6 peasants, one and all, claim the soil, the whole of the soil, and wish to expel their lords 1 Thus the evolution is taking place. Socialism, or in other words, the army .of individuals who desire to change social conditions, has resumed its march. The moving mass is pressing on, and now no government dare ignore its serried ranks. On the contrary, , the powers that be exaggerate its numbers, and attempt to contend with it by absurd legislation and irritating interference. Fea-r is an evil counsellor. No doubt it may some.times happen that all is perfectly quiet. On the morrow of a massacre few men dare put . themselves in the way of the bullets. When a word, a gesture are punished with ·imprisonment, the men who have courage to expose themselves to the danger are few and far between. Those are rare who quietly accept the part of victim in a cause, the triumph of which is as yet distant and even doubtful. Everyone is not so heroic as the Russian Nihilists, who compose manifestos in the very lair of their foes, and paste them on a wall between two sentries. One should be very devoted oneself to find fault with those who do not declare themselves Socialists, when their work, that is to say the life of those dear to them, depends on the avowal. But if all the oppressed have not the temperament of heroes, they feel their sufferings none the less, and large numbers amongst them are taking their own interests into serious consideration. In many a town where there is not one organised Socialist group, all the workers without exception are already more or less consciously Socialists; instinctively they applaud a comrade who speaks to them of a social state in which all the products of labour shall be in the ha~1ds of the labourer. This instinct contains the germ of the future Revolution; for from day to day it becomes more precise, transformed into distincter consciousness. What the worker vaguely felt yesterday, he knows to-day, and each new experience teaches him to know it better. And are not the peasants, who cannot raise enough to keep body and soul together from their morsel of ground, and the yet more numerous class who do. not possess a clod of their own, are not all these beginning to comprehend that the soil ought to belong to the men who cultivate it 1 They have always instinctively felt this, now they know it, and are preparing to assert their claim in plain language. Bibi oteca G no B anco
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