What profound regret must all of human Thought have felt upon learning that a man had needlessly risked his life trying to eliminate the Red Beast.
I think about the disappointment of Pressensé, Quillard, Anatole France, Mirbeau,[1] of all the tyrannicides in France; of all who showed us this people exterminated, this other one crushed; of all those who made us cry with their accounts of the tragic scenes happening in the country of the Lone Man.
I was supposed to write an anarchist article here; I won't. Today I will speak as a man of fraternal liberty, setting aside all my economic views. This morning, I didn't read the newspapers to keep part of its originality to my indignation ; I am sure that Jaurès in L'Humanité, Clemenceau in L'Aurore, Cipriani in La Petite République, Bérenger or Meslier in L'Action, that all, socialists or republicans, agreing together, must regret that the act didn't throw to the four winds the limbs of this bloody beast, this vampire.
I remember the speeches of our best speakers and I still thrill to the oratoral images showing this horrendous hydra like a tiger crouching in its den or like a spider in the corner of its web ; I remember the writings of the best thinkers detailing point by point the daily crimes of this monster and counting its victims by the thousands ; I remember the drawings of the best pencils, the best pens and I still see the disgusting blood from the sharp claws and the flesh hanging from the beak of this bird of prey.
I remember, I feel, I live all of this and I still applaud to these magnificent forms that undoubtetly gave to all the desire to be the one who would free the earth from this bloody monster.
With these orators, writers, masters of drawing, thinkers, I dare to hope that at last this throne placed on corpses will crumble in blood and that, if Brutus's weapon deviated, it nonetheless showed the path to follow, as bloody and risky it may be.
ALBERT LIBERTAD.
[1] Figures of the emerging Armenophile movement in France at the time, including Francis de Pressensé (1853 - 1914), founder of the Human Rights League (LDH) and close to anarchist circles in the 1890s-1900s, Pierre Quillard (1864 - 1912), an anarchist close to Pressensé who served as the main relay of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) in France and who founded the Pro Armenia newspaper, Anatole France (1844 - 1924), a major French author and vocal Armenophile who also participated in the Popular Universities set up by anarchist groups during that period and finally Octave Mirbeau (1848 - 1917), a major French author, vocal Armenophile and close to anarchist circles since the Ravachol case, 13 years earlier, when he defended him and published several pieces in support of his actions.