The doctrinaire asks: “Could he not be as secure in his possession if the land were owned and exaction made by all the people?” Certainly. That is my contention. The whole tribedidexercise dominion over the land, but to encourage the individual member of the tribe to improve a particular portion of the wild land, the tribe agreed to protect the individual in that which his labor had created, namely afarm. My contention now is that the ultimate ownership of the land is in all the people; but society had a perfect right to divide it on such terms as were thought best and to guarantee to each individual “security of possession,” ortitle, to that which he had produced. The great trouble with Mr. Doctrinaire is that he does not begin at the beginning. If he would study the condition of the human race as it gradually evolved from the patriarchal state, the tribal state, the nomad state, into that fixed and complex status which we now call “Christian Civilization,” he would readily understand how private ownership of land was the axis upon which the improvement of the conditions of the individual and of the State turned. As long as tribes wandered about from province to province, with their herds of goats, or sheep, or cattle, nibbling the grass which nature put up, and moving onward to another pasture as fast as one was exhausted, there could be nothing but tent life, nothing but personal property. The house had to move every time the family moved. Therefore, when the herds devoured the grass in one place, and the tribe had to move to another, tents were struck, the few household goods were packed on the backs of the wives, or on the backs of other beasts of burden, and the family moved. When man and beast multiplied to such an extent that nature no longer supplied a sufficiency of food, it became necessary for the tribe to settle down, and to divide the territory upon which they settled among the various members of the tribe. That was done in Germany, as well as in various other countries, but I take Germany because the German tribes were our own ancestors. They divided the lands every year. It was seldom the case that the same tribesman occupied the same home for more than one year. Like the Methodist preachers of today, their homes were always on the go. The farmer’s home in those days was precisely like the Methodist preachers’ homes today—a matter to be fixed at the annual conference. The Methodist preacher who today is preaching in the town may next year be sent into the remote rural precincts: the mountain parson may next year be sent to the seaboard. The church is fixed and the parsonage is stationary, but the preacher and his wife and his children are forever moving. Now in precisely the same manner the tribesmen of the German tribes used to be going from farm to farm, and there were no considerable improvements made while that state of affairs existed. Why? Because we are just so constituted that we do not care to build houses for other people to live in, if we know it. When we start out to beautify a home, we may never enjoy it, but we expect to do so at the time, and without that expectation there would be no beautiful homes.
Mr. Doctrinaire thinks because each tribesman would try to grab the best piece of land, there was original injustice in allowing private ownership. If he will think for a moment, he will realize that the native selfishness of man does not make against the private ownership of land to any further extent than it does to the private ownership of personal property. When the tribesmen went out to hunt, each hunter sought to bring down the finest stag. Each hunter naturally wanted to hunt where the best game was to be found. Hence those eternal wars between theIndian tribes which brought down the population on the American continent. Hence also those feuds and tribal wars which desolated the East in the times of nomad life.
We find Abraham and Lot in a bitter dispute over a certain pasture; but as to the well which Abraham “had digged” there was no resisting his claim, thatwell was his property. Why? Because in the quaint language of the Bible, “He had digged that well.” In other words, while nature put the water in under the soil, and while nature made the soil itself, it was Abraham’s judgment which selected the place where he could find the water, and it was Abraham’s labor that removed the earth which covered the water. In other words, Abrahammade the well, in precisely the same sense that the pioneer in the wildernessmakes a farm.
But, as I said, the competitive principle, each one wanting to get what is best, reveals itself in all directions. Every fisherman has always wanted the best fishing grounds. Nations have been brought to war by this cause, to say nothing of tribal disputes and individual contests.
Nowhere have I contended that it was private ownership of land that made it possible for the laborer to claim and retain the product of his labor. I could not have said that because I know quite well that personal property preceded property in land. In other words, the laborers acquired a full title to the rude garments in which they clothed themselves, the rude implements which they used in the chase, their weapons, canoes, etc., long before they ever made farms. This has been explained fully elsewhere and does not at all antagonize the statement thataftera tribesman has acquired by his labor an interest in the land,the government of the tribe may be so arranged that the produce of the land will be taken away from the land-owner as fast as he produces it. Instead of robbery by taxation in land—products preceding private ownership in land—the reverse is the case. To fleece the laborer of what he produces on his farm was the after-thought of those who governed the tribe.
This is shown by the wretchedness of the peasant class in Russia today. Historians tell us that the Russian peasant formerly owned a very considerable portion of the land, just as the French peasants did, and in addition to the individual ownership which was in the Russian peasantry, there was a large quantity of communal land which belonged to each community of peasants as a whole. In the process of time, the ruling class in Russia put such burdens upon the peasant proprietor that he gradually lost his land and became a serf. Of course, Mr. Doctrinaire recalls that in 1860 the serfs of Russia were freed, and they were given a large portion of the land which had been taken away from them by the Russian nobles. They also held the communal lands. What has been the result? The ruling classes have put such heavy burdens in the way of dues and taxes upon the peasants that their ownership of the land, communal and individual, has brought them none of the blessings which they anticipated. Thus we have a striking and contemporaneous illustration of the great truth which I have sought to emphasize, namely, that the mere ownership of land does not emancipate the people.
Arthur Young, the famous “Suffolk Squire,” rode horseback over the rural districts of France, just before the Revolution broke out. He found that the French peasants owned their own farms. He made a close and sympathetic study of their condition.
And what was that condition?
Wretched to the very limit of human endurance. The king, the noble, and the priest were literally devouring the Common People. Privilege, Titles, Taxes, Feudal dues were driving the masses to despair, to desperation.
Yet the French peasant had “access to the land.”
In England, at that time, the peasants did not own land, and yet theircondition was incomparably better than that of the French.
Why? Because they werenotground down by Taxes and Feudal dues.
Could you ask a more convincing illustration?
Mr. Doctrinaire makes the point that when one member of the tribe decided to undertake the arduous task of making a farm out of a few acres of the millions which belonged to the tribe, this industrious member of the community “robbed” all the others when he claimed as his own that which his hands had made. I can see no more “robbery” in this case than in that of another tribesman who went and cut down one of the millions of forest trees which belonged to the tribe, and with painful labor hollowed out this tree and created a canoe. At the time the one tribesman made the canoe, every other tribesman had the same chance to do the same thing. At the time the one tribesman went into the woods and made a farm every other tribesman had the same right. If Mr. Doctrinaire thinks that the first occupant of any particular spot did not have the right to locate a farm, he might as well say that the first finder of the cavern, or the hollow tree, did not have the right to occupy that which he had first found, and yet he knows perfectly well that this right of discovery and occupancy was always recognized from the beginning of time and that from the very nature of things it had to be recognized to prevent the bloodiest feuds in every tribe. (A curious survival of this Right of Discovery is to be seen even now in the claim to the “Bee Tree” by the first to find it.)
Mr. Doctrinaire says, impliedly, that if the tribesman had fenced in no more than the spot out of which he had made a farm, injustice would not have been done to the tribe: but he says the tribesman went further and fenced in a great deal more—“vast areas,” which he could not use, and also “claimed” these as his own. How does Mr. Doctrinaire know that? I did not state anything of the sort. Nor does the historian state anything of the sort. I was tracing title to land to its origin, and I contended that the origin of title to land was labor. Consequently, my contention was that the tribesman fenced in that which his labor had redeemed from the wilderness—his original purpose in fencing it in beingpartlyto identify what was his own,partlyto assert his exclusive possession,but chieflyto protect his crop from the ravages of the wild animals that were still roaming at large in the forest. Mr. Doctrinaire must remember that the fencing of the farm was one of the most tremendous difficulties that the pioneer met with.Hehad no barbed wire;hehad no woven wire,hehad no convenient sawmill from which he could haul plank. No;hehad to cut down enormous trees, and by the hardest labor known to physical manhood, he had to split those trees into rails, and with these rails fence in that little dominion which he rescued from “the wild,” that little oasis in a great desert of savagery.
To put up the fence was heroic work. To keep it up was just as heroic, for forest fires destroyed it from time to time, and the pioneer had to replace the barrier against the encroachment of animal life and the inroads of savagery with as great a tenacity and as sublime a courage as that of the people of Holland, who tore their country from the clutches of the ocean and barred out the sea with dikes. Tell me, that after the pioneer had created this little paradise of his—rude though it might have been—amidst the terrors and the toils and sacrifices of that life in the wilderness,it should be taken from him by the first man who coveted it, and who said, “here, take your crop, that is all you are entitled to: take your crop and give me your farm!”Would that have beenright, at the time private property was first recognized by our people in Germany? Would that have been right at the time our pioneer farmers in New England and Virginia created their farms, endured difficulties and dangerswhich make them stand out in heroic outline on the canvas of history? No, by the splendor of God! It would have been robbery and nothing less than robbery for the tribe to have confiscated the farm which the pioneer of America had made—partly with his rifle, partly with his axe, partly with his spade—and throw it into the common lot where the idler and the criminal would have just as much benefit from it as the pioneerwho had made the farm.
As tothe abuse of land ownership, that is an entirely different question. I agree that there should be no monopoly of land for speculative purposes. The platform of the People’s Party has constantly kept that declaration as a part of its creed. The abuse of land ownership is quite a different thing from land ownership itself. I am not defending any of its abuses. I am simply saying thatthe principleis sound. All those things which belong to the class ofprivate utilitiesshould be left to private ownership, because I believe in individualism; but all those things which partake of the nature of public utilities should belong to the public.
Mr. Doctrinaire says that railroads have their power based in the fixed principle of private ownership of land. I deny this utterly. It was always necessary for the civilized community to have public roads. Even the Indians had their great trails which were in the nature of public roads. A public road never of itself did anything injurious to a community. The taking of land for a public road confers a benefit upon the entire community. It is for that reason it is laid out. The amount of land which is taken for a road, whether you cover it with blocks of stone, as the Romans did, or whether you cover it with iron rails, as modern corporations do, can inflict no injury whatever upon the communityunless you go further. For instance, if you erect toll gates on the public highways and vest in some corporation the right to charge toll on freight and passengers at those toll rates, then you have erected a tyranny which can rob the traveler and injure the community. In that case, you can clearly see it isnot the road, it isnot the land overwhich the road passes, that is hurting the individual and the public.The thing which hurts is that franchisewhich empowers the corporation to tax the citizens and the property of the citizens as they pass along that highway. In like manner, the road which the transportation companies use could never have inflicted harm upon individuals or communities.The thing which hurts is the franchisewhich empowers the corporation to rob the people with unjust freight and passenger tolls as they pass along the highway.
Mr. Doctrinaire mires up badly in trying to evade the point which I made about Italy. I contended that while it was true that great estates were the ruin of Italy, there had to be some general cause at work, injurious to the average man, before the soil could be concentrated into these great estates. This is very obvious to anyone who will stop to think a moment. Mr. Doctrinaire thinks that the great estates in Italy were acquired by simply claiming the land and fencing it in, by “each individual claiming far more than he could use.” If all the land of Italy had been claimed and enclosed, the power that these land claimers had over subsequent comers is obvious; buthowdid “the claimers” get the lands? The most superficial knowledge of Roman History ought to convince Mr. Doctrinaire thatItaly was cut up into small holdingsuntil one branch of the government, the aristocracy, represented by the Senate, gathered into its own hands by persistent encroachment all the powers of the State. After that had been done, they fixed the machinery of government so that the aristocracy were almost entirely exempt from public burdens, whereas the common people had to bear not only their just portion, but also the portion which the aristocracy shirked. The ruling class, the patricians, not only escaped their burdens in upholding the State but theyappropriated to themselvesthe revenue which the Roman State exacted from the lower class, the plebeians.The result was that the Italian peasant found himself unable to sustain the burdens which the government put upon him and he abandoned his farm, just as the French peasant quit the land, for the same reason, prior to the French Revolution. In other words,the small proprietor had to sell out to the patrician, and the patricians got these great estates in the same manner that Rockefeller, for instance, got the estate which he now holds at Tarrytown. The Standard Oil King did not simply stretch his wires and “claim” land. He bought out the people who found themselves unable or unwilling to hold their lands. Rockefeller stood relatively on the same ground of advantage held by the Roman patricians. Governmental favoritism, and special privilege, the power of money which he had attained through unjust laws, made him more able to buy than the individual owners around him were to hold.Therefore he absorbed the small estates, and his estate became the “great estate,” just as such great estates were created in Italy.
Mr. Doctrinaire can see the process going on around us. He can see how great estates absorb small estates. Our legislation for one hundred years has been in the interest of capital against labor. A plutocracy which enjoys the principal benefits of government, and contributes almost nothing to the support of the government, has been built up: charters have been granted by which large corporations exploit the public; and in this way great estates, whether in stocks or bonds, or gold, or land, have been created.
The same principles, the same favoritism, the same privilege, working in different ways, brought about the same results in France before the Revolution, in Rome before its downfall, in Egypt, in Persia, in the Babylonian Empire. If there is any one word which can be appropriately used as an epitaph for all the dead nations of antiquity, that word is “privilege.” The government was operated by a ruling class for the benefit of that class, and the result was national decay, national death.
Mr. Doctrinaire asks me: “How did the ruling class at Rome come to control the money?” I might answer by asking him: “How did the controlling class in the United States come into control of the money?” He would certainly admit that they have got control of it. How did they get it? They took into their own hands, in the days of Alexander Hamilton, the control of governmental machinery. They erected a tariff system to give special privileges to manufacturers. Out of this has come the monopoly which the manufacturers enjoy of the American market, and the natural evolution of the tariff act which Alexander Hamilton put upon our statute book more than one hundred years ago, produced The Trusts.
Again, the power to create a circulating medium to be used as money and to expand and contract this circulating medium, thereby controlling the rise and fall of markets, was a vicious principle embedded into our system by, Alexander Hamilton, more than one hundred years ago.
Again, the granting of charters to private companies to exploit public utilities is another means by which our patrician class has secured the control of money. Now at Rome there was a similar process. Instrumentalities were different, the names of things were different, but the ruling class at Rome had the power of fixing the taxes, and they appropriated to themselves the proceeds of these taxes. They had the power of legislation in their hands and exploited the public for their own benefit. In this way they secured, of course, the control of money. The one advantage of paying no tax themselves and of appropriating to themselves the taxes which they levied upon the plebeians was sufficient to give them not only the control of money, but the control of the land and of the man. In fact that tremendous power, to fix the taxes and to appropriate the public revenue, is all that the ruling class of any countryneed have in order to establish an intolerable despotism over the unfavored classes.
Mr. Doctrinaire has the fatal habit of crawling backwards with his logic. He says that the Roman Patrician could not have controlled the money until he got control of the land. The slightest reflection ought to convince him that this cannot be true. No class of men ever secured the control of money by merely controlling the land. Just the reverse is the universal truth. Without any exception whatsoever governmental machinery, the taxing system, usury, expansion and contraction of the currency hold the land-owner at their mercy. The land-owner, as such, never had them at his mercy and he never will.
Another instance of the crawl-backwards method of reasoning is given when Mr. Doctrinaire says thatusury grew out of land monopoly instead of land monopoly growing out of usury. When a man gets himself into such a state of mind that he can deliberately write a statement of that sort for publication, he is beyond reach of any ordinary process of conviction and conversion. My statement was that usury is a vulture that has gorged itself upon the vitals of nations since the beginning of time. Mr. Doctrinaire says this is not true. On the other hand, he says that land monopoly came first, andthenusury. If the rich people got all the land first, so that they had a land monopoly, upon whom did they practice usury?How could they fatten on those who had nothing?If Mr. Doctrinaire is at all familiar with the trouble between the Russians and the Jews in Russia he knows that one of the accusations brought by the Russian against the Jew is that the Russian land-owner has been devoured by the money-lending Jew. If he knows anything about our agricultural troubles in the South and in the West, he knows that the Southern and Western farmer complains that he has been devoured by usury. If he knows anything about the history of the Russian serf, he knows that the money-lending patricians made serfs out of the small land-owners by usury. If he will study the subject, he will find that in Rome, Egypt and Assyria the small land-owner was devoured by usury, had to part with his property and thus surrender to those who were piling up great fortunes by governmental privilege and by the control of money.
Take the Rothschild family for an example. Did they have a land monopoly which made it possible for them to wield the vast powers of usury? Theirs is a typical case. Study it a moment. A small Jewish dealer and money-lender in Frankfort is chosen by a rascally ruler of one of the German States as a go-between in a villainous transaction whereby the little German ruler sells his subjects into military service to the King of England. These soldiers, who were bought, are known to history as the Hessians, and they fought against us in the Revolutionary War. This was the beginning of the Rothschild fortune, the transaction having been very profitable to the Rothschild who managed it. Later, during the Napoleonic Wars, the character of a Rothschild for trustworthiness became established among princes and kings who were confederated against Napoleon and many of the financial dealings of that day were made through him. Of course, these huge financial transactions were profitable to the Rothschild. Again, a certain German ruler, during those troublesome times, entrusted all of his cash to the safe-keeping of a Rothschild, the purpose being to put the money where Napoleon would not get it. For many years the Rothschild had the benefit of this capital, and he put it out to the very best advantage in loans and speculations, here and there. By the time Napoleon was overthrown at Waterloo the Rothschild family had become so rich and strong that it spread over the European world. One member of the family took England, another France, another Austria, another Belgium, the parent house remaining in Germany, and to this day the Rothschild family is the dominant financial influence ofthe European world. In other words,by the power of money and the power of usury, they were able to make a partition of Europe and they are more truly the rulers of nations than are the Hapsburgs, the Hohenzollerns, the Romanoffs, or any other one dynasty which nominally wields the sceptre.
Now, can Mr. Doctrinaire ask for a better illustration of the truth of my statement that the power of money is not based upon the monopoly of land; and that the monopoly of land is the fruitage of the tree of usury? Originally, the Rothschilds owned no land. It was only after they had become so rich that they were compelled to look around for good investments that they began to buy real estate. Their vast fortune, which staggers the human mind in the effort to comprehend it, was not the growth of land monopoly, butwas the growth of usury. What the Rothschilds have done in modern times, men of like character did in ancient times, and just as the modern world will decay and collapse if these evil accumulations be not prevented, so in ancient times people went to decay and extinction because no method of reform was found in time to work salvation.
Mr. Doctrinaire asks me what is the cause of the Standard Oil monopoly. I thought that if there was any one thing we all agreed about it was that the Standard Oil monopoly had its origin in violations of law, in the illegal use of those public roads which are called transportation lines, the secret rebate, the discriminating service, the favoritism which the transportation company can exercise in favor of one shipper against all others, to the destruction of competition. You might end land monopoly, but as long as the railroad franchises exist, the Standard Oil monopoly will exist, if they can get the favored illegal treatment which they got in the building up of their monopoly and which they still have in sustaining it. The power of Privilege in securing money, and the power of money in destroying competition, was never more strikingly evident than in the colossal growth of Standard Oil. Mr. Doctrinaire might own half the oil wells in America, but unless he made terms with the Standard he would never get his oil on the market at a profit. The Big-Pistol is not the ownership of the oil-well. The Big-Pistol is the mis-use of franchises.
With all the power that is in me, I am fighting the frightful conditions which beset us, but I know, as well as I know anything, that the principle of the private ownership of land has had nothing whatever to do with our trouble.
Repeal the laws which grant the Privileges that lead to Monopoly; equalize the taxes; make the rich support the government in proportion to their wealth; restore public utilities to the public; put the power of self-government back into the hands of the people by Direct Legislation; restore our Constitutional system of finance; pay off the National debt and wipe out the National banking system; quit giving public money to pet banks for private benefit; remove all taxes from the necessaries of life; establish postal savings banks; return to us the God-given right to freedom of trade.
With these reforms in operation, millionaires would cease to multiply and fewer Americans would be paupers. Trusts would not tyrannize over the laborer and the consumer, Corporations could not plunder a people whose political leaders they have bought. Some statesman might again declare as Legaré declared twenty years before the Civil War: “We have no poor.”
English travelers might have no occasion to say, as Rider Haggard said last year, that our condition was becoming so intolerable that there must be reform or revolution. On the contrary, the English travelers might say once more, as Charles Dickens said in 1843, that an Angel with a flaming sword would attract less attention than a beggar in the streets.
And with these reforms accomplished any man in America who wanted to work a farm of his own could do it.
I cannot promise that he would getone of the corner lots of the Astor estate, but I have no doubt whatever that if he really wanted a farm, and were willing to take it a few miles outside of the city, town, or village, he could get just as much land as he cared to work.
Sir Walter Scott used to say that he had never met any man from whom he could not learn something. No matter how ignorant the humblest citizen may appear to be, the chances are that he knows a few things which you do not know; and if you will “draw him out” you will add to your knowledge.
The Virginia negro who happened to pass along the road while the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was puzzling his brains over the problem of mending his broken sulky-shaft, knew exactly the one thing which John Marshall did not know.
The great lawyer was at his wit’s end, helpless and wretched. How could he mend that broken shaft and continue his journey? He did not know and he turned to the negro for instruction.
With an air of superiority which was not offensive at that particular time, the negro drew his pocket-knife, stepped into the bushes, cut a sapling, whittled a brace and spliced the broken shaft.
When the Chief Justice expressed his wonder, admiration and pleasure, the negro calmly accepted the tribute to his talent and walked off, remarking,
“Somefolks has got sense and some ain’t got none.”
That little story is a hundred years old, but it’s a right good little story. A school-teacher, whom I loved very dearly, told it to me when I was a kid. He was the only man I ever knew who had it in him to be a great man, and who refused to strive for great things because, as he said, “It isn’t worth the trouble.”
He was naturally as great an orator as Blaine or Ben Hill. He was far and away a loftier type than Bryan, for he had those three essentials which Bryan lacks—humor, pathos and self-forgetful intensity of feeling. But after one of his magnificent displays of oratory he would sink back into jolly indolence, and pursue the even tenor of his way, teaching school. “It is not worth while. Let the other fellows toil and struggle for fame and for office, I don’t care. They are not worth the price.”
Few knew what was in this obscure teacher, but those few knew him to be a giant.
Once, at our College Commencement, the speaker who had been invited to make the regular address was the crack orator of the state. He was considered a marvel of eloquence. Well, he came and he delivered his message; and it was all very chaste and elegant and superb. Indeed, a fine speech.
He sat down amid loud applause. Everybody satisfied. Then the obscure genius to whom I have referred rose to talk. By some chance the faculty had given him a place on the program.
I looked at my old school-teacher as he waddled quietly to the front. I saw that his face was pale and his eyes blazing with fire. I felt that the presence and the speech of the celebrated orator had aroused the indolent giant. I knew he would carry that crowd by storm—would rise, rise into the very azure of eloquence and hover above us like an eagle in the air.
And he did.
Men and women, boys and girls, laughed and cheered and cried, and hung breathless on his every word, as no crowd ever does unless a born orator gets hold of them. Actually I got to feeling sorry for the celebrity who had made the set speech. He sat there looking like a cheap piece of neglected toy-work of last Christmas.
The faces of the leading people aftermy old teacher had sat down, were a study. The expression seemed to say, “Who would have thought it was in him!”
I don’t think he ever made another speech.
The brilliant eyes will blaze no more. The merry smile faded long ago. The great head, that was fit to bear a crown, lies low for all the years to come.
He left no lasting memorial of his genius. Only, as through a glass darkly, you may see him, in a book called “Bethany,” written by one in whom he, the unambitious, kindled the spark of an ambition which will never die.
There being no smokers in the “smoker,” I went in there to stretch out. The Florida East Coastline train was working its way down the peninsula, and was doing it very leisurely.
Into the “smoker” came a young fellow with whom I opened conversation. It turned out that he had been pretty much all over Europe. He had toured Germany several times. On the Sir Walter Scott principle, I sought knowledge from him, and he told me several interesting things.
One evening he had been at Heidelberg when the soldiers mounted guard. This being a regular function many civilians had assembled to see it.
An officer was putting the men through some of their exercises, when, at the order to “ground arms,” one of the privates let his gun down too slow.
The officer flew into a rage, rushed up to the soldier, slapped his jaws, kicked him repeatedly on the shins, struck him with the flat of his sword, andspat time and again in the man’s face!
Of course the officer was cursing the private for every vile thing he could lay his tongue to, all the while.
Said my informant, “He not only spat in the man’s face once, but he did it four or five times.”
I asked, “Was there no murmur of disgust or indignation in the crowd of citizens who were looking on?”
“None whatever,” he said. “The people took the occurrence as a matter of course. It happens so often.”
Then the young man rose up in the smoker, and showed me how the private had stood in his place, rigid, staring straight ahead, not daring to change his position or expression while enduring the kicks and spits of the officer. Not a word of protest or complaint did he venture to utter.
That’s Militarism, gone crazy.
Not long ago one of our high-priced city preachers declared publicly that we Americans needed an Emperor to head our army.
Do you recall a story which went the rounds of the newspapers a few years ago? In substance it hinted that William Hohenzollern, Emperor of Germany, had compelled one of his young officers to kill himself.
My traveller related to me the particulars as he had learned them in Germany.
The Emperor was holding a banquet, a revel, on board his yacht, theHohenzollern: wine had been drunk freely; loose talk was going on. The Emperor made some insulting reference to the mother of a lieutenant who was seated near him.
Upon the impulse of the moment, the brave boy did a most natural thing—he slapped the brutal defamer of his mother in the mouth.
Consternation paralyzed the Emperor and all his guests.
The lieutenant left the yacht; no one tried to stop him. Going ashore, he made ready to quit the world; and next morning he rode his bicycle deliberately off a precipice and fell headlong to his voluntary death.
And the high-priced, city preacher declared thatweneeded an Emperor!
Frederick the Great was really a great man.
Riding along the streets of Berlin one day, he saw a crowd looking up at a placard on a wall, Reining his horse, the old King inquired, “What is it?”
He was told that the placard contained a lot of violent abuse of himself.
“Hang it lower, so that the people can read it better,” ordered the King, and he rode on.
The pompous despot who now sits upon the throne of Frederick the Great puts girls and old women, as well as boys and men, in jail if they dare to say, or to write, anything disrespectful ofhim.
Is democracy gaining ground anywhere? Are not those historic allies, the Church and the State, encroaching steadily upon the masses? Are not the High Priest and the War Lord constantly putting a greater distance between themselves and the Common People?
Does notthe individual citizenhave less power and recognition now than at any other time since the founding of our Government?
Poor General Wheeler! After all his efforts to please Northern sentiment, they would not permit him to be buried with the Confederate flag in his coffin!
The Nationis a mighty good paper, but it ought not to class General N. B. Forrest as “a scout” and “guerrilla.”
General Forrest was named by General Lee, during the last year of the war, as the best soldier that the Civil War had developed.
Forrest was greater than his commanding general at Fort Donelson, at Murfreesborough, and at Chickamauga. He finally swore that he would not obey any more fool orders from blundering superiors, and he struck out for himself. During the short time that he held independent command his achievements, considering his resources, rivalled those of Stonewall Jackson in the Valley Campaign.
Nor shouldThe Nationbe too hard upon the West Point officers who followed their native states out of the Union. Justice to those officers requires one to remember that they were taught at West Point that the States had the right to secede from the Union.
IfThe Nationwill consult the text-book from which Generals Lee, Johnston, Beauregard and Wheeler were instructed in Constitutional Law, it will discover that these young officers simply put in practice that which their teachers had taught them to be their right.
The book to which I refer is Rawle’s work upon Constitutional Law.
After General Wheeler had tried so hard to win the heart of the North,don’tyou think they might have allowed the Confederate flag to rest upon his folded hands?
Thatwas the flag which he had followed in the storm of actual war. The Cuban business was nothing. It was child’s play, and pitiful child’s play at that. But the Civil War was real, was colossal, rent a continent asunder, and shook the world. It was the Confederate flag which had led Wheeler to his fame. His youth, his first and best, had been given tothat; of all the banners on earth none could have been dearer, holier to him thanthat.
To look upon it was to bring back the years and the deeds which had brought him glory. It associated itself with the heroes who had listened to his battle-cry, and who had sanctified their sacrifice to duty with their blood. It spoke to him of the hopes and the griefs and the despair of his home, the South; it recalled the enthusiasm and the heartbreak; the splendid devotion of noble women, and the resignation of conquered men.
Surely, surely the Confederate flag must have been the dearest emblem of Duty and Sacrifice to General Joe Wheeler.
Don’tyou think that Charity might have softened the heart of the North to the old warrior who was dead, and that they might have let him rest under the “Conquered Banner?”
The House: I give you warning, old man; it’s loaded!Bart, in Minneapolis Journal
The House: I give you warning, old man; it’s loaded!
Bart, in Minneapolis Journal
If George Washington Came to the Capital TodayMorris, in Spokane Spokesman-Review
If George Washington Came to the Capital Today
Morris, in Spokane Spokesman-Review
The Stirring War Drama Entitled: “Chased By the Enemy; or, Curfew Shall Not Ring This Evening”Opper, in N. Y. American
The Stirring War Drama Entitled: “Chased By the Enemy; or, Curfew Shall Not Ring This Evening”
Opper, in N. Y. American