After all, however, do not the people rule? Does not the power of such extra-legal government continue by their choice? Can they not smash it if they choose? Theoretically, yes; practically, no! The extreme decentralization of the legal government--the success of the constitution and laws in preventing the concentration of power at any one point in any one office in a legal government--is the very foundation upon which the existence of the extra-legal government rests. It is also the chief reason for its continuance in power. The paramount power of the electorate as a whole is broken into infinitesimal fragments by the constitution and laws providing for a multitude of independent offices to be filled by election. To turn out an extra-legal government which has filled practically all of the offices in the legal government the electorate must be vigilant, active, and successful, not in filling one office or a few offices at a single election, but in the filling of a hundred offices voted for at all the elections occurring during a period of from four to eight years. The extra-legal government stands as a solid, well-organized, single-headed army against a large but disorganized mass. The latter may triumph at points or on occasions, but it will exhaust its strength in comparatively small and unimportant victories. Coming to the voting booth constantly handicapped by the densest political ignorance, without organization and without leaders, it falls again and again before the trained and permanent feudal army of vote-directors. There will be no serious danger to our extra-legal government from the electorate as a whole while the officers of the legal government are shorn of power or the opportunity by combination to secure power and compelled to face constantly an electorate ignorant of their personalities and their qualifications for office. It is one of the maxims of modern warfare that the important thing is to destroy or disrupt the opposing army--not merely to occupy a particular place or a particular territory. In the same way, in a war upon unpopular government, it is important to destroy or disrupt it, not merely to fill a few offices, or even many offices, with good men who are opposed to an extra-legal government which still continues in existence, ready again to seize the power of government when occasion offers. So long as the real government is in an extra-legal oligarchy at the head of a feudal organization of vote-directors which remains unimpaired, while the popular army occupies for the time being a few offices denuded of power, the campaign has accomplished next to nothing. In a few more elections the extra-legal government will again have secured as complete control as before.