begun in wasting strikes and bloody riots; and at every new outburst the wave of fire and blood spreads wider and rises higher.
We reproach the nations of Europe with their millions of armed men, but those millions are levied to repel the invasion of foreign foes. In our land it is hardly a secret that the millions of militia are mustering and drilling for the principal purpose of suppressing insurrection against the plutocracy by the "lower classes"—the laboring class of our own citizens. In every American city are rising the castles of the plutocracy in the shape of great armories for the militia.
But why, some may ask, should we turn from a future thus dark and threatening, to look vainly on a past which might have been, but which, alas! never was? Well, I could never quite agree with the philosophy of Whittier's oft-quoted couplet:
The saddest are these: It might have been."
or Dante's despairing cry of a lost soul:
Che ricordarse del tempo felice
Nella miseria."
