“United States and State regiments are organized on the unit of four, which permits the most rapid and effective change of front that can be devised. The art of war consists in making soldiers fight. The line of retreat must be kept open to avoid capture. In future revolts the people shall assume the aggressive. Army officers have wasted years of study over the science of street fighting, unavailingly. The plan below shows a method adopted as best. The troops are formed on the street in two bodies in column of four, headed by a Gatling gun. On the sidewalk a line of skirmishers and sharpshooters, whose duty it is to fire into the houses, the whole advancing cautiously. When a cross street is reached, a company is left to hold it, in order to keep open the avenue of retreat. Military knowledge has become popularized since 1877, and now, in almost any contest, it would be easy to find some fair leaders of the people who would devise some means of meeting such an advance, as indicated by the following diagram. The diagram represents a street corner. The plan is, at the street crossing to have bodies of revolutionists with movable barracks placed obliquely on the cross street, and who from there will fire vigorously upon the advancing column. They have supporters also in the building, also at the corner, whose duty is to throw dynamite upon the troops. If the position is carried, the party defending escape through the cross streets. The rear of the column can also be attacked from the cross streets. If the men in the barricades are armed with the new international dynamite rifle (which I am told exists in the hands of the revolutionists), I give it as a careful technical opinion, that, pursuing these tactics under brave and able leaders, fifty men can hold at bay and finally destroy in any of your cities an attacking force of five thousand troops.” Signed “R. S. S.” Alcatraz Island, December 8. The _Alarm_, December 26, 1885: _Bakounine’s Groundwork for the Social Revolution.—A Revolutionist’s Duty to Himself. (Free translation from the German.)_ 1. The revolutionist is self-offered; has no personal interest, but is absorbed by the one passion, the revolution. 2. He is at war with the existing order of society and lives to destroy it. 3. He despises society in its present form and leaves its reorganization to the future, himself knowing only the science of destruction. He studies mathematics, chemistry, etc., for this purpose. The quick and sure overthrow of the present unreasonable order is his object. 4. He despises public sentiment and acknowledges as moral whatever favors the revolution; as criminal whatever opposes it. 5. He is consecrated; he will not spare, nor does he expect mercy. Between him and society reigns the war of death or life.