To say that these armies and frowning forts and gatling guns are needed to maintain peace and order at home is to admit at once that the great mass of men are held captive by the more powerful few. Organized soldiers and policemen, courts and sheriffs, with guns and forts and jails, have the greatest advantage over the disorganized mass who cannot act together, and who know not which way to turn to keep outside the meshes of the law. Not one in a thousand need be trained to arms and authority to keep the unorganized mass in the place reserved for it to live. The purpose of guns and armies is to furnish the few an easy and sure way to control the mass. Neither are these armies made of the ruling class. The officers, it is true, are generally taken from the favored ones, but the regular soldier is the man too poor and abandoned to find his place in any other of the walks of life. He is only fit to be an executioner of his fellow man. No ruler can love his subjects when he takes their money and their labor to buy cannon and train men to shoot them down. That this is the real purpose of standing armies and warlike equipments is plain to all who have eyes to see. More and more the rulers have learned to build their barracks and mass their troops not on the borders of their land but convenient to great cities, in the midst of districts thickly populated by working men. As nations grow older the opportunities of the masses grow less. More men are called to serve the state, and greater preparations are made to preserve the possessions of the rich. These soldiers are moved from place to place, are massed at time of need, not in accordance with the petition of the citizens from whose ranks the soldiers come, but in response to the request of the ruling class. * * * * *