But the great armies and navies are not really kept to-day for foreign conquest. Now and then, in obedience to the commercial spirit that rules the world, these vessels of destruction are sent to foreign seas. But the rulers of the earth live on fairly friendly terms. Long since, the most ambitious have abandoned their dreams of world power and are content to exploit a portion of the earth. When warships are sent to foreign seas they usually fire a salute rather than train their guns for death. Monarchs the world over respect each other. They are bound together by ties of common interest, if not of common love. When a ruler dies, even though the most tyrannical and despotic, every other ruler promptly sends condolences to the sorrowing court; their own subjects may die unwept, but a touch of common feeling moves them to mourn a ruler’s death. Nations are bound by many ties to preserve peace among each other. Scions of royal families are handed round in marriage from court to court, treaties of all sorts are made and ratified in most solemn form; and even more than this, the real owners of the world, those who possess the stocks and bonds which rest upon the wealth that the poor have labored to create, these real rulers who make war or peace by giving or withholding funds, these own the great bulk of the property of the various nations of the world, and will not lightly suffer their possessions to be destroyed. And yet these same real rulers, who stand behind the thrones of all the world, approve of this preparation for war, approve of taking millions of men from their homes and training them to kill, approve of every fort and gun and battleship. More than this, they contribute largely of their private funds to build batteries and equip militia, especially in the great cities of the earth. Through the speeches of their agents and the voice of their press, all this grim visage of war is for the stranger without their gates. But in reality the prime reason for all the armies of the world is that soldiers and militia may turn their guns upon their unfortunate countrymen when the owners of the earth shall speak the word. And these unfortunate countrymen are the outcast and despised, the meek and lowly ones of the world, the men whose ceaseless toil and unpaid efforts have built the forts and molded the cannon and sustained the soldiers that are used to shoot them down.