manifestations away. I am about to give you the philosophy of bomb
throwing from my point of view; from the point of view you pretend to
have been serving for the last eleven years. I will try not to talk
above your head. The sensibilities of the class you are attacking are
soon blunted. Property seems to them an indestructible thing. You can't
count upon their emotions either of pity or fear for very long. A bomb
outrage to have any influence on public opinion now must go beyond the
intention of vengeance or terrorism. It must be purely destructive. It
must be that, and only that, beyond the faintest suspicion of any other
object. You anarchists should make it clear that you are perfectly
determined to make a clean sweep of the whole social creation. But how
to get that appallingly absurd notion into the heads of the middle
classes so that there should be no mistake? That's the question. By
directing your blows at something outside the ordinary passions of
humanity is the answer. Of course, there is art. A bomb in the National
Gallery would make some noise. But it would not be serious enough. Art
has never been their fetish. It's like breaking a few back windows in a
man's house; whereas, if you want to make him really sit up, you must try
at least to raise the roof. There would be some screaming of course, but
from whom? Artists--art critics and such like--people of no account.
Nobody minds what they say. But there is learning--science. Any
imbecile that has got an income believes in that. He does not know why,
but he believes it matters somehow. It is the sacrosanct fetish. All
the damned professors are radicals at heart. Let them know that their
great panjandrum has got to go too, to make room for the Future of the
Proletariat. A howl from all these intellectual idiots is bound to help
forward the labours of the Milan Conference. They will be writing to the
papers. Their indignation would be above suspicion, no material
interests being openly at stake, and it will alarm every selfishness of
the class which should be impressed. They believe that in some
mysterious way science is at the source of their material prosperity.
They do. And the absurd ferocity of such a demonstration will affect
them more profoundly than the mangling of a whole street--or
theatre--full of their own kind. To that last they can always say: 'Oh!
it's mere class hate.' But what is one to say to an act of destruct