strong arm of the military and navy. Whose appetite? Whose army and navy? Those of the mass of American fools? Oh no, ours, Congress-McKinley-and-the-millionaires'. The fools obey us, or they wouldn't be fools. And the Porto Ricans and Filipinos and others that we convey God, humanity and civilization to? Why, the beggars, we just dose them up with liberty, law and order chaff and make them think they've got something tangible and rich, while underneath we take their whole kettle of fish, their country, and eat it to satisfy our 'earth-appe tite,' and exploit it to gratify our 'wealth-appetite.' And if they can't digest liberty and love we dose them with bullets. The merry shibboleth 'Christianity and civilization' fools one lot of fools, and the merrier one 'Liberty, Law and Order' fools another set. This way we net in the whole gang of American asses-all the country except Congress, McKinley, Me, and the millionaires. It's great fun, life's worth living—for us. I have to laugh night and day thinking how the farce of giving a people civilization, liberty, law and order under our absolute sovereignty and after we have taken away their whole territory, goes down with a continent of fools! But it does; it slips down the American throat like Christianity castor oil, and purges away every rudiment of American insight. Just wheedle American prejudices by seeming to give in to and agree with them, and I defy you to show me one thing you can't do with the people. Talk of fools, if the cares of state and railroads and dinners gave me time I would invent a vocabulary of words to express the American character handsomely. Fool is mild, tender and complimentary, compared with the fact. Off-hand I should say they are a combination of dunce, knave, idiot, ass and hypocrite, for all the while they think, like a wicked old senile imbecile, that they are governing themselves, guiding us, and taking in somebody.

We have the word of a reliable Englishman, A. V. Dicey, that Depew is straight about the Christianity

civilization hoax on its English side. "We don't go to Egypt to civilize it," he says; "we go to get new markets."

Is it irrelevant and irreligious to ask the American people whether they can stomach the humiliation which Depew, speaking for Congress and monopolists, has spewed upon them? Can they with honor and self-respect permit a policy which is trumpeted by its originators as a lie in all its texture, a gross, conscious and intentional fraud on the feebleminded multitude?

3. The Devil In Us.

The bud of American holiness was peculiarly made but must be looked into if one would comprehend the full flower which soon burst. We lied to Spain about the motives and reasons of our demands, she knew we were lying, we knew we were lying, she knew that we knew it and we knew that she knew it. We said to her, Act as if our motives and purposes were the opposite of what we both know they are or we will go to war and make you act that way; act as if we were fighting only to free and not to 'swipe' your territory, or we will fight you and free your territory and take it. The after utterances of our statesmen, which we shall amply examine, show beyond all doubting that these were our purposes and motives, held in abeyance, but held. Spain was bound by honor to reply to such a nation of liars (Congress & McKinley) with a war. It is one of the good acts of her life that with defeat and humiliation certain she replied to the great lying Yankee, 'Since you hold me up and order me to deliver my property, saying that the reason I must obey is the good of the property and not your greed for it, and proving this by swearing you will not keep it when both of us know you will, I refuse to obey. You give a lie as the reason for your robbing to shield yourself before the world, and you command me to affirm the lie

*Congress & McKinley.

by behaving as if I believed it and pretending to give my property willingly, when the gun of your greed is at my head. I will not. I will resist, and you shall be compelled to take your booty by force, that the world may know you are a bloody villain, not a pious saint.

The point is this. Our lie compelled Spain to refuse our demands and to fight instead. If she had yielded to these demands, with our background motives in sight, it would have been criminal. This is not rhetoric. In declaring war Congress and McKinley said, The object of this war is to free oppressed peoples, that is why Spain must give them up, we shall not take these peoples or their territory. If they had said instead of this, The purpose of the war is to make Porto Rico, the Philippines and perhaps Cuba our own, that is our true ultimate purpose (as it turns out it was), we never should have gotten those colonies without a world war. Europe would have forbidden us, and if England had said go on, the continent of Europe would have fought England and us. Spain knew this. Spain knew that we were picking her pockets by chloroforming Europe with a lie; tearing away that lie, our work was merely brutal robbery, to be resisted by any honest nation. Hence she fought us under compulsion of duty, as a man would fight a burglar in his house at night. If the burglar said, I am a clergyman and you must not fight me but give up your jewels without resisting, it would still be the victim's duty to fight. If there were neighbors, which should they help, the householder or the clergyman thief? Congress was shrewder than the clergyman-burglar. It dressed up as half priest, half politician, and entered Spain's domain and fell upon her. When the neighbors heard Spain's cries for help and ran in, we showed them our clothes and said, This woman has stolen and misused property and we are here to restore it to its rightful owner. Poor Spain saw the devil underneath our false garments and

tried to show the others, but failed, and after they were gone we knocked her senseless and made off with all that she had.

The whole trouble was Spain's brightness. She saw through us. She knew she was dealing with a thief and murderer. She knew we would do as we have done. If the devil had not been in us all would have been different, she would not have seen it under our priestly police robe; our acts would not have been those of an excited robber, getting his plunder or killing its owner. It would not have been difficult to secure the 'freedom and independence of Cuba' but for the very obvious devil in us. Spain would have imagined the devil anyway, some think. That is begging the question. The devil was there and we could not help showing it. If it had not been there we should not have shown it, and time would have convinced.

But above all, our letting the devil in us out this time. entirely establishes the right of Spain's course in treating us as if we were a devil and fighting us, and it destroys our privilege to play clergyman or policeman again. We perhaps shall not wish to. Maybe we can carry on the devil's work we have begun in the devil's own jacket. Be this as it may we shall have to do so, for it is now known to the world that there is no saint anywhere in

us.

There is this proviso, already suggested. The American people only permitted the war as one for honest freedom, they did not sanction or enter it as a war for spoils, it is therefore an open question still how much the devil is in the American character, and how much confined to the American masters. In the first round the masters won unequivocally. For there is no question that the people were not devil enough either to have gone deliberately to rob Spain or to wage a war which they knew would become one of plunder. The clergyman's surplice on congress deceived the American people as well as the

powers of Europe. So far the whole people stand before the world as sheer devil because they have not repudiated and undone the work which a devil congress and president perpetrated in their name. If they do not undo it mankind will know that devil was ingrained in the American character, and that the momentary rulers only initiated a work which brought that latent devilishness into fierce and fractious play.