by James Coplin

Created on: December 31, 2009   Last Updated: January 01, 2010

The Propaganda of the Deed

The cellar was chill, as bleak as the Parisian winter that entered its cracked mortar. A smouldering kerosene lantern supplied what little light and warmth that was to be offered. Within that small circle Jean Leherot's gloved fingertips twisted the serpentine wick through which he would transmute the Idea to the Deed.

It was reckless, he knew, to be working explosives so close to the flame. The soiled straw mattress on which he slept had been rolled back, the planks resting upon two kegs now his workbench. Upon it lay his tools, a pile of iron scrap, black powder and casings. He paused to warm his fingers, lifting the completed bomb and weighing it in his hand appraisingly. It was heavy - heavy, black and ugly .It was the perfect vehicle to carry M. de la Rochelle, the President of France, to his deserved place in Hell.

Of course Leherot did not actually believe in God, Heaven or Hell. Scattered about his cellar were the ink stained, well read copies of the anarchist newspaper La'Revolte which were both his Bible and the river of his thoughts.

 He didn't need it to know who his enemies were. They were all around him; the bourgeois, the capitalists, the courts, police, soldiers and all the rest who stole the very bread from the working class even as their tables groaned under the weight of their banquets. Yet La'Revolte and others like it clarified and defined that which he already knew in his heart. Property and possessions were the grindstones under which the Workers were crushed and could only be lifted by the violent rising of the oppressed. He and men like him were to be its prophets, preaching with the litany of the bullet, dagger and bomb.

He rose up from the table.  The Procession would be passing by soon and there was a particular spot he wished to be. Other then that he had no plan. If all went well the Ruling Classes throughout the world would tremble, knowing even their most powerful leaders were subject to the wrath of the down trodden.

 If not, it was all the same. The beauty of the Deed was its simplicity. The Anarchists had nor would tolerate no leaders. It fell to each to act individually, without direction- to strike without hindrance whenever opportunity presented. There were no ringleaders. Yet each act, successful or not, drew a frantic search for them resulting in mass arrests, trails and executions. By perception then, a lone assassin became an army as

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