesale executions carried out and .boasted of by the "friends of order." As I write, news comes that the National Guards are likely to capture three thousand geni d'armes. If they succeed in doing se, it is only to be expected .that they will make reprisals, in order to put a stop to further barbarities at Versailles. But it would be for the interest of the Republic in the long run to avoid even . reprisals, .that the world may see ,that bloodshed is abhorrent to workmen slit is not to the bourgeoisie. 1 f,we look back to the old Revolution, we shall find that the names most identified with its cruelties were 'those of middle-class men. Y,,ither 1 tom:sm.:Rey. nor M