save ourselves. Will we only persevere in conquest and then with imperialism no millionaire will care a tick if we impeach, imprison, or hang McKinley, for the millionaire ends will be gained. Caesar was killed to save liberty, but it did not save it, for all the apparatus of monopoly was left standing, and another Caesar was soon ready, whom the people saw it was neither worth while nor possible to kill. Tyranny is not defeated by merely removing a tyrant, it is necessary to destroy the machinery of tyranny. The doctrine of Go on is for our tyrants all-inclusive and all-sufficient. It will unfailingly lead in the next congress to a new bill liberally enlarging the army and navy. We are cynically assured of this by those who know best. "If," says the future aspirant for the presidency,

If the people let their representatives in Congress hamper the administration, as they did last winter when they refused to put the army upon a proper footing as to size, permanence and organization, then the people have themselves to thank if the war lingers, and difficulties and danger increase.

What more do adolescent billionaires require than this? Here's the whole crashing climax, everything aimed at from the alpha, and shouted from the housetops without a flinch by one of their trusty henchmen. Go on, that is all you have to do, and you satisfy us; when the outburst of savagery is subdued keep a large force afield for use in minor outbursts; enough for us if the army is on a proper footing as to size, permanence and organization, and expansion marches.

Now that the secret is brazenly told from the fountain head we shall be Australian Bushmen or Otaheites if we do not grasp the deadly import of it and act. It cries out across the land in tones that ought to pierce and thrill the dullest heart, Awake! Awake! The knell of liberty has been struck! Come forth to its rescue or perish!

Do you dare to tell me after all the treasonable things that have been done to pave the way to a proper army that self-government will survive if we 'Go on'?

2. Withdraw From The Philippines.

The two points now made the most of by the million

aire coterie are these: Where the flag has gone up it must never come down; Because the Filipinos are half savage half child they cannot govern themselves and we must govern them.

Bragging of our wonderful conquest of dead Spain the reeking Alger expressed the first of these sentiments creditably to his personal exploits: "We went through the struggle and came out victorious. We transported across the sea more than 150,000 men without accident. We fought battles in the Philippines, Cuba and in Porto Rico, and we never lost a battle, a color, a prisoner or a gun. Wherever the American flag was planted by the American soldier, there it stands, and there it shall stand forever."* This flatulent argument has been disposed of by reminding all swollen heads that raining fierce blows upon a wormy carcass does not establish bravery, and a business man who plants his sign in a bad location is only an arrant fool if he does not take it down. Except for the benefit of generals, politicians, millionaires and kings, there is no mundane reason for keeping common sense and national affairs eternally divorced.

When this is answered the same fallacy wobbles up in another gown. Yes, they say, it was folly to have planted the flag, knowing all we now do, But it has been assailed, so now we must keep it stuck in the mud, in the name of Pride. Does the business-man who has raised his sign in a bad place think it necessary to keep it there simply because competitors assail him with competitive volleys and try to drive him out? This occurs every day, and the only question the true business man asks is whether there is a business reason for staying. He does not bullheadedly determine to injure himself and everybody else just for fun or for Pride's sake, as the nation is implored to do. The folly of corrupt politico-military reasoning reaches its height in this argument. For instance a brigadier-general who is not yet locked in a mental asylum calmly segaciates to his countrymen: “Of course we sustained none of the heavy losses experi

*Speech on his pseudo-triumphal return to Detroit, Aug. 2, '99.

enced in the battles of the war of the rebellion, but there were all too heavy losses, if they had not been imperatively required for the vindication of the assailed flag. The losses of the enemy were at least five or six times greater than those on our side."* Think of a man of business saying to his wife, I am losing a thousand dollars a day at my new branch business stand, but my competitors have assailed my trade and are trying to run me out, and I am imperatively required to vindicate my assailed sign. But then, the consolation is that they are losing at least five or six times as much a day as I am. The wife of that codfish would probably have him adjudged unsound of gill and put under restraint by the courts before he squandered his whole fortune.

But a memory comes up which is worth some hundred thousand common reasons, because we thought so highly of it that we corroborated it by force. Spain was dealing with Cuba on that very principle of saving the honor of her assailed flag. If that principle was sound we had no right forbidding Spain to pursue it; but we forbade her, and declared forever that the principle is not right. Hence it is not right for us to revamp what we have destroyed and apply it to the Philippines. Spain said what we are saying: The Cubans must first stop resisting and lay down their arms and acknowledge our gentle sovereignty, and we will then do everything that is right by them. We copy and repeat that brimstone paragraph, ad nauseam, about the Filipinos. But we then replied to Spain,

"If Spain should be permitted to pursue her course in Cuba, she would go on without remorse, and destroy, if possible, the patriots to the last man. Her black crimes call aloud for vengeance, and that vengeance will be taken by the American people in the interests of humanity.'†

And we acted on this to the extent of war. In other words we engaged in blood to establish the proposition

*H. G. Otis, at a reception to him in Los Angeles on his return from the Philippines, May 12, 1899.

+Cullom in the Senate, April 16, 1898.

that the right of subduing an enemy merely to heal a sore on your flag does not exist. We spent much treasure and many lives to prove that; we have since spent much treasure and many lives with the same troops to unprove it and prop again the Latin deathshead program which we knocked down. Historians in two thousand years will display with this the obtuseness of the Anglo-Saxon mind and make it a scientific canon for lumping us with other baboons and barbarians. For we do say, and say it constantly that we cannot treat with an enemy in arms against us--the identical plaint of Spain. The Spanish language of the United States is as follows: "The supremacy of the United States must and will be enforced throughout every part of the archipelago. Those who resist can accomplish nothing but their own ruin." [Article First of Proclamation of our Peace Commissioners to Filipinos, March, '99.] Unconditional surrender was the peaceful message of the peace commission.

A mass meeting of Chicago bishops, ex-congressmen and ministers of Christ's gospel, (May 7) resolved that the rejection of our peace propositions by the insurgents was "contumacious." They resolved that our soldiers are fighting "in just reprisal for an unprovoked attack." They resolved "Sixth-We regard the great issue of the hour to be the success of our country in the performance of the duty which it owes to civilization. Until this is assured-until armed insurrection has ceased-we have no terms to offer but the American terms of unconditional surrender." O God, forgive them, they know what they do! The great duty to civilization as they see it, is to put down armed insurrection, which was Spain's great duty as she saw it, and for endeavoring which we put her down!

Lastly, we regale ourselves on the peachy press. "In accepting the surrender of the insurgents, one thing

should be insisted upon with absolute firmness, and that is that the surrender should be unconditional. It should not be tangled up with promises, express or implied, such as will be likely to cause trouble in the future." The big fellow vindicates his honor by making no express or implied promises to spare the life of his little victim. That was the attitude that so deeply grieved us with Spain. We wanted satisfactory Spanish promises to deal kindly with Cuba, not demands for unconditional Cuban surrender. But we oscillate around to the Filipinos and bray the ultimatum—“Complete submission to the American power or continued war is the only alternative. This will, of course, be insisted upon by the American commander.”—“When the supremacy of our flag has been fully established, the problems of the future will demand and receive consideration.”

How crazy every one has become! When Spain fulminated this doctrine of the duty of unconditional submission, we all saw that it was nothing but vindictiveness and revenge, or the sinister cloak of recapture and loot! But when we do it? Well, fundamental principles do not change in six weeks or months. A doctrine cowardly,

vindictive, revengeful last summer is the same this summer. What was so mean that we could not allow Spain to do it, is so mean that some holy rescuer ought not to allow us to do it.

3.

"Sovereignty" the Billionaire Whelp.

The Committee on National Affairs of the New York City Republican Club, a club for the general guidance of the Universe, has just enunciated the second argument as an antidote for the revelations of truth-telling volunteers:

Among the four choices which were presented to us in the most surprising issues of the late war, which settled itself in ways quite beside the intention and beyond the ability of men, we have been led so far to choose the honest and intelligent course. We cannot give the islands back to Spain; we cannot leave them, with the Spaniards driven out, to a self-government to which they could not possibly be equal; we cannot, by the experience of the past, propose a joint pro