Great Britain would, so far as our constitution allows. I do not think we should shirk the work of permanent government for them, anything other than permanent government, however desirable, will be most difficult. And my reasons are that future surrender is sure to be construed as a confession of failure, and would hurt the national pride. We need not have assumed the burden, but having done so it must be patiently and loyally borne.... And lastly, the whole spirit and tendency of the European policy, which we are following, forbids such surrender... No government can succeed there (in the Philippines) which is not based on force. We need to place a benevolent despot in every district in the archipelago. Therefore, the military government is the only one possible." (Theodore S. Woolsey, Professoral Skyrocket of the University of Yale.

This plaything is a great growth on the other, with machinery inside for walking, and is almost a baby. We have got on now where there is no presumption of future independence, and we must have a military despot over every island jewel in our crown. Will not this toy keep

us playfully engrossed for long to come? That's the intention of the givers. As we go out the annual door of the Academy of Wisdom, Bliss and Slops, another professor puts a tinted slip in our hands with the clammy information typed upon it "that the inhabitants of the tropics will never be capable of self-government in the sense usually attached to that expression."—(W. Alleyne Ireland from London, Imperial England.) Professory means by this to imply that if we are careful of this doll it will never wear out. The common people of America can play with the English wonder forever, and by learning hypnotism from the learned Academy can fix their minds on it to such an extreme that they will not remember the mortal necessity of eating at all-a splendid and imperishable conquest for learning and millionaires. How majestic American society will be with thousands of

plumed military Governors looking like General Boulanger stomping their clinking spurs around! We are now getting a three or four thousand candle power arc light thrown upon the scorpion under the cockpit phrase, 'Vindicating the dignity of the assailed flag'; the professors are throwing X-rays upon it and bringing out the bones and inward tumors: the resolve to squat viselike on savages forever and make the army an integral to the American governing system! That fine-surfaced doll has poison on the cheeks which little children may lick off in their love of beauty and die. Sure it is that if an X-ray were thrown on human history from the period of Cain to that of McKinley and Hanna it would discover not a military despot that was benevolent. It would disclose a drove of panther-hogs long enough to supply American packing establishments with army beef for nigh an aeon.

Stepping up from wall-eyed collegians to wall-headed statesmen, the most trippling translators of the divinity Greek of heaven into market-stock human, we are confronted with a doll and a maxim by mail-robber Smith (Charles Emory), one of the pieces of Cabinet furniture. The name of his doll is Blind Patriotic Devotion, the doll being blind; the maxim is tied around its neck wth a string on a brass tablet; it is a priceless treasure of thought first penned by Rameses the Great and handed down to Smith from the Pharaohs. This is it :

There is call for thoughtful and patriotic devotion on the part of the people. In dealing with great questions which concern the future of our country and its relations to the world there ought to be no room for narrow partisanship. Let us confine our partisan differences to domestic issues; let us limit our family contests to the family circles; let us, with patriotic spirit. . . [here he weeps, his voice breaks, and it is impossible to hear what he says] and when we come to confront foreign questions and foreign nations involving our honor, our dignity, and our interests before the world, let us stand united as one people, forgetting that we are Republicans or Democrats, and remembering only that we are all [McKinley] Americans together.

This Smith is a thoroughly honest and innocent fellow.

He thirsts for the abolition of partisan feuds which propose post-mortem examination of American institutions that are dying mysteriously on every hand. His doctrine is, let the dead stay dead and don't inquire for poison in their stomachs. Smith is no partisan. The other day Smith's president with Smith's help made an order abolishing civil service rules covering thousands of offices, so that the Democrats in them could be packed out and Republicans put in. This, however, is a 'domestic issue' and he says let us confine our partisanship to such small things and on the great questions of wars and massacres and the assailed flag and Boulanger military governors all over the world let us "stand united" and follow the Republican dictator McKinley without blinking. · If we don't elect McKinley again to show we sanctify his jugular revels it will be "narrow partisanship." Smith's posture is this, the nation must open its mouth and close its eyes and take in any foreign object provided by the administration of the party in power. This doctrine would authorize the president to declare war on China and levy ten million soldiers to invade it and no one would have a right to peep lest Europe might think we were not a united people. It is the dead doctrine of the absolutism of kings. On all the hugest concerns of the commonwealth it proclaims that the people must not think, discuss, or criticise or vote, but turn all over to the president. That is democracy gone to seed. Smith certainly knows how to make a doll that will do its duty.

When other dolls pall on the multitude the doll of trade survives and blooms. There is something perfectly ghastly about this doll, and that is why it charms. It suggests those awful crayon black and pale portraits of the family dead which hang on devoted walls. It gazes down with coffined urbanity, interrogating the waylaid— do you not think I'm a nice thing to have around? Trade in the eyes of the average man, the mere writhing citizenworm which turns at no kick, is a doll as big as Gulliver

in Lilliput. It terrifies the faithful sciolist believer like the mysterious horror which emanates from the hideous bronze face-making god idols of China, Africa, and antiquity. After all other dolls are played out this uncanny figure is wheeled forth on its juggernaut wheels and in the midst of incantations which no heads but those of ward politicians, economic professors and millionaires can fathom, the population is invited to play with that. One of the games connected with that is testing how many can be deprived of the means of subsistence in a short time. When we grow weary of killing savages for the honor of the flag, and ruling savages from national pride, and following the president whoever he may be, wherever he may go, and whatever he may do, we have to fall prostrate before the doll of trade or there is no good modernness in us. What if we were to brave its wooden lightnings and take the sawdust out of its legs, bowels, lungs and brainlobes one by one, and get into its holy of holies, if it has any, where some one has struck a sulphur match and the smoldering woodfire is sending out the fumes of superstition: perhaps if we did that, full-sized adult American men would lay by dolls and put on pantaloons and come out of the nursery to do men's thoughtful independent business.

CHAPTER XIX.

Without Consent of The American
Governed.

Our

The most momentous fact of the century is the manner of foisting imperialism upon us. To do it with our consent would have been one thing, to do it without our consent, as it has been done, is the greatest fourth-dimensional marvel of time. The guy of humanity which laid Spain at our feet opened the problem to the Millionaire Administration how to rob Spain and disarm popular suspicion. The act of confiscating instead of liberating Spain's territory had to be painted as an act of humanity. It was easy enough to say that all the Spanish islands should be liberated from Spain, but the pinch came in showing the humanity of our keeping them, particularly on top of our biblical asseverations not to do so. rulers got over that by inventing that the islanders are not fit to govern themselves. It is an invention, because it certainly had not and has not been proved. The hardest tussle came when the unselfish Trust Administration was called on to establish the humanity of exterminating a race to give it liberty. This intention was flatly stated by our war bosses. During that long bright period when we had the rebels 'well in hand," "Secretary Alger said that the situation was most encouraging, and that it was apparent that the Filipinos realized the strength of the United States and saw that resistance would mean extermination for them if they persisted in defying authority."* The invention used to clothe this deformity in virtuous humanity was the happiness of un