As military commander, as a great general, I eulogize the heroism and self-sacrifice of my blind slaves and hirelings that have returned from a successful campaign against a weaker nation. I speak of the great benefit that the success of our arms will confer upon the people, I emphasize its stimulating effect upon the progress of our country and upon our civilization. Yet while my anointed lips pour forth these solemn lies, my mind travels over the bloody fields of carnage; I behold the thousands of the slain, the mutilated bodies, the torn limbs, the streams of human blood.... I stand in the pulpit and call the faithful to prayer. I thunder eternal curses upon the heads of the unbelievers; I threaten the people with the torments of hell and I try to bribe them by the promise of heaven. Believe, live and be saved, I cry. Or else you will die and be damned! For I am the visible representative on earth of those invisible, extra-mundane spirits whom man, in his fear and ignorance, created to his own continued mental enslavement. Terrified, sin lies prostrate at my feet. It does not know that a sick conscience is a characteristic trait of all slaves. It is the universal self-accuser. Were the people--individually and collectively--to sin on a grand scale, were they to refuse to be the puppets of the man-made idols--were that to happen, masters and slaves would cease to be. The tyrants of the world are under great obligations to me. They must not forget this. For if they should, I will unfold my solemn black robe, I will smooth the hypocritical lines on my face--then shall the world behold all the filth and corruption that I, Dignity, hide." [Illustration] PATERNALISTIC GOVERNMENT. By THEODORE SCHROEDER. (_Continuation._) HERE is paternal solicitude with a vengeance in a law I requote from Wordsworth Donisthorpe: "They shall have bows and arrows, and use the same of Sundays and holidays; and leave all playing at tennis or foot-ball and other games called quoits, dice, casting of stone, kailes, and other such importune games. Forasmuch as labourers and grooms keep greyhounds and other dogs, and on the holidays when good Christians be at church hearing divine service, they go hunting in parks, warrens, and connigries, it is ordained that no manner of layman which hath not lands to the value of forty shillings a year, shall from henceforth keep any greyhound or other dog to hunt, nor shall he use ferrets, nets, heys, harepipes nor cords, nor any engines for to take or destroy deer, hares, nor conies, nor other _gentlemen's game_, under pain of twelve months imprisonment. "For the great dearth that is in many places of the realm of poultry, it is ordained that the price of a young capon shall not pass threepence, and of an old fourpence, of a hen twopence, of a pullet a penny, of a goose fourpence.