Transcribing the Past

  Credit to No Bonzo A short story demonstrating a possible Anarchist future, written sometime in the 1890s.   Common-Sense Country There was a country where Common-sense had somehow got the upper hand. In that country sense was as common as lunacy is in a madhouse. There was a place for everything, and everything was either in that place, or else was on the direct way there—the shortest way, the easiest way, the cheapest way. In that country everybody was brought up with the notion that the simplest plan in everything served everybody’s turn best, even the clever people’s; and it was taken as a matter of course that if things did not go wrong people wouldn’t. They read in their books of history and comparative sociology that in countries were things do go wrong, people go wrong too, in the blind, blundering attempt to straighten things back a bit. But in Common-sense Country it was always said when things went wrong that there had been some nonsen...

  Mil gracias! Christmas greetings and thanks from the Basque children     We thank all the people of England, Wales and Scotland who have helped us - The Basque children in England. Six months ago you saved nearly four thousand of us from bombs and machine-gun fire and hunger. To-day in homes all over your island we are being looked after, fed, warmed, and well-treated. Some of us have been able to go home to our fathers and mothers in Bilbao now that there are no longer air-raids. Those who have been looking after us took great care to see that only those claimed by parents should go home. Many of us cannot yet have that happiness. Some of us have lost all trace of our mothers after the fall of Santander and Gijon. Others know now that our mothers and our brothers and sisters are in Catalonia, suffering from hunger and cold and illness. They cannot take us back yet.      There have been some people who have made a lot of propaganda about our being here. T...