There was once a time when all the despotisms of Europe were banded together to destroy republican institutions, and when the threatening gesture of this young republic held them back from half a world. And thus bravely we guarded civilisation with our Monroe Doctrine, until the lesson of freedom had been learned. But now time has passed, and we have come to a new age, with new perils and new duties; there is a new kind of slavery in the world, and a kind in which we lead all civilisation. The control of our Republic has passed out of the hands of the people; by fraud and force our liberties have been overthrown—the very word has been relegated to schoolboy orations and Grand Army reunions. And by this new despotism of greed the people have first been plundered and crushed, and now are to be marshalled and led out to do battle with other peoples, similarly beguiled. In this work every force of reaction and conservatism in civilised society is now enlisted, every tradition of olden time has been called into service. No pretence is too hollow, no blasphemy too abominable to be employed; every national prejudice, every racial hatred, every religious bigotry is made use of—and the starving wretches of the slums and gutters of London are sent into South Africa to capture diamond mines for the glory of free Britannia, while the helpless peasants of Russia are led out with jewelled images of the Virgin in front of them to steal Manchuria in the name of Jesus Christ. It is with Germany that we Americans are scheduled to battle for the sake of the Monroe Doctrine. And what is the situation in Germany? There is first of all, the degenerate who sits upon its throne, and proclaims himself by grace of God the lord and master of the German people. There is in the second place, the hide-bound mediæval nobility of the Empire, the direct descendants of those robber-knights of whom we read a while ago, some of them living in the very same castles from which their ancestors made their raids. There is in the third place, the aristocracy of the army, whose insolent and dissolute officers beat, kick and maim the helpless country boys and artisans who are herded like sheep under their command. There is in the fourth place, the bigoted seventeenth-century Protestant Church, with its snuffy country parsons and doctors of dusty divinity. There is in the fifth place, the mediæval Roman Catholic Church, with its confessional and other agencies of Darkness. There is in the sixth place, a subsidised “reptile press,” whose opinions are written and whose news is garbled by knavish bureau officials. And every one of these powers, forgetting all past differences, and uniting with brotherly affection, are struggling with every prejudice they can appeal to, and every threat which they can wield, to hold the German people subject to the identical same “System” that rules in America, the industrial aristocracy of cunning and greed;