I tell the truth about it, some foolish person may drive it to become
still worse by trying to assassinate it. I cannot help that, even if I
could see what worse it could do than it is already doing. And the
disadvantage of that worst even from its own point of view is that
society, with all its prisons and bayonets and whips and ostracisms and
starvations, is powerless in the face of the Anarchist who is prepared
to sacrifice his own life in the battle with it. Our natural safety from
the cheap and devastating explosives which every Russian student can
make, and every Russian grenadier has learnt to handle in Manchuria,
lies in the fact that brave and resolute men, when they are rascals,
will not risk their skins for the good of humanity, and, when they are
sympathetic enough to care for humanity, abhor murder, and never commit
it until their consciences are outraged beyond endurance. The remedy is,
simply not to outrage their consciences. Do not be afraid that they will
not make allowances. All men make very large allowances indeed before
they stake their own lives in a war to the death with society. Nobody
demands or expects the millennium. But there are two things that must be
set right, or we shall perish, like Rome, of soul atrophy disguised as
empire. The first is, that the daily ceremony of dividing the wealth of
the country among its inhabitants shall be so conducted that no crumb
shall go to any able-bodied adults who are not producing by their
personal exertions not only a full e