And absurd also to say that we could not take and hold Cuba by force, only we said we wouldn't. That will be cleared up for us by and by by Mr. Grosvenor, the fidus Achates of McKinley. But before him let us stand Platt of New York, the famous liberty-loving boss of that State, on the rostrum and hear him talk. He comes out of the tar kettle and says:

There has never been absent from the floor of the Senate that class of intellect which has found in the Constitution its warrant for opposing new things. Nor is it new things only which are so resolutely opposed in the name of the fathers. It is the old things with new faces as well. Here we have been for a whole century annexing territory, annexing with a club or with a caress, just as necessity demanded, and yet Senators are discovering to one another the most acute distress over what they boldly describe as a 'departure from the time-honored traditions.'

Platt is that celebrated patriot who holds the Republican party of New York in the hollow of his conscience and sells legislation to corporations for cash, euphemistically entitled 'campaign funds'; a wretch who is a disgrace to his country and his kind and most inimical of all men to popular government because he has monarchized popular forms and made legislation chattel to monopolies. ‘Annexing with a club or with a caress, just as necessity demanded,' is quite a neat description of that shark in sheep's clothing, Congress, McKinley & Co. Platt is one of those sinister men who, like his colleague Croker, occasionally speaks the cantankerous truth, although for a warm quarter of a minute or two it lifts off the lid of hell.

It is now time to hear Grosvenor.

The idea, said he, that the army might be invoked to subvert our liberties was a man of straw. Mr. Grosvenor contended that the purpose of the administration had never deviated from the time the declaration of war was adopted with the absurd provision in it which no one here would support now. From that day to this, this government, under the guiding hand of the administration, had never deviated from its purpose, and stood today simply executing the orders and decrees of Congress, of civilization, and of Almighty God.

"Does the gentleman mean the Teller provision as the absurd provision in the declaration of war?" asked Mr. Dinsmore.

"I mean the provision that the people of Cuba were, and of right ought to be, free and independent," replied Mr. Grosvenor.

"I belong to a party," said Grosvenor on another day, "that has always upheld the cause of liberty. I belong to a party that has never pulled down the flag of liberty."

There is some evidence here of the date when God packed up and left Congress or was packed out of it. By the help of Almighty God Congress had been so successful in robbing chicken coops that congressmen were now not only able to repudiate Almighty God, but to devoutly wish they had never taken him into partnership. If we were to do it over again we would not insert that 'absurd provision' that we went not out for to steal, into the declaration of war. What was the use, Mr. Grosvenor asks, of going to the expense of getting a brand new tailor made robe of hypocritical unselfishness to do our rapine, spoliation and murder in when we could have done the whole thing just as well in our every-day clothes? No use at all, the cloak is very inconvenient when you have nice stabbing or fast running to do, let us throw it off, now, and that glazed mask of Godliness. which gets in the way of the eyes and prevents striking the fiercest blow, and do our stealing hereafter in our every-day clothes. Besides, continues Grosvenor, Almighty God will sympathize with us just as much. He knows that murder is an instrument of salvation as well as of burglary, and we can fool 'Him' into compliance by assuring Him' that we break into our neighbors' houses to get their property to give it to education and religion and liberty for the good of the neighbors themselves. Listen to me. Although we've kicked out God bodily as far as any attention to right and decency, honor, good faith and humanity, goes, I keep 'Him' on our side by saying in 'His' ear: 'This government stands today simply executing the orders and decrees of Congress, of civilization, and of Almighty God.'

God is finally carved up and devoured by Congress while Chauncey Depew says grace with dinner oratory. Depew had been as usual to England and was re

turned to the bosom of his fond Republican club. The number of guests is chronicled and the oracle then and there drafted a new American contract with God over 'His' remains. Behold the context:

There is a colonial possession desire. It is in the blood, and no power can stop it. Though we have not entered upon it in haste, we will uphold it with the strong arm of the military and navy. A people of the same intellectual blood are in hearty accord with us in this crisis, for the civilization and humanity of the world.

The Englishman understands us very well, but the Frenchman does not know any more about us than does the Chinaman.

They (the English) rally us goodnaturedly on our protestations of pure sentiment in the war, and say: "Yes, that is always the way we get in, and then stay. Christianity and civilization demand it, you know, and we give the beggars liberty, law, order and justice, which they never had before. It is in your blood. You have come by it honestly. You have aroused the appetite of earth-hunger and you cannot stop."'*

When do you think this was? Clear back in July, '98, showing that the political masters of the country had decided to throw over and slay God long before the clergy got wind of it. This bland cynicism is final and absolute, there is no doubting it, no going behind the returns, for Depew is part of the Republican pulse, he is as slick a thief as any, and his heart beats in cathedral unison with that of the Great Chief Thief. He says that all this God, Humanity, Christianity and unselfishness business is a great humbug, operated consciously by those in the political lead to satisfy the mass of fools in society who think that 'Christianity' and 'civilization' are something more than empty beer bottles or discarded wine casks. By that ruse 'we get in,' and 'then we stay there.' Who are 'we'? Why, Congress, McKinley & Co., and the millionaire trade monopolists; all the rest are fools, who have various hobby fictions which we pander to with big phrases, and so lead them our way like hogs with rings in their snouts. To muzzle these fools we call it 'For the civilization and humanity of the world'; we mean by that, Appetite of earth-hunger, Colonial possession desire, which nothing can stop, and which we will uphold with the

*Los Angeles Herald, July 2, 1898.

strong arm of the military and navy. Whose appetite? Whose army and navy? Those of the mass of American fools? Oh no, ours, Congress-McKinley-and-the-millionaires'. The fools obey us, or they wouldn't be fools. And the Porto Ricans and Filipinos and others that we convey God, humanity and civilization to? Why, the beggars, we just dose them up with liberty, law and order chaff and make them think they've got something tangible and rich, while underneath we take their whole kettle of fish, their country, and eat it to satisfy our ‘earth-appetite,' and exploit it to gratify our 'wealth-appetite.' And if they can't digest liberty and love we dose them with bullets. The merry shibboleth 'Christianity and civilization' fools one lot of fools, and the merrier one 'Liberty, Law and Order' fools another set. This way we net in the whole gang of American asses-all the country except Congress, McKinley, Me, and the millionaires. It's great fun, life's worth living—for us. I have to laugh night and day thinking how the farce of giving a people civilization, liberty, law and order under our absolute sovereignty and after we have taken away their whole. territory, goes down with a continent of fools! But it does; it slips down the American throat like Christianity castor oil, and purges away every rudiment of American insight. Just wheedle American prejudices by seeming to give in to and agree with them, and I defy you to show me one thing you can't do with the people. Talk of fools, if the cares of state and railroads and dinners gave me time I would invent a vocabulary of words to express the American character handsomely. Fool is mild, tender and complimentary, compared with the fact. Off-hand I should say they are a combination of dunce, knave, idiot, ass and hypocrite, for all the while they think, like a wicked old senile imbecile, that they are governing themselves, guiding us, and taking in somebody.

We have the word of a reliable Englishman, A. V. Dicey, that Depew is straight about the Christianity

civilization hoax on its English side. "We don't go to Egypt to civilize it," he says; "we go to get new mar

Is it irrelevant and irreligious to ask the American people whether they can stomach the humiliation which Depew, speaking for Congress and monopolists, has spewed upon them? Can they with honor and self-respect permit a policy which is trumpeted by its originators as a lie in all its texture, a gross, conscious and intentional fraud on the feebleminded multitude?

3. The Devil In Us.

The bud of American holiness was peculiarly made but must be looked into if one would comprehend the full flower which soon burst. We lied to Spain about the motives and reasons of our demands, she knew we were lying, we knew we were lying, she knew that we knew it and we knew that she knew it. We said to her, Act as if our motives and purposes were the opposite of what we both know they are or we will go to war and make you act that way; act as if we were fighting only to free and not to 'swipe' your territory, or we will fight you and free your territory and take it. The after utterances of our statesmen, which we shall amply examine, show beyond all doubting that these were our purposes and motives, held in abeyance, but held. Spain was bound by honor to reply to such a nation of liars (Congress & McKinley) with a war. It is one of the good acts of her life that with defeat and humiliation certain she replied to the great lying Yankee, 'Since you hold me up and order me to deliver my property, saying that the reason I must obey is the good of the property and not your greed for it, and proving this by swearing you will not keep it when both of us know you will, I refuse to obey. You give a lie as the reason for your robbing to shield yourself before the world, and you command me to affirm the lie

*Congress & McKinley.