"This is what you should try for. An attempt upon a crowned head or on a
president is sensational enough in a way, but not so much as it used to
be. It has entered into the general conception of the existence of all
chiefs of state. It's almost conventional--especially since so many
presidents have been assassinated. Now let us take an outrage upon--say
a church. Horrible enough at first sight, no doubt, and yet not so
effective as a person of an ordinary mind might think. No matter how
revolutionary and anarchist in inception, there would be fools enough to
give such an outrage the character of a religious manifestation. And
that would detract from the especial alarming significance we wish to
give to the act. A murderous attempt on a restaurant or a theatre would
suffer in the same way from the suggestion of non-political passion: the
exasperation of a hungry man, an act of social revenge. All this is used
up; it is no longer instructive as an object lesson in revolutionary
anarchism. Every newspaper has ready-made phrases to explain such
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