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Title: A Girl Among the Anarchists
Author: Isabel Meredith
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7084]

[This file was first posted on March 8, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GIRL AMONG THE ANARCHISTS ***

In spite of the fact that there are certain highly respectable
individualists of a rabid type who prefer to call themselves Anarchists,
it must be owned that it requires some courage to write about Anarchism
even with the sympathy befitting a clinical physician or the scientific
detachment of a pathologist. And yet it is certain that Anarchists are
curiously interesting, and not the less in need of observation from the
fact that apparently none of the social quacks who prescribe seriously in
leading articles has the faintest insight into them as a phenomenon, a
portent, or a disease. This book, if it is read with understanding, will,
I feel assured, do not a little to show how it comes about that Anarchism
is as truly endemic in Western Civilisations as cholera is in India.
Isabel Meredith, whom I had the pleasure of knowing when she was a more
humble member of the staff of the _Tocsin_ than the editor, occupies,
to my knowledge, a very curious and unique position in the history of
English Anarchism. There is nothing whatever in "A Girl among the
Anarchists" which is invented, the whole thing is an experience told very
simply, but I think convincingly. Nevertheless as such a human document
must seem incredible to the ordinary reader, I have no little pleasure in
saying that I know what she has written to be true. I was myself a
contributor to the paper which is here known as the _Tocsin_. I have
handled the press and have discussed details (which did not include bombs)
with the editor. I knew "Kosinski" and still have an admiration for
"Nekrovitch." And even now I do not mind avowing that I am philosophically
as much an Anarchist as the late Dr. H. G. Sutton, who would no doubt have
been astounded to learn that he belonged to the brotherhood.

Curiously enough I have found most Anarchists of the mildest
dispositions. I have met meek Germans (there are meek Germans still
extant) who even in their wildest Anarchic indignation seemed as little
capable of hurting a living soul as of setting the Elbe on fire. For it
must be understood that the "red wing" of the Anarchists is a very small
section of the body of philosophers known as Anarchists. There is no doubt
that those of the dynamite section are practically insane. They are
"impulsives"; they were outraged and they revolted before birth. Most of
the proletariat take their thrashing lying down. There are some who cannot
do that. It is out of these who are not meek and do not inherit even
standing-room on the earth that such as "Matthieu" comes. Perhaps it may
not be out of place to suggest that a little investigation might be better
than denunciation, which is always wide of the mark, and that, as
Anarchism is created by the social system of repression, more repression
will only create more Anarchism. However, I am perfectly aware that the
next time a wild-eyed philosopher, who ought to be under restraint in an
asylum, throws a bomb, all the newspapers in Europe will advocate measures
for turning all the meeker Anarchists into outrage-mongers. For of the
Anarchists it is certainly true that repression does not repress.
Anarchism is a creed and a philosophy, but neither as creed nor philosophy
does it advocate violence. It only justifies resistance to violence. So
much, I think, will be discovered in this book even by a leader-writer.

"In order that I might inquire better into the matter of this science
with the same freedom of mind with which we are wont to treat lines and
surfaces in mathematics, I determined not to laugh or weep over the
actions of men but simply to understand them, and to contemplate their
affections and passions such as love, hate, anger, envy, arrogance, pity,

and all other disturbances of soul not as vices of human nature, but as
properties pertaining to it in the same way as heat, cold, storm, thunder
pertain to the nature of the atmosphere. For these, though troublesome,
are yet necessary and have certain causes through which we may come to
understand them, and thus by contemplating them in their truth, gain for
our minds as much joy as by the knowledge of things which are pleasing to
the senses."

I. A STRANGE CHILDHOOD
II. A GATHERING IN CHISWICK
III. AN ABORTIVE GROUP-MEETING.
IV. A POLICE SCARE
V. TO THE RESCUE
VI. A FOREIGN INVASION
VII. THE OFFICE OF THE _TOCSIN_
VIII. THE DYNAMITARD'S ESCAPE
IX. SOME ANARCHIST PERSONALITIES
X. A FLIGHT
XI. A CRISIS
XII. THE _TOCSIN'S_ LAST TOLL.

In the small hours of a bitter January morning I sat in my room gazing
into the fire, and thinking over many things. I was alone in the house,
except for the servants, but this circumstance did not affect me. My
childhood and upbringing had been of no ordinary nature, and I was used to
looking after myself and depending on my own resources for amusement and
occupation.