land of 1776, maintained to build up a nation of customers for the benefit of a favored class at home. And so we find American ideas sacrificed not merely to commercialism but to special privilege. The people furnish the soldiers; the people pay the taxes; the people build the ships, and the trusts gather in the spoils.

This revolution in our government and ideals has been accomplished by wrenching the fundamental law and the fundamental sentiments of a whole people once devoted to liberty. The whole of society has been shaken. The evil passions, the evil ambitions of men are kept down in a large measure by the unwritten law of ideals which have become intrenched by centuries of indoctrination. There is no written penalty affixed to selfishness, cruelty, lying, hypocrisy, greed, dishonor or hatred or the other demons of human nature exorcised or controlled by the power of civilization. But when the rigor of those ideals is loosened at the top the whole system of morals suffers a relaxation and a relapse. A president may initiate the catastrophe, but its impulse will recoil upon him. The congressman and the senator will feel released from the strict course of rectitude. The judge on the bench will see in the life about him and the policies about him excuse for yielding to the gathering pressure. All other officials will be similarly affected. The influence will creep into private life. It will dominate the relations between men in business and in society. All principles, whether of government or of individuals, become affected. The highwayman in the alley knows what is going on and merely raves at the system that marks him out for sure punishment. At last it is only

a mask that conceals the bloated face of society. There is nothing left but organized hypocrisy.

We all expect men as individuals to be more or less illogical. Life is illogical. History is illogical. Governmental policy is still more illogical. But there is a limit to its illogic. When it reaches that point morals are prostrated upon their foundations. A president may change his mind-but not from the right to the wrong. He may contradict himself-but not in the same breath. He may preach one thing and do another -but circumstances must change. There must be reason for such alterations; there must be sound sentiment for them. If these are absent it will not be long until the humblest man in the land will understand. And if the president may do such things why not himself? It is a question of example.

If there ever was an irrational war it was the war with Spain. Americans deride the French as mercurial, sentimental, unsubstantial. And yet what appeared to be the American people demanded war with Spain. The Spaniards were governing without the consent of the governed, but they were willing to concede more than we have conceded. Weyler had instituted the reconcentrado camps, but Spain had yielded on that point. The homes of the islanders were being burned, the people were being butchered and the horrors of war hovered over the desolate land. But they promised to end the war. Spain confessed the objections to her course. And yet there must be war. The Maine incident was eliminated from the controversy by a court of our own selection. And yet there must be war. And the war came.

Then the American people beheld the United States move up and occupy the place vacated by Spain. We took their war and their methods. We tricked the Filipinos, we shot them, we burned their homes. We adopted Weyler's reconcentrado policy. We taxed them without representation. We put ourselves in the position where a combination of powers could drive us out for the same reason that we drove out Spain, and thereby make us a theme for epic laughter as long as the world should stand. Does the whole of history furnish so illogical a chapter? It seems too puerile to believe of a great nation which traces its liberties to the time when our ancestors were wild men in the north of Germany and when, as barbarians in the British Isles, they resisted Caesar and threw off the yoke of benevolent assimilation. The moral effect of such a course of shuffling and hypocrisy cannot be calculated because it is likely to affect untold generations.

At the very outset of the scheme of conquering the Filipinos it was known that the theory of the army had to be changed. Conquest cannot be left to a citizen soldiery, because volunteers fight for a principle. They fight for their rights and their homes. Such were our soldiers before imperialism became a national dream. With the volunteers we had twice driven back the hosts of monarchy. With volunteers we had met and defeated the greatest Anglo-Saxon army that ever took the field. And yet for the purpose of conquering a people armed in part with primitive weapons the creation of a regular soldiery many times its former size

was demanded.

This is what Gibbon wrote about the

two kinds of armies:

"In the purer days of the (Roman) commonwealth the use of arms was reserved for those ranks of the citizens who had a country to love, a property to defend and some share in enacting the laws, which it was their interest as well as duty to maintain. But in proportion as the public freedom was lost in extent of conquest war was gradually improved into an art and depraved into a trade."

There is no trouble about the size of the army. It is too large for legitimate purposes. But it is not large enough to be a necessary menace. The trouble is that the theory of our soldiery has been changed. Small in comparison as it is, it is the army of an empire and not of a republic. Our soldiers in the Philippines are not fighting for any principle. They are not defending their homes. They are not staying aggression. They are not repelling an attack upon liberty. There is no sentiment in the struggle. There is no conscience in the fight. It is of no consequence to our soldiers whether they win or lose, except as a matter of honor, advancement and money. For these they are there to conquer, as the Arabs were in Spain, as Spain was in Peru and Mexico, and as Great Britain is in south Africa. To conquer for spoils not for themselves, because they are only hired men, but for the trusts at home-as the Spanish regulars fought for gold for the sovereign, as the Englishman is fighting for the banks of London.

We have been assured by those who have made this army that it is too small to be dangerous to the people

at home. But the real danger lies in the change of our ideals. For if a small army can be created for oppression and conquest a large army can be created for the same purpose when a large army is required. And the precedent is already established for the use of such an army at home against the sullen discontent that has already been sown among the people.

This unaccountable revolution was not accomplished without fraud and force, and that more subtle form of coercion known as freedom with starvation. Professors were driven from their chairs, the pulpit was silenced, the press gagged, officials were retired to private life and a spirit of falsehood and misrepresentation pervaded the atmosphere. Imperialism cannot succeed without the satanic influences of life, and these came to the front with promises and threats, with dissimulation and with bribery, with every art that will persuade, silence, repress or purchase. And so as consequences of such an initiation it has followed that freedom of speech is denied; that debate is frowned down as tiresome and intolerable, and that the postoffice department has become a censor of the press invested with unbridled despotism. So long as Spain and France could repress discussion by cutting out men's tongues their forms of monarchy and privilege flourished. So long as imperialism can intercept the interchange of ideas by the modern methods of ostracism and starvation and by the prevention of discussion and publicity in all the ways in which it is done imperialism may flourish. But against reason in a fair and open field it stands no chance of success. With steam, electricity and the printing press elim