Correspondence

Comrades of the 'Weal,

I am very glad to see that you had so successful a meeting on the 11th. We had a very good one at Sheffield too though the attendance was small, it was very heartily enthusiastic, and our speakers were well received.

It will probably be news for you that I have left Sheffield for Liverpool, where I hope to be able to settle down. The fact is, our paper dragged on but badly, we could never pay more than about the half of the cost, and we determined to stop it at least for a time; and then other circumstances came to decide me to leave, to my great regret and that of the comrades there. But Anarchy is safe in Sheffield and per- haps I may be able to do something here in Liverpool, where there is a field almost unbroken. There is a Socialist Society but no Club or place of meeting as I am told by Comrade Chapman, who is himself an academic Anarchist but the only one that I can hear of. Blatchford (Nunquam) of the Workman's Times is coming to lecture here on Tuesday at the invitation of the Socialist Society. They want I suppose soft talk like some of those present at your commemoration meeting who objected to wild talk about pillage and dynamite etc. Now I know that there is often too much wild talk about such things, but for me the wildness consists in the talk because it only is talk too often; but I am firmly of opinion that the time has come to prepare to use such things as dynamite, as soon as a favourable opportunity offers; such as an extensive strike or lock-out, with circumstances which aggravate the feeling of the workers. Then explosives ought to be employed and no doubt in the course of the present winter there will be opportunities enough.

Comrade Tochatti's remarks as reported in the 'Weal amused me considerably. He forgot that he was there to commemorate the killing of Comrades who had done more for Anarchy than any others-not by their preaching but by their acting. And yet he says the lesson they left us was now to preach. "They did not throw the bomb," it may be said, but it was the throwing of it that gave effect to all that followed, and they got credit for it, and so the case is just the same for us as if they had thrown it, or one of their comrades with their consent.

We have innumerable shades and colours among us it seems to me even among us Anarchists to say nothing of the stupid Social Democrats, who as Bernard Shaw says in the Fabian Essays think, they act the part of good Socialists by looking on at the awful misery and suffering around and doing nothing but waiting for the evolution of Capital itself to end them! It is much the same thing when a man says: I am an Anarchist, but pillage and dynamite! oh no! Now the more I think of the matter the more convinced I am that the only logical way for a Revolutionist to make a livelihood is by pillage of some kind-by living on the enemy, and I am utterly disgusted that I have not been able to devise a way of so doing. Up to the present I have however been able just to live without, but I don't know how it will be in the future. I was not of quite so decided opinion about the matter a year ago nor six months ago, and thus some of us go on evoluting!

I have a protest to make and that is against the protesters such as W. Morris and Edward Carpenter. The latter has lately published in the Workman's Times some very pretty verses most thoroughly Anarchist in sentiment and which directly incite the workers to the pillage of their robbers as well as contempt for all the nonsense of law and authority. And yet this same Carpenter in conversations disavows all connexion with Anarchists, belauds Fabians and Trades Unionists who he must know are doing harm if he be logical; and he has never except in a half-hearted way done anything to support our propaganda in Sheffield - propaganda which must have had the sympathy and support of all good Anarchists.

For my part, I do not understand such people, and to the devil I pitch them be they ever so literary or artistic.

Give me Anarchists willing to die NOW if necessary for Anarchy, and if you can find me 15 or 20 to join me I promise you we will make an oppression on the enemy and do more to make recruits to our cause than all the rest who only preach and write verses.

The idea is this. I have been discouraged with the regard to the No Rent and Robbery Propaganda not because they are not excellent but because they are very difficult to carry out. But the weakest point in the citadel of Property seems to me after much consideration and discussion to be the landlord's right over their Game. This is a right which is already greatly weakened even in the minds of the most ignorant and prejudiced, but the landlords still dare to assert it, and I believe that 15 or 20 of us with guns could make such a campaign against it as would destroy it for ever and show the way to upset all their other rights.

We might, it seems to me work all through the country living on the enemy in one way or another and remaining in each district only. so long as it was not quite too hot for us. We would have to fight though and per chance kill an occasional keeper or policeman, and this is the risk which I for one am willing to take. I wish Comrades would take the matter up and discuss it.

J. Creaghe