E

ever.

The tyranny under the Czardom of Russia is experiencing evolutionary processes of a radical revolutionary character, because of the transforming power of Count Tolstoi's writings.

This Christian iconoclast who has been the master literary stylist of the past two generations, devoted his superb talents to the amelioration of the downtrodden masses. The inspiring classics from his trenchant pen are bequeathed to unborn generations for the emancipation of the multiplied millions of the world's oppressed.

As Christ walked the Via Dolorosa

of

in order to become the world's perfect Savior, Count Tolstoi voluntarily went the way of the unrecognized peasant that he might become Russia's practical emancipator. That greatest weapon known to man, the pen, has done more for the populace of Russia than all other agencies combined. Tolstoi eloquently championed the cause Democracy and helped to precipitate measures fraught with incalculable worth to his country. Permanent revolutions travel the sure road of inevitable evolution. Tolstoi has wrought the inception of a far-reaching reformation. Russia is under the spell of a sweeping transition. The cryptic introduction before the preliminary Peace Conference by Sir Henry CampbellBannerman, "The Douma is dead; long live the Douma," is pregnant with a profounder meaning than at first appears. The ruthless abolishing of the Douma was significant of the passing of the ancient order, but the dauntless

Organized, entrenched state Socialism is thundering at the gates of the German Riechstag with increasing power. Germany's record of peace and prosperity under the reign of the Iron Duke was phenomenal. When Emperor William was a young Prince, Germany had 36,000,000 people; today, the Fatherland has a population of 65,000,000, and claims the world's trophy for peace. Notwithstanding the splendid intellectual, diplomatic and executive powers, and commanding personality of the Emperor, Germany is not in the masterly grasp of a Bismarck at this critical crisis. The Emperor and his suave nephew, Prince von Buelow, schemed to crush, at one fell swoop, the power of that detestable type of Socialism, by dissolving the Riechstag. The Emperor found himself in the dilemma of accepting a moderate form of constitutional government or accepting definitely prescribed limitations of power. The political Chesterfield, Chancellor von Buelow, experienced a sudden transition in favor of a delighted successor.

The London Times unearthed the correspondence between the Emperor and the highest official of the English navy. A young German editor pumped scathing criticisms into the Emperor's

vulnerable castle until a mild retraction was issued, while Dame Rumor whispered, across seas, that the Emperor was laboring under a species of insanity.

The dominant type of German Socialism is known as State Socialism, and is heavy with the poison of destruction of the home, church, and state. This subtle influence spreads like a deadly menace over everything.

France, with $117 per capita, and

11,000,000 families owning their homes out of a total of 12,000,000 families, seems thrifty, prosperous and contented. But France is seething in the throes of a national experiment by reason of the separation of church and state. The country is Catholic to the core, with 28,000,000 adherents. The wedge of Socialism entered and the leaders become tired of being ruled from Rome. M. Briand, the recently resigned Premier, was a pronounced Socialist. Conservative, impregnable, impenetrable, unchanging old England is on the brink of a social revolution and is literally honey-combed with the perforating influences of Socialism.

Minimize as we may the apparent in

dications of internal revolution of an imperial character and external clash of far-reaching consequences, and still Great Britian is siding up to a situation that is destined, sooner or later, to break the bond of Empire and change the whole map of Europe. A seething volcano is smouldering beneath the citadel of the world's greatest empire. A combination of heterogeneous forces conspire to consummate the greatest imperial catastrophe of all history. Every nation grows its own seed of destruction. The empires of the past planned their own overthrow by an insatiate craving for expansion. In the whispering galleries of the centuries, the graphophone of history repeats itself with invariable accuracy. Definite causes are certain to produce definite effects.

Germany is overpopulated and must have territory for colonization purposes. The only way to acquire territory is to cross some English possession. When the German army marches across English territory, it will be to the tune. of artillery that will shake all nations and reverberate around the world. Germany has the best drilled standing army on earth today, and the government has built up since 1848 a marvelous navy. They have followed the ways

of peace for more than a generation, but the Emperor seems to be itching to even old scores with the German blood that reigns on the English throne and rules the high seas.

The mongrel character of the population of the government on whose territory the sun never sets, superinduces unavoidable elements of palpable incompatability. India, Egypt, Africa, and Canada would swing, under sufficient provocation, into the column of independent governments. Like rocks on the edge of a high boulder, when one starts all immediately follow.

Organized Socialism has put its representatives into the Imperial Parliament of Great Britain, while militant suffragetism bombards the legislative and judicial departments with repeated onslaughts. The ancient regime is slipping from beneath their feet, leaving its advocates to reel under the intoxication of a tantalizing uncertainty.

I shudder to think of what the next ten years will write on the page of English history. The Hague may postpone matters by amicable arbitrary measures, but the ultimate consequences must eventually come.

A descendent of the old Hapsburg line startled the world with the point of his Spanish pen by signing a peculiar document concerning the church and state in the land of the Alhambra.

The almond-eyed statesmen of the Celestial Kingdom are twisting the tail of the sleeping giant by contending for a constitutional form of government.

The insurrectionists of the unspeakable Turkish tyranny wrought a marvelous part in the affairs of the mysterious Ottoman government. In their new Parliament they are driving the chariot of state directly to the goal of constitutional government.

Our Republic, the eighth wonder of the world, is drifting among the political shoals of a national upheaval. The ship of state has left its old moorings

and is out among the floating timbers without any sure place of anchorage. Confusion grows worse confounded. The party that has held power, practically for a half century by its solidarity, is now irreconcilably rent in twain. The brave insurgents have rolled up surprising victories and the battle has just begun. Stereotyped party lines are rapidly disappearing. An absolutely new alignment, possessing adaptability to conditions, seems inevitable. Democracy bids fair to rule in the halls of congress again. The door of hope stands ajar. The White House appears in the dreams of her majesty of the Southland. Her magic wand failed to bind the "Solid South" when apparently insurmountable barriers blocked the road to decency and principle. The Cromwellian spirit incarnated in the machine-conquering soul of Carmack-called the Democrats of

the old Volunteer State to join forces against an unscruplous Governor who trampled their honor and good name beneath his unhallowed feet.

Socialism in this country is on trial in its administration of the municipal affairs of the cosmopolitan city of Milwaukee.

The hand of destiny on the dial of fate points to high noon. The hour has struck. The dogs of war have been turned loose. The army of toilers is marching to battle. "Equal rights to all and special privileges to none," is the war cry of the tramping millions. There are but two roads by which a revolution travels. The one is by the ballot box. The other is by the cannon's mouth. The first is always preferable. The second sometimes becomes necessary. May the power of the untramelled ballot prevail is the soul-cry of our glorious uncrowned queens.

"C

WOLONIES abroad," "Expansion," "World Power," and expressions of similar ilk have a sort of magnificent suggestion to the ordinary man--the man who works and sweats and fights and tries to keep his rent up and to pay his debts. To him these and like expressions impart strength and wealth; imperialism to him is something to brag about. This I might call the Imperialistic Delusion, for it surely is a delusion, and one, I am sorry to say, that a great many of us entertain.

The American "benevolent assimilation" of the Philippines and Filipinos has not brought us strength. It has brought us weakness. It has not brought us wealth, but on the contrary has increased, and is increasing, our national deficit by millions. It is enriching Morgan and Carnegie and their associates, but I fail to see that it has taken any burden from our shoulders. I fail to see that it is helping US.

The United States Steel Corporation, that is, J. Pierpont Morgan and others of his stripe, believe in our being a "World Power." It helps them to market the products of their various. monopolies. They have to have foreign markets as our home market cannot absorb all of the manufactured products of this country, and if poor, simple old Uncle Samuel owns the foreign market, that makes it all the better -for Morgan. Why? Don't you see why? It's simple. If we did not have possessions abroad we would not have a big navy, and if we did not have a big navy our Morgans could not obtain trade advantages in the East. It takes a Big Stick to enforce the Open Door and secure trade advantages in the East and without the backing of a big navy our merchants would be left at the pole by those of Germany and England;

and Mr. Morgan-not we would be left "waiting at the church."

Mr. Morgan needs the big navy more than he needs anything else. Sixteen battleships carrying the stars and stripes around the world helps him, not us. We pay for the navy; he and other Wall Street pirates use it. We pay for the Philippines-in blood and money. We have been paying for them ever since that last night in April when Dewey steamed into Manila Bay, and we are still paying; but, the Morgans get the benefit. Those islands, ten thousand miles from our nearest coast, helps the Steel Trust and the Tobacco Trust to pay fine dividends on watered stock, but we pay more than ever before for steel, and a five-cent plug of tobacco is smaller now than it was twenty years ago.

In a moral sense, we have no right to the Philippine Islands. A republic cannot have colonies; it is contrary to fundamental principles. A republic rests upon the consent of the governed; a colonial government rests upon force. Once, under a man named Washington, we fought for the principle of a colonial possession, obtaining its inalienable right to a voice in the shaping of its own affairs. Is it right for us to deny that inalienable right, now? This same Washington, in his farewell address, the grandest address ever made to people, warned us against foreign alliances and possessions. All of our glorious past, the monopoly-throat-cutting present, as well as the ominous future, warns us against colonial expansion, nevertheless we are a "World Power."

Chief Justice Taney, in deciding the case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford, said: "There is certainly no power given by the Constitution to the Federal Government to establish or maintain colonies

bordering on the United States or at a distance, to be ruled and governed at its own pleasure; nor to enlarge its territorial limits in any way except by the admission of new states. * * A power in the general government to obtain and hold colonies and dependent territories, would be inconsistent with its own existence in its present form."

There are other warning voices from the past. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "If there can be one principle more deeply written in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest." Henry Clay said, "Of all the dangers and misfortunes which could befall this nation, I should regard that of its becoming a warlike and conquering power the most direful and fatal." The great Lincoln may be quoted time and again against imperialism, and Daniel Webster, the expounder of the Constitution, exclaimed, “Under our Constitution there can be no dependencies;" and it seems to me that a certain recent result, namely, a distinguished and well advertised gentleman getting it good and hard directly back of his Adam's apple, prove that there are many who still prefer "Old Constitutionalism" to this un-American "new nationalism.”

Our present Chief Executive, that "good natured gentleman surrounded by determined men who know just what they want," calls our retention of the Philippine Islands "one of the most interesting experiments in national altruism ever undertaken," and he is, of course, heartily in favor of keeping them as a colonial possession; yet, notwithstanding this statement, anti-Imperialists may well use words from his own lips as an unanswerable argument to show the necessity of our allowing the Filipinos to govern themselves as an independent nation. Two years ago at Washington President Taft announced himself as opposed to a tax on tea and in favor of a tax on corporation dividends in order to raies the money

It

needed to recover the large imperialism deficit. It is hard to conceive him as turning right around and alleging that our Philippine policy costs only a small amount, six millions of dollars, annually. However, our Washington statemen (?) often make strange and unaccountable errors in arithmetic in defense of their friends of Wall Street. The ominous future warns us against retaining the Philippine Islands. seems to tell us that the American blood already spilled over there will be as a drop in a bucket to what will be spilled if we insist on continuing our present policy of domination and oppression. There are many who say our navy must be doubled in size so that we may better protect these islands in the Orient. They assert that Japan wants the Philippine Islands and wants them badly enough to fight for them. If that be true, it is the very reason we should make them an independent nation. Certainly, the Filipinos would be in a better position to defend themselves as an independent country than as a dependent colony. As an independent people they would have an army, guns and munitions and possibly a navy; as a benevolent assimilator engaged in an "altruistic experiment" we could not afford to allow them such things. Our government, too, would be in a much better position to defend the islands if they were independent. We, as a protector, could detail offiecrs to train the Filipino soldiers, and when we consider how stubbornly they resisted the Spaniards and later, our own soldiers, we can appreciate the fight they will make when any other nation attempt to rob them of their independence. As allies, the Filipinos would be valuable aids to us in a war in the Far East; as subjects they would probably take advantage of our situation and strike for freedom. However, it is practically certain that if we would announce our definite policy to make the Filipinos independent, we could secure, by agreement with