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good heavens, there is nothing that quails the regal impertinence of the commercial class, nor are they wrong. at all in confiding all their affairs to the great god Claptrap. Claptrap crowned the conspiracy of Alcibiades and humbled the glory of Athens, claptrap like a bellowing cyclone has swept across the track of nations. from that day to this crushing out the good and nobility in them, and why, pray, shall it not succeed again? It succeeded day before yesterday with protection, yesterday with the trust, why not today with imperialism, standing armies and dictatorships? Have the people grown in wit since Greece or since yesterday?

At all events it is clear what they expect, and in their gorgeous confidence in their claptrap god they proclaim undaunted that the people will surely grant them the favor to be fooled again. The trust has fooled nearly all people's possessions away, why shall not imperialism finish the good job and take also the fooled fools' liberties? So reason those who expect it to happen.

Will the same old gag work again? On this point turns American fate; the people never were confronted by so grave a question. Monopolists must now have a standing army to protect themselves from the people— they ask the people with invincible assurance to give them this army, to be this army. These monopolists do not say in so many brutally truthful words: 'Monopoly has only begun its rule, we shall absorb all, you may not submit peacefully, you must therefore give us a trenchant military force to police our universal monoply against yourselves'; but they say in the winsome language of charitable commerce: 'We need the Philippines and Porto Rico for national trade and prosperity; they are a stepping-stone to China where there is still more trade and national prosperity; all this will give the laboring man work and we shall all be blest, and shall also bless the Tagals and Chinese. Incidentally this will call for many

more new battleships and permanent battalions, but that is a small matter for we are a rich and mighty nation upon whom taxes and debts are rather like wings that bear us up than weights which drag us down. We shall not feel an army of one or two hundred thousand. And there is our dignity solemnly beckoning to us to come and take our place among the Powers of the earth, those noble Powers whose armies are so grand and common citizens so happy. We can't be one of them without an army; hurrah then, let us fall to with united. patriotism and create it!' This is the diplomatic language that monopolists use in their courteous request to the American people to commit suicide. These commercialists are a pack of barbers at their trade crying up expansion to shave us, but they are more than that—when they get us in the chair they will cut our throats.

CHAPTER XI.

The Military Curse.

1. Liberty Must Fall.

"I say then that there is no easier way to ruin a republic, where the people have power, than to involve them in daring enterprises; for where the people have influence they will always be ready to engage in them, and no contrary opinion will prevent them." These were the words of Machiavelli.* It has been true of the world throughout the past; is it to be true of modern republics? Is an army to be the invariable assassin of liberty?

These are questions of considerable import. We have begun the elevation of a great army, having leaped by one act of congress to 60,000 men, nearly double and a half our ancient force. We have involved ourselves in daring enterprises, against the earnest warning and counsel of all the strongest and best men of the nation. History says that when republics do these things they fall. Are we prepared to deny history, are we of a better caliber to create history of a new kind, or are we ready to sink back into monarchy and despotism?

Our span of popular government, but little more than a century, is hardly a day in the life of nations. The favoring conditions have been in every sense unique, our experiment altogether abnormal. When these singular advantages pass away will not our liberties pass with them? That is the expectation of the world, and all the indications of the time converge toward that event. Our freedom

*Discourses on Books of Livy, ch. LIII.

has rested upon nature's generous distribution of immense material resources. Land was obtainable for the asking, and all men could live independently. The land has gone and independence with it; the abnormal conditions in which freedom grew have disappeared and the promise is already vivid that freedom is about to depart.

There is the closest union between freedom and the distribution of wealth. Freedom is a consequence of the just distribution of wealth and vanishes if wealth concentrates. If, on the other hand, there is true popular freedom in fact and spirit, there will be fair distribution of wealth as an effect. The law and condition of freedom is equitable distribution of wealth.

This floods the present chaos with light. The unique advantages of our new country have crossed the meridian. and are going down, we are becoming normal in the European sense, the laws governing wealth in old countries now govern in ours. The crucial consequence of this full settling and industrializing of the country is that wealth ceases its fair distribution and is gathered by the few rulers of trade. Coincidently with this new order freedom also droops toward the horizon. Events happen which seem fortuitous and are treated as detached and astonishing, whereas they are results of the ending of equity in distribution. The war with Spain followed by the Filipino war is a pretext, a mere concomitant circumstance; if it had not happened something similar to serve the guiding tendency would have happened. Industrial monopoly is total and universal, and must be protected; its protection calls for armies, and that is national militarism. Industrialism militarizes in order to terrorize.

The swift growth and stunned acceptance of the military program show that the soil had been knowingly prepared. It spread like clouds of poison in a single year and the people sunk torpid and powerless beneath its furious vapors. Go back this one year. Spain to be ejected from Cuba for the atrocity of killing Cubans in order to

own and rule Cuba for Spanish advantage. The horror of it was a stench in our nostrils too awful to endure; our nerves quivered with intolerable anguish at the sight. A year later we debonairely slaughter Filipinos in identical Spanish style, perpetrating the identical atrocity, for the identical Spanish reason, gain. The stench is no more, the anguished indignation at the murder of the weak has passed over into a fiercer indignation against the weak for resisting murder. What cataclysm fell on conscience, humanity, ruth, honor, in this curt year? They never existed. Nothing done has been accidental or inexplicable; all was buried in us when we feigned the rescue of Cuba; we have resurrected our nature: the secret of all was the necessary creation of militarism. Creation by whom and for whom? By the people, under spell of those who have confiscated the people's wealth and need a military police support.

But why, if we had freedom and knew its value, did we not keep it? We had enjoyed notable and exceptional equity in the distribution of wealth-why did we not retain that? And why did not this equity of distribution save our freedom for us if freedom and fair distribution are such close kin? The answer is that in spirit we never were a free people. We never yet have comprehended what freedom is. Had we done so the events through which we are coursing could not have transpired, even in shadow or burlesque. Lay this well to heart, for it explains all our present infamies and prospective woes.

The marvelous opportunities of life which were lavished on our people for a hundred years arose from no virtue of our own, but fell gratuitously from heaven upon our careless laps. We received them and, like prodigal sons, behaved as if they were deserved and would always deluge us in luxuriant showers. The lesson and the virtue which we ought to have learned we spurned; we did not ask the foundation of the freedom which we held, or how to fix it forever-we glided on recklessly sporting in the

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