Wrong in a wrong war, the 'Manifesto des seize' of 1916

On March 14, 1916, a statement by fifteen French and foreign anarchists appeared in La Bataille, the daily newspaper of the French, then syndicalist, trade union Confédération Generale du Travail (CGT). In their “Déclaration,” they declared their opposition to the Allies making peace with Germany and for continuing to fight until the occupation of foreign territory by Germany and its allies would end. The fifteen signatories of what became known as the “Manifeste des seize” were “Christiaan Cornelissen, Henri Fuss, Jean Grave, Jacques Guérin, Pierre Kropotkin, A. Laisant, F. le Leve, Charles Malato, Jules Moineau, Ant. Orfila, M. Pierrot, Paul Reclus, Richard, Ichikava, W. Tcherkesoff.”[^1]
The declaration received wide coverage in the world press and stirred up controversy in anarchist circles around the world; it became the cause of heated polemics and broken friendships. The initiative had been taken by the Dutch journalist and economist Cornelissen, who had been working in Paris since March 1898. He feared the growing defeatism among the French workers but also among intellectuals, as evidenced by the resonance Romain-Roland received. A sign of things to come in his own circle had been the actions of a minority of the group around Les Temps Nouveaux led by Girard, who had tried to take over local and subscriber bases and use them for agitation in favor of immediate peace. That group could be called the anarchist Zimmerwaldians.[^2] Cornelissen's articles in the La Bataille — he had been foreign editor since the magazine's founding in 1911 — had led to conflicts with pacifist co-editors and with a growing number of militants in the CGT in 1916.
Immediately at the outbreak of war already, against a stream of refugees, he had rushed from his vacation home on Oléron on the French west coast to Holland via St. Malo and England. He wanted to garner support for the Allied cause in Holland. He had great prestige in libertarian and syndicalist circles, but now encountered disbelief and incomprehension in his own circles.[^3] His maneuvering left him isolated from the antimilitarist movement in the Netherlands. Returning to France, he remained committed to fighting the German danger in the Bataille. In 1915, he even devoted a separate pamphlet to the economic side of the war. Les Dessous Économiques de la Guerre was provided with a long laudatory introduction by Prof. Charles Andler, one of the leading intellectuals of the French Socialist Party.[^4]
In early 1916 Cornelissen wrote to his brother-in-law Warlaam Tcherkesoff and his friend Peter Kropotkin, living in London, that if things continued as they were, the anarchists would all become Tolstoyans, who would drag the working masses into their apathy, so that the dreaded authoritarian Prussians would overrun Europe. At the request of the London kindred spirits, among whom Jean Grave — before the war editor of the leading anarchist journal Les Temps Nouveaux —, Cornelissen drafted a manifesto, which was, however, replaced by Tcherkesoff and Kropotkin with their own version. Probably Cornelissen's text was too long-winded. He did, however, secure publication in the Bataille.[^5]
A month later, the text was included in the libertarian journal Libre Fédération, published by Jean Wintsch in Geneva. In May 1916, the text appeared in the first issue of the Bulletin “Temps Nouveaux.” It was published by some members of the preexisting group, with Cornelissen, Paul Reclus and his son Jaques as the driving forces. Cornelissen's wife, Lilly Rupertus, took care of the production of the magazine, as she had done from 1907-1913 in the production of the Bulletin International du Mouvement Syndicaliste.[^6] The Bulletin “_Les Temps Nouveaux_” appeared irregularly; a total of sixteen issues were published until July 1919.[^7] The line started with the Manifeste des seize was continued with great vigor in the magazine, and the 'seize' and their followers fiercely defended themselves against allegations by people like Sebastien Faure and Errico Malatesta. The latter even called Kropotkin and his followers "anarchistes de gouvernement" (government anarchists). A worse accusation could hardly be imagined for an anarchist.
The uproar the manifesto caused was not in the unexpectedness of the position taken by the fifteen leading anarchists. Kropotkin and Tcherkesoff had already expressed concern about the German threat to European civilization before the war, and their prose had occasionally been decidedly germanophobic. Germanophobia certainly also played a role with Christiaan Cornelissen, who had acquired his distaste for Germans at the international congresses of the Second International in Brussels, Zurich and London. On a trip with a CGT delegation to Berlin in 1911, his anti-German feelings had only intensified. For all the signatories, they actually held the German socialists as much responsible for not preventing the war as they blamed the German elite for causing it to break out. Memories of 1870-1871, German support for the oppressors of the Paris Commune, did not foster soft feelings toward the Germans either.
Among many socialists and anarchists in France, as well as outside, however, since the confusion of the first days of war in August 1914 and the war's entrapment in an endless war of attrition in trenches, the will for peace had grown. In any case, doubts about the sense of continuing the war were growing. Why not among the fifteen signatories?

German aggression posed a threat — transformed into action — not only to our hopes for liberation but to the whole of human evolution. That is why we anarchists, we antimilitarists, we enemies of war, we passionate friends of peace and brotherhood among peoples, joined the side of resistance and believed that we could not separate our fate from the fate of the rest of the population. Needless to say, we would have preferred the population to take up the defense itself. When that proved impossible, we had no choice but to submit to the inevitable.[^8]

And in the second Bulletin “Les Temps Nouveaux,” Paul Reclus wrote in an article “Absolut et relatif,” "The present conflict is a phase in the eternal struggle between Authority and Conscience; I reject the notion of remaining an uninterested spectator". The spiteful reference to Romain-Rolland is obvious, but more interesting is the view of the world war as a struggle between Authority and Conscience, just as that was the underlying thought in the Manifesto itself in noting that a German victory would set back "the whole of human evolution".[^9] In the fourth Bulletin we encounter the notion of France as the natural homeland of the revolution, to be defended against attack.

Given all the crimes committed by Germany to destroy France as the home of socialism, of revolutionary syndicalism and of anarchy, all socialists, revolutionary syndicalists and anarchists have an unquestionable duty to help in every possible way to destroy the official slave-driving Germany and to secure the rights acquired by the peoples through heroic struggle and revolution.[^10]

In the sixth Bulletin, of February 1917, a Russian anarchist who had served in France wrote, 'Contre l'Indifférence, lettre dun volontaire russe' (Against Indifference, letter from a Russian volunteer). He advocated the defense of democracy against “feudalism,” the defense of what human civilization had achieved, in the name of a better future. He also names the core of the argument of the pro-Allied anarchists. To a possible objection that you are collaborating in evil, he replies that a German victory is a greater evil. The destruction of democracy makes the achievement of Anarchy impossible. According to A. Lis, the “volontaire russe,” antimilitarism was not a value in itself, it was part of the total struggle for freedom. The individual, antimilitarism, had to give way to the general, the struggle against oppression. The struggle against Germany was part of the class struggle. In this, it was not a question of reconciling with the bourgeoisie in France, it was a question of fighting for the interests of the workers. After the war, a new flowering of Socialism in the democratic countries would then be possible.[^11] A similar spirit exudes from Peter Kropotkin's statement upon his departure for Russia, whereby now the Tsar had fallen. In his Open Letter to Western European Workers of June 1917, published in the seventh Bulletin, he proclaims that the task of the true internationalist is to liberate the subjugated peoples, in order to continue working for social revolution after the war.[^12]
In particular, it is the eighth double-thick, larger and more beautifully executed issue of the Bulletin, from September 1917, in which one can find the views of the pro-Allied libertarians — including their view of the immediate future — now that Germany seemed to be falling. Besides most of the “seize,” others like the leader of the CGT, Léon Jouhaux, now participated in the "Survey on the Conditions for a Lasting Peace". The notable thing is the emergence of what was later called reformist anarchism, the advocacy of as much federalism as possible, as much self-government as possible, as much control as possible for workers and, in the long run, expanding the power of the individual. But all the contributions are also concerned with justifying the pro-allied position. The preface is already:

We have condemned German aggression from day one and remain convinced that the victory of the Centrals (Germany and Austria-Hungary) would mean the irreparable downfall of our ideal of human liberation. Hence, our libertarian conscience looks forward wholeheartedly to the destruction of German militarism.[^13]

Charles Malato once again sharply articulated the problem of the greater and the lesser evil:

If they did not want to stand by like blind men in the face of the shocking changes that were taking place, libertarians had no choice but to defend the lesser evil against the greater, in the hope that out of the shambles, if not the realm of their dreams, then at least the germ of a new and better life would emerge.[^14]

Not until more than a year later would the ceasefire follow, and for another fifteen years the anarchist journals polemicized about participation in the war, often in strong language. Even in the historiography of anarchism, the “Manifeste des seize,” and the subsequent attitude of the signatories, is a thorny issue.
Now, was their stance really unique in the development of anarchism? We can refer to the attitude of the majority of French anarchists during the Dreyfus affair. After initial reluctance to help a rich bourgeois son of a perhaps unjust conviction, a large number of anarchist forefathers devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the rehabilitation of Dreyfus, with Bernard Lazare at the forefront. This included arguments such as participation in a general struggle for justice against feudal backwardness. But also, according to many anarchists, support for the imperfect, more or less democratic legal order was preferable to aloofness, which would play into the hands of reaction. The notion of pursuing the lesser evil already played a certain role in the debates of the time.[^15]
The most obvious parallel to the struggle of the signatories of the “Manifeste des Seize” is, of course, that of the dire choice facing Spanish anarchists at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Was making a pact with the Republic necessary to prevent a victory by the right? In those debates of 1936/1937 and in their treatment in the memoirs and historiography, we see the arguments and bitterness from the World War years returning. Perhaps some mildness toward the “governmental anarchists” of March 14, 1916 is in order among contemporary historians and anarchists, who, if they wish, can wrestle every day with questions concerning the lesser evil.
[^1]: La Bataille, March 14, 1916. The confusion over the number of signers had arisen because a place name behind a signer was mistaken for a name of a personal. [Translator: According to Cornelissen the initially signatures were 15 people but a second edition had 120: "And if, at the beginning, the document bore only fifteen signatures, a second edition already counted around one hundred and twenty, comrades from all countries (French, Italian, Swiss, English, etc...) and some of whom had expressly written behind their names : "to the armies". In short, the manifesto clearly expressed the opinion of internationalist syndicalists and libertarians, who had remained revolutionaries." Les devoirs des révolutionnaires et la guerre de 1914-1918, Plus Loin N°41, 1928] [^2]: Jean Grave, Quarante ans de propaganda anarchiste, Paris 1973,493-499. [^3]: Cornelissen/Chichery Collection (IISH) I G 1 a 21/23. Christiaan Cornelissen, Strijd, lief en leed 'n de Oude socialistische beweging en de Vakorganisatie. Persoonlijke herinneringen door Christiaan Cornelissen, 335-340. (Reference is made to my 1991 printed transcription available at the IISH. HJVV)
[^4]: Christiaan Cornélissen, Les Dessous Economiques de la guerre. Les Appétits Alletnands et lesDevoirs de l'Europe occidentale, par Christiaan Cornélissen, économiste hollandais. Avec préface de Charles Ancller. proftsseur á la Sorbonne, Paris/Nancy, s.d. [1915] [Translator: Can be found online at: ]https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9607047v]. [^5]: Cornelissen, Strijd, 341-343
[^6]: The share of Lilly Rupertus can be determined from Collection Cornelissen/Chichery IG la 24, and I G 2 a 18.
[^7]: Jean Maitron, Le mouvement anarchiste en France, Paris, 1975, vol. II, 234. The IISH holds the most complete series, of the Bulletins.
[^8]: “Déclaration,” Bataille, March 14, 1916.
[^9]: Paul Reclus, 'Absolut et rélatif, Bulletin “_Les Temps Nouveaux_” no. 2 [June 1916].
[^10]: Bulletin, no. 4 [winter 1916-19171. The quote is from the unsigned editorial introduction and is probably from Cornelissen.
[^11]: A. Lis., “Contre l'Indifference” lettre d'un volontaire russe, Bulletin, no. 6 [February 1917].
[^12]: Pierre Kropotkine, “Lettre ouverte aux travailleurs occidentaux,” Bulletin no, 7 [June 1917].
[^13]: Bulletin no 8 [September 19181, editorial introduction to the survey.
[^14]: Bulletin, no. 8 [September 1917], 31.
[^15]: Maitron, le Mouvement anarchiste, 1,331-342.