Now dear lord, you are evidently a very powerful and learned man and a fine spokesman for the vested interests of your country, but evidently America is a dark continent to you. In England it is clear from what you say that every citizen is rich and happy and enjoys a fair share of these glorious and vested interests. Charles, you will hardly believe it, but it is not so with us. We have an institution called trusts, of which you have never heard. The greater part of our vested interests are cornered by a few citizens, and they are combining their vested interests into trusts. The goal before them is one grand, stupendous, colossal, universal, omniscient, omnipotent, national trust, and after that—don't stagger, Charley-a world-trust. Yes, it is coming very fast. The national all-trust is nearly here, in two years it will be finished. Then the capitalists of the civilized countries will discover the absurdity of international competition, as the capitalists of a nation have learned the folly of intra-national competition. Then of course they will unite, and all the vested interests in the world will be in the hands of a little board of trade and we shall have an all-world trust. To be sure this is all new and quite incomprehensible to one like you who represents a free and equal, rich and happy and benevolent people, for, as you told your interviewer, "our people [the English] absolutely rule," and if they absolutely rule they must have justice and each one a fair share in vested things, or they would not be as you declare, happy. You differ slightly in this from that political fogy Gladstone who lately died, who said that 'the institutions of England which have enabled her to govern successfully distant colonies and subject states are founded on the doctrine of inequality, but let that pass.

Lord Charles Beresford, great and honored aristocrat, we will explain to you why the average American citizen has no more reason to insure and fight and die for

*Quoted by Mr. Hoar in a speech at Worcester.

the vested interests of his country's monopolists than for the vested interests of the Hottentots and Bushmen. The owners of American vested interests are systematically and with malice pre-reasoned scalping and skinning the American people that is the whole story in a short sen

tence.

Men do not insure other people's houses-why should the mass of our people, who have no vested anythings left and derive no benefit from the foreign trade of monopolists' vested interests, insure them with a vast navy and army? Give us light on this, Beresford, schooled to great a airs. It is quite an insurance bill you ask us to foot for other people and for interests that will repay us nothing. The late congress appropriated $674,981,022 for the expenses of our government; in addition to this it authorized the expenditure of $44,104,500 for the construction of new war vessels. Forty-four million dollars in a lump sum to insure and protect American vested interests which have already taken America away from Americans! Remember too that our vested interests do not pay the taxes, they clandestinely shift them on to the many who have minimum or no vested interests.

In spite of your ignorance of the fact we have heard that England's vested interests are owned by a petty fraction of her population, and that when you are pleading for America to wake up to her commercial opportunities you are asking at bottom that the American rank and file shall come to the rescue of the pigmy clique of English vested interest owners. This is an insult to the body of the American people, although so good and disinterested a man as you does not know it. You do not know, to use your own words, that there is 'not a hap'orth of sentiment in trade,' either between individuals or nations; you would not dream of using the American masses to buttress the combined English and American vested-interest class. You have told us of your honorable descent from men who never robbed, who never destroyed

English Saxon liberties, and we shall take you at your word that you are an innocent saint.

7. Who 'Lord' Beresford says he is.

'Mr. Phelan-You yourself are a true Celt, are you not, Lord Beresford?

Mr. Beresford-No, I am a half-bred Celt. That is to say, I am Norman. I have no Saxon blood in me at all.

Mr. Phelan How far back do you trace your line?

Mr. Beresford-To the Conqueror; we trace to the Conqueror, because we came over with him. We can't go beyond that, though we have tried to.'

Every true American ought to revere Beresford after that. He is a lord, and he came over with William, the pious William who stripped their lands from the libertyseeking Saxons, destroyed their free institutions, and retarded the growth of popular freedom and upright human independence in England for centuries, infusing a foul strain of domineering robber poison which still runs in the Anglo-Saxon vein and prevents the realization of justice, the evolution of character, and the consummation of democracy.

This flippant aftercomer of William the Conqueror of England was a very good type for that robbing, vestedinterest nation to send over to our William the Conqueror of the Philippines. We doubt not Beresford loves and cherishes human liberty as vehemently as did that bushwhacking ancestor of his; the vested-interest ruling classes of England who invite us to arm in their defense likewise care as much for it.

CHAPTER V.

Business Enterprise of Generals.

The words of our fighting classes at home in favor of imperialism likewise lose all their force when we consider who these people are and the motives of selfishness which move them to seek for this country a military future. It is almost enough to name these classes over to understand why they wish expansion. Have we not lately had some deep experiences what a precious set of self-seekers our military officers of all grades and sorts are? Is there any thing in the daily conduct of our fire-eating professional politicians to make us think they care for the world, their country, or for aught beyond their own skins and interests? What of our eruptive press? What of great makers of trusts, so disinterested that they are taking all America as their own and damning the people to a hell of poverty and hardship? We charge these classes with seeking their own despicable private ends in painting the glories and profits of expansion.

Let us study them one by one. The trade of officers of war is war. Through schemes of war they promote themselves in the great objects of their lives, salaries, renown, affluence and influence. All their aspirations and hopes center on military magnification. And it is their trade art to make others see things as they do. They are a species of commercial drummer, whose business success hangs upon their convincing others that wars and rumors and preparations for wars are the most important affairs of human society. They must do this or remain always little people. They have the galling example of foreign coun

tries. There a general is a truly great man; he is really a god with his clanking sword, his glittering uniform, his awful majesty of mien, his towering disdainment of the common carcasses of mere citizens which creep on the low earth below him. It is a thing to be a general in Europe. Life has character if you can feel yourself reposing on the clouds of power, master of instruments to blow the groveling herd of men to dust if they run amuck the doctrines that you patron. How different in America! How abominable, how degrading! A general is only a mortal here, adored and deified by none-until recently. He swallows wind into his stomach and swells himself out in vain. He has been kept down in his proper place.

But times have changed and he thinks that if he throws a little more business enterprise into his trade he may win the privilege to expand and swagger and become a tinselled deity. Will he miss such a chance? Will he stint his arguments to convince his darling countrymen how good for them will be the owning of islands and invading of Asia? He looks forward to the time when he will not have to beg and argue to these countrymen, the time when with docile battalions behind his ramrod back he can stride haughty and ferocious across our part of earth and not demean himself by knowing that he has countrymen. Oh people of America, watch this fellow argue now! Because the army is still small, see how small and humble he is. With the deferential modesty of impassioned concern for us, he tells us of the danger of our coasts, talks soulfully of universal love, of duty, and of civilization!— this professional murderer, this smasher and preventer of civilization, verily talks of duty! But give him his army and what will you hear him talk of then? Go to Russia and listen to the generals; are they talking of love? To civilized Germany, free France, liberal England: are their generals talking as we would wish to give ours liberty to talk?