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  programme ­
  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  government ­
  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-