2. De Negrier Dyer.

But now we are awake to the realities, and what is it still drives us on, why do we persist in the destroying obstinacy of biting a nail in two with glass teeth? It is the dignity of the flag. Somebody is telling us to immolate a hundred thousand farmers' sons a year if need is, or the nation's honor will be sullied; he tells us that the mistake we made in attempting the job on the ground that it would kill no farmers' sons, commits our livid honor to killing countless hosts of them. Waive his reasoning and look at him. He dashes out in his true colors under the scalding criticism of the newly disclosed facts. Give ear to the language of those who pretend to be the defenders of the dignity of the flag. The secretary of the Anti-Imperialist League wrote to Capt. N. Mayo Dyer of the Baltimore charging that the army' and navy are inculcating a martial spirit which threatens civil liberty. Capt. Dyer proves that they are not by the following reply: The Anti-Imperialist Secretary "ought to be denounced as a traitor to his country for writing such a letter. Anyone who will deliberately oppose and try to prevent the work of the army and navy of his country is as low in my estimation as though he were to deliberately take up arms against his country, and should be taken in hand at once."

We thank God that if our military porcupines feel this way they say it. To prison with anyone who talks against the army doings now, whatever the doings are! To the gallows with him if he says too much. The army is infallible. Rub your eyes and read about Dreyfus and the spotlessly, immaculately infallible French army of Eden. Our officers are using the very words of its of ficers. Captain Dyer says this: You are a traitor if you do not ignore all the loathsome revelations that have lately come to you from the Philippines, the scoundrelism and

fraud which the vampire army commanders and parasite president have vented on the nation must all be overlooked, and you must gaily continue sending your friends to death, for no purpose, for no end, for no good—because upon a misunderstanding you began to do it, and the president says keep on! The new Declaration of the American people then must be, Do what the president says, without a question, without a murmur, without even the insult to him of thinking about it, or you are a traitor. This is the American Army and Navy Declaration of Independence of the American people. Thanks, Dyer, no man ever helped liberty more than you have, for your words will damn the army and navy with the overwhelming American millions who still love liberty and will have it though all the batteries of hell stand between.

A little affair happened in France which may be set alongside of Dyer's outbreak as a companion piece. General De Negrier was until July 25 a member of the Supreme Council of War of France.

It

Among his duties was that of inspector of four army corps. appears that in the course of a recent tour of inspection he addressed to the commanders of corps a verbal communication violently censuring the government for its failure to defend the army, and declaring that if the government refused to interfere, they themselves must act in self-defense. Gen. De Negrier invited the commanders to transmit the communication to all generals and officers.*

Now this is a practical paraphrase of Naval Capt. Dyer's words. Whoever does not look at the American army and navy as we officers do, and sheepishly give up his nose for us to lead him by, ought to be denounced as traitor. De Negrier says that if the government of France fails to "defend the army” and “interfere” against those who disapprove and criticise any course it is pleased to take, "they themselves"-the army, the generals"must act in self-defense." Dyer says, "Any one who will deliberately oppose and try to prevent the work of the army and navy of his country is as low in my estima

*Paris Cable, Associated Press.

tion as though he were to deliberately take up arms against his country, and should be taken in hand at once."

Ossa on Pelion! Ever new insolence piled on insolence by these bursting military bullfrogs! Ever more daring insults and infringements on our rights of speech and act! And the American people supine, submissive, silent, cowardly. Even France can teach the skulking Americans a little. What response did the traitor De Negrier get for his incendiary instigation? 'General De Gallifet, Minister of War, hearing what Gen. De Negrier had done, instituted an inquiry and then summoned him to Paris and taxed him with the affair, which De Negrier was unable to deny.' A decree was then issued ordering his degradation, and disgracing him from the Supreme Council of War. ingly disgraced.

The traitor Dyer ought to be spank

It has gone too far when an army or navy upstart can talk that way to the free American race. Words like those are a nest egg for yet worse words and for actions. Break such an egg as soon as it is laid and tear up the nest if you do not want a brood of devils hatched hereafter. Bring this mouthy knave to civil judgment, strip off his anchor-straps, and thereby teach his kind that they are to hearken obediently to the American people, not to rule and insult them.

"A Jesuit, preaching before Louis XV., declared that blood alone could extinguish heresies, and it would be well to spill a few drops at once, in order to avoid the flowing of streams in the future." That is the position of De Negrier, Dyer and his fellow bravos toward their masters and paymasters, the sovereign people. Throttle those who are already crying out agains the damnable crimes of the Administration and Army, gag them, imprison them, spill a few drops of their blood, spill it all, and thereby awe the nation at large and freeze the rage that is beginning to swell. A hundred and forty-six years ago that might have answered in France, but it will not go

down in the United States of America now.

Rather will

these Military Snarlers who advocate it go down, a monument to posterity of one of the last attempts of the hateful military class to seize royal powers over a free people. If not, if Americans fail to rise to this crisis and crush the budding aspirations of the army and navy out, what will come? France will be repeated here. The story well authenticated came out, of ‘an atrocious plot to cause the assassination of Dreyfus by means of a simulated attempt at midnight rescue, when the prisoner awoke confronted by a jailer holding a loaded revolver within half an inch of his temple. This narrative, which is confirmed by Mathieu Dreyfus, is coupled with the revelation of the refined torture inflicted by forged dispatches presented to Dreyfus falsely accusing his wife of dishonor, and has stirred the passion of the masses to a tremendous pitch.' This thrice distilled fiendishness emanated from the French Cabinet, of which Meline, Lebon and Gen. Mercier were members, and was perpetrated to maintain the dignity of the army and preserve it from the cavil of civilians.

It is greatly important for Americans, who are consenting to be loaded with the annihilating incubus of an army, to saturate their minds with this pungent Dreyfus affair. The army paraded itself as the most honorable institution of France, as ours does; prattled with the apparent innocence of a newly feathered angel of the honor and dignity of the flag, as ours does. O ye gods, what good men these generals and colonels, the fellows of the General Staff and Cabinet Ministers of France were! Washed in the blood of Dreyfus they were cleaner than the children of Israel after sacrificing fifty thousand sheep; stainless, holy, honorable, like our generals and McKinley, their one supernal motive their country's good. what was this college of military saints who could not sin doing? These highest generals and ministers of France

And

were lying, perjuring themselves, inventing and forging false accusations of a brother officer-to keep the common people of France respectful to the army and their miscreant selves. It is altogether one of the blackest things in history; it is nearly as infamous as our butcherous treachery to the Philippines. You cannot readily gain a conception of this infamy, it is so foul and limitless. But if you can imagine Jesus during his years of preaching virtue, conducting clandestinely machinations to become the Emperor of Rome, and forging documents, blackening innocent men's characters, lying about the purity of their wives, and ordering plots for their secret assassination, you can comprehend the character and deeds of the leaders of the French army. And if Jesus, being detected and brought to trial for his secret crimes, had replied to the judges that it was perfectly right for him to do all that he did, because its object was to establish the kingdom of God on earth, we should have the perfect counterpart of what these diabolic French generals said they lied and perjured, they blackened others and concocted. assassination to establish the kingdom of the French army on earth, that sweet smelling necessary institution for France.

This is what the Dyers of our navy and army will do here one of these days if their acorn insolence goes unpunished, when the time comes that the honor of their sacred instrument requires perjury, false imprisonment, defamation and assassination. Remember, it was the highest military men of France Gen. Mercier was Minister of War-not the underlings alone, who engineered this dunghill conspiracy. Every man engaged in it was of that bestial vile fraternity of professional assassins of earlier ages—only a hundred or two years earlier after all —who were ever ready to put the knife into the prisoner of state whose life was inconvenient to the reigning devil; and these "fleshed villains, bloody dogs" are the loftiest