All four of these requisites exist in the United States to-day, awaiting the master hand that shall unite them. Many of the leaders of American public life know this. Some shrink from the issue, because they are unaccustomed to dream great dreams, and are terrified by the immensity of large thoughts. Others lack the courage to face the new issues. Still others are steadily maneuvering themselves into a position where they may take advantage of a crisis to establish their authority and work their imperial will. The situation grows daily more inviting; the opportunity daily more alluring. The war-horse, saddled and bridled, is pawing the earth and neighing. How soon will the rider come? 4. _Eat or Be Eaten_ The American ruling class has been thrown into a position of authority under a system of international economic competition that calls for initiative and courage. Under this system, there are two possibilities,--eat or be eaten! There is no middle ground, no half way measure. It is impossible to stop or to turn back. Like men engaged on a field of battle, the contestants in this international economic struggle must remain with their faces toward the enemy, fighting for every inch that they gain, and holding these gains with their bodies and their blood, or else they must turn their backs, throw away their weapons, run for their lives, and then, hiding on the neighboring hills, watch while the enemy despoils the camp, and then applies a torch to the ruins. The events of the great war prove, beyond peradventure, that in the wolf struggle among the capitalist nations, no rules are respected and no quarter given. Again and again the leaders among the allied statesmen--particularly Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Wilson--appealed to the German people over the heads of their masters with assurances that the war was being fought against German autocracy, not against Germans. "When will the German people throw off their yoke?" asked one Allied diplomat. The answer came in November, 1918. A revolution was contrived, the Kaiser fled the country, the autocracy was overthrown. Germans ceased to fight with the understanding that Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points should be made the foundation of the Peace. The armistice terms violated the spirit if not the letter of the fourteen points; the Peace Treaty scattered them to the winds. Under its provisions Germany was stripped of her colonies; her investments in the allied possessions were confiscated; her ships were taken; three-quarters of her iron ore and a third of her coal supply were turned over to other powers; motor trucks, locomotives, and other essential parts of her economic mechanism were appropriated. Austria suffered an even worse fate, being "drawn and quartered" in the fullest sense of the term. After stripping the defeated enemies of all available booty, levying an indeterminate indemnity, and dismembering the German and Austrian Empires, the Allies