BAKUNIN THE APOSTLE OF NIHILISM. 21/ 
Bakunin, and the majority of those of Geneva against him. 
Thus two federations were constituted. The working men’s 
societies of German Switzerland assembled in general congress 
at Olten in 1873, and at Winterthur in 1874. The pro 
gramme adopted was very moderate. There was no question 
of collectivism, but merely of the regulation of labour in the 
manufactories, and of the means of intellectual and technical 
culture. The Socialists of the Jura, however, guided by James 
Guillaume, adopted the extreme ideas of Bakunism. It was 
in this centre that the Avant-garde was published, a paper which 
was condemned at Geneva on account of an article on regicide 
by a refugee named Brousse. For this group, to destroy and 
to kill appear to be the sole means of improving human affairs. 
On this point I may quote a curious passage from the number 
of the Bulletin of the Federation of the Jura, which appeared on 
the 4th of March, 1876. A group of French refugees resident 
at New York, calling themselves Authoritarian Revolutionists, 
demanded, in a manifesto, that in future all reactionaries should 
be killed without mercy. The Bulletin replied that hatred is 
a bad counsellor, that the reactionaries were to be counted 
by millions, and that they consisted not only of magistrates, 
priests, officials, and proprietors, but also of the great mass 
of the people, who did not at all understand humanitarian 
collectivism. Universal suffrage, said the Bulletin, would hardly 
give us half a million of votes : we should accordingly have 
to cut the throats of all the rest, which would be impossible. 
The essential point is to rid ourselves of the leaders : for this 
a few thousand heads would suffice. 
Violent language of this kind causes little uneasiness in 
Switzerland. No repression or interference is attempted. New 
Socialistic journals and societies come and go. The best of 
their forces is employed in self-destruction, and the social order 
seems in no wise imperilled. It is true that society there rests 
on a very wide and very democratic basis. Not only is there 
universal suffrage in Switzerland, but there is also direct govern 
ment by assembly of the whole people {Landsgenieinde), as in 
f e primitive cantons, or by the Teferendum or plebiscite, as 
in the other cantons. In the revision of the Federal Constitu-