France is said to be threatened with a dynamite conspiracy,
which may become important in European politics. The miners of Montceau , near Macon, oppressed, as they thought, by a pions manager, attacked. the church and other buildings, and the images of the Virgin, with dynamite. They were arrested, and probably implicated others, whose arrest in turn revealed the existence of a secret society, pledged to destroy order and the bourgeoisie and to produce anarchy, by the use of dynamite. Affiliated committees were found to exist in Lyons, where the dining-room of a restaurant has just been blown up; and in Paris, where letters threatening explosions have been handed to the police ; and the central committee is declared to be sitting in St. Sauveur, Geneva, and to be allied to the Russian Nihilists. The latter story seems unlikely, but there may be darker Committees behind the Nihilists, men at war both with property and religion all over the world. The police are continuing their investigations, and a panic is setting in in Paris and Lyons which bodes no good to Geneva, as Switzer- land, if threatened for harbouring violent anarchists, would not be protected by Germany. As yet, the evidence is imper- fect, and the stories are wild ; but the existence of dreamers who think the road to a happier future lies through murder and destruction is, unhappily, too well proved. The discovery of dynamite seems to have unsettled dreamy brains all over the world, and to have intoxicated men already half delirious with the passion of pity, with a sense of unexpected power. They feel as if they wielded the lightning, the most dangerous of temptations for human beings.
