What was the Paris Commune, and what did it do? In the words of an impartial publication, "The Communard chiefs were revolutionaries of every sect, who, disagreeing on governmental and economic principles, were united in their vague but perpetual hostility to the existing order of things. History has rarely known a more unpatriotic crime than that of the insurrection of the Commune."[1109] "The Commune was an insurrection which initiated a series of terrible outrages by the murder of the two generals Lecomte and Thomas.... The incapacity and mutual hatred of their chiefs rendered all organisation and durable resistance impossible.... The Communists were committing the most horrible excesses: the Archbishop of Paris, President Bonjean, priests, magistrates, journalists, and private individuals, whom they had seized as hostages, were shot in batches in prisons, and a scheme of destruction was ruthlessly carried into effect by men and women with cases of petroleum. The Hotel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the Tuileries, the Ministry of Finance, the Palace of the Legion of Honour, that of the Council of State, part of the Rue de Rivoli, &c., were ravaged by the flames; barrels of gunpowder were placed in Notre Dame and the Pantheon ready to blow up the buildings, and the whole city would have been involved in ruin if the national troops had not gained a last and crowning victory."[1110] Socialists have nothing but praise for the Communards, who killed and burned, desecrated the churches and devastated the town. They speak with enthusiasm of the leaders of that outbreak as of heroes who fought for the "Brotherhood of Man," and they exalt them above the saints of early Christianity. The philosopher of British Socialism exclaims: "Limitless courage and contempt of death was displayed in defence of an ideal, the colossal proportions of which dwarf everything in history, and which alone suffices to redeem the sordidness of the nineteenth century. Here was a heroism in the face of which the much-belauded Christian martyrs cut a very poor figure."[1111] "It was in the Commune that we saw manifested as never before the strong compelling force of a secular altruism. Without hope of heaven and without fear of hell, men lived and died for the idea of a brotherhood of self-governing and self-respecting men and women."[1112]