CHAPTER XVII.

The King at Large.

1. His Motive.

Having shown that McKinley harbors a motive which he does not confess, and that unless he is a lunatic he could not behave as he does without such a surreptitious purpose, because if his mind were honest and free he would come forward and tell the people all and willingly let them make up their own minds, and would then abide by their will, what is this secret gadfly resolve which is goading the pompous despot's mind?

The secret is that the millionaire syndicates have determined to extend their predatory pastures by force of American guns. Our army and navy are to be for these universe-looters as their dynamite and jimmy to crack the safe of the world and get its treasure; McKinley is their despised caitiff in this deed. How did they get the fellow so under their heels? He was an incompetent business man of feeble caliber and caoutchouc will. He failed as a banker in the village of Canton, Ohio, and was picked up by Mark Hanna, a syndicateur of iron purpose wholly devoid of public virtues and conscience, an unblushing briber, the quintessence in every particular of the modern unbridled industrial adventurer-despot. This thug saw his chance and (with Kohlsaat of the Chicago Times-Herald we believe) pulled McKinley out of the melting-pot of his fortunes. Thenceforth and forevermore the bankrupt broker was Hanna's minion. The king-maker knew he could not be king himself, for there

is popular detestation of his ilk, but he knew that through his bondslave Mc he could rule more absolutely than if king. The late campaign followed in which at Hanna's beck the millionaires poured out their millions lavishly to make themselves despots of this hemisphere. Their success far exceeded their own twilight dream, for unexpectedly the question of expansion and imperialism arose while their willow king possessed the throne. At first they did not fully realize the possibilities which this opened, which accounts for the president's initial opposition to the Spanish quarrel. All they realized at the first instant was that a war would disturb trade currents and might delay their vast operations for welding all productive property of the States in a firm monopoly. But this was only momentary and their ideas electrically shot out to the horizon of world-monopoly. Their operations, half unconsciously to themselves, had brought them to the point where war was the next and inevitable step toward culminating their monopolist evolution, these operations had created the war conditions, and it was but a moment's act for the millionaires to become conscious of it and swell to their new world-role.

By magic McKinley was transformed into a 'loyal' and enthusiastic war president, and with subtle cunning at the war's close the colonial policy was engrafted on us. This was not done at the instance of the people, it was never placed before the people in a form which permitted them to act on it, the popular will on the subject was never ascertained and never sought; the executive took affairs into his own hands, shaped a program in his closet at the command of his masters, and has been prosecuting that program for months, not only without giving the sovereign people a chance to authorize or disapprove it, but without so much as deigning to make a statement of the contents of the program to them.

So he has in the few months thus occupied wrought a · revolution in American government. The people have been the highest tribunal, and have uniformly asserted their sovereignty; this president has succeeded in subjugating the people to such a depth that even without the formal courtesy of admitting them to his counsels he fastens on them a new system of government, as well as a fundamentally new national policy. The change is not less far-reaching than Julius Ceasar's alteration of the Roman commonwealth, which cost floods of human blood and finally the subverter's life. Everybody then saw what was happening and the best men fought rather than submit to it, and fell on their own swords when hope died; this equal revolution and greater subversion of democracy has transpired under so great a cloud of disguises, so gradually, with such pious persuasions of warimposed necessity and God-imposed duty, that men were dazed and the masses have aimlessly followed events rustically agape. The barbarian instinct of the party clan has been strenuously employed to knout and garrote thought.

2. Congress Slapped.

Obedient to the orders of the star-chamber millionaires the president inaugurated the plan of imperialism, unsanctioned by Congress or people; step by step he has delevoped that policy, entirely of himself, never consulting Congress or people. The Anglo-Saxon race fought many centuries to establish chambers of representation without consulting which monarchs could not act. On that rock all Anglo-Saxon polity thus far wrought stands or falls. McKinley the Omnipotent brushes that rock from his invading path as though it were a fretting pebble. He consults nothing but his sweet Gaveston, the millionaires. "Come Gaveston, and share the kingdom with thy dearest friend"; "He that I list

to favor shall be great"; The headstrong people shall not limit me.'

This ignoring the people and inaugurating a vast new plan of state by personal autocracy is the most trenchant and terrible event transpiring in the Anglo-Saxon world in modern times, being the undoing of Anglo-Saxon history, the strangulation of the Anglo-Saxon race genius. The foundations of the great deep are shaken and the pillars on which our world stands broken up. No longer are we Anglo-Saxons, having parted with the quality which entitled men to bear that name. 'Self-governing'

was the kernel of might and progress which indomitable way-breakers bore from the Elbe to the Thames and thence to Plymouth Rock-we are not worthy to be called their sons. The haughty domination of one man belongs to Constantinople, St. Petersburg, Berlin, our yielding to the little mounting sneak McKinley makes us Turks and Slavs. Liberty's birthright takes flight from us. But the daring dictatorship snatched by this McKinley leads to much which that magnificent has not foreseen. It absolves his subjects from allegiance to him. There is in people who were once Anglo-Saxon a supreme code: when elected men tread on their sacred vows of office those who elevated them are released from duty; the elected ruler who transgresses constitution and laws under which he bound himself to serve, destroys his title to obedience from those he rules.

McKinley began by transgressing an inviolable duty to receive from the people through Congress instructions what he should do in the East. He then concealed and protected himself behind ambiguity. When the people translated his actions into words and attacked the specified policy, his supporters denied the policy for him, and proved their denial by demanding where the president had ever declared such a doctrine. Since he would not verbally define his plan he could thus squirm out of any

thing, though convicted by his constant deeds. While doing everything that one designing unlimited imperialism would do, he always replied to critics that his only aim was the establishment of order in the Philippines. By this means he delayed much sharp attack, but did not for that delay his imperialist measures; he seized the truce to hasten them. His friends to this moment insist that when congress meets it will decide the Philippines' future, and they say, meantime stand by the president. They use this seemingly innocent language: "We have a right to demand of all good citizens to stand by the President as he upholds the honor and glory and the greatness of the flag, no matter what the individual ideas may be regarding the Philippine Islands." And all the while they are violently pushing operations designed to make impossible the action of congress along any line. but that which they are establishing. In Sing Sing and commerce such a method would invariably be chicanery.

So sure is the presidential flock of success that some of its most conspicuous geese exult in the market-place already that imperialism is forever and irrevocably fastened to the nation. That notable fiddle-string Whitelaw Reid often and passionately vibrates to the presidential tuning fork in the highest octave:

"Nothing in human power can ever restore the United States to the position it occupied the day before Congress plunged us into the war with Spain; or enable us to escape what that war entailed. No matter what we wish, the old continental isolation is gone forever. Whithersoever we turn, we must do it with the burden of our late acts and carry the responsibility of our new possessions." "We are actually and now responsible, not merely to the inhabitants and to our own people, but in international law, to the commerce, the travel, the civilization of the world, for the preservation of order and the protection of life and property in Cuba, in Porto Rico, in Guam and in the Philippine Archipelago."'*

Yet no one but McKinley ever said we should assume those responsibilities! It is all settled and the people had never a thing to do with settling it—no more than if Mc

*Address at Miami college, June 15. '99.