LITERARY WORK, ETC. 221 



movement among the workers in favour of a more rational and more 

 equitable system of government, and of social organization, will con- 

 tinue to grow as it has been growing during the last few years. I 

 trust that, in the more advanced countries — especially in Germany and 

 France — it may become sufficiently powerful, even within the coming 

 year, to exercise a decided control over the reactionary party, and 

 even be able to initiate, and perhaps to secure, some important legis- 

 lation for the extension of individual freedom, and for checking mili- 

 tary expenditure. 



As to the future (limiting ourselves here to the twentieth century), 

 I look forward to the same movement as destined to produce great 

 and beneficent results. 



The events of the past few years must have convinced all advanced 

 thinkers that it is hopeless to expect any real improvement from the 

 existing governments of the great civilized nations, supported and 

 controlled as they are by the ever-increasing power of vast military 

 and official organizations. 



These organizations are a permanent menace to liberty, to national 

 morality, and to all real progress towards a rational social evolution. 

 It is these which have given us during the first years of this new 

 century examples of national hypocrisy and crimes against liberty and 

 humanity — to say nothing of Christianity — almost unequalled in the 

 whole course of modern history. 



Scarcely was the ink dry of the signatures of their representatives 

 at The Hague Conference, where they had expressed the most humane 

 and elevated ideas as to the necessity for reduction of armaments, for 

 the amelioration of the horrors of war, and for the principle of arbi- 

 tration in the settlement of national difficulties, than we find all the 

 chief signatories engaged in destroying the liberties of weaker peoples, 

 without any rational cause, and often in opposition to the principles 

 of their own constitutions, or to solemn promises by their representa- 

 tives, or in actual treaties. 



England carried fire and sword into South Africa, and has robbed 

 two Republics of the independence guaranteed to them after a former 

 unjust annexation; a crime aggravated by hypocrisy in the pretence 

 that British subjects were treated as "helots;" whereas their own 

 committee of inquiry into the war has now demonstrated that it was 

 a pure war of conquest in order to secure territory and gold-mines, 

 determined on years before, and only waiting a favourable opportunity 

 to carry into effect. 



The United States, against their own " Declaration of Independence " 

 and the fundamental principles of their constitution, have taken away 

 the liberties of two communities, the one — Porto Rico — by mere over- 

 whelming power, the other — the Philippines — after a bloody war against 

 a people fighting for their independence, the only excuse being that 



