not be published before July. Russell
recalls the self-sacrifice of the conscientious objectors in Britain,
and the persecutions to which they have been exposed. He extols their
faith (a faith for which he himself suffered). The cause of individual
liberty is, he declares, the highest of all. Since the middle ages, the
power of the state has grown unceasingly. It is now maintained that the
state is entitled to dictate opinions to all, men and women. Prisons,
emptied of criminals, who have been sent to the front in uniform to take
part in the killing, are filled with honest men who refuse to be
soldiers and to kill. A tyrannical society which has no place for rebels
is a society condemned in advance. First of all its progress will be
arrested, and then it will become retrogressive. The medieval church at
least had, as counterpoise, the resistance of the Franciscans and of the
reformers. The modern state has broken everything that resists its
power; it has made around itself a void, an abyss wherein it will
perish. Militarism is the modern state's instrument of oppression, just
as dogma was the instrument of the church.--What is this state, before
which all cringe? How absurd to speak of it as an impersonal authority,
to invest it with a quasi-sacred character! The state consists of a few
elderly gentlemen, for the most part of less than average ability, for
they are cut off from the new life of the masses. Hitherto, the United
States has been the freest of the nations. She has reached a critical
hour, not for herself merely, but for the world at large, which regards
her with tense anxiety. Let America beware. Even a just war may give
rise to all possible iniquities. Vestiges of ancient fierceness linger
within us; the human animal licks its chops as it watches the
gladiatorial combats. We veil these cannibal appetites under
highsounding names, speaking of Right and of Liberty. The last hope of
our day lies in youth. Let youth claim for the future the individual's
prerogative to judge good and evil for himself, to be the arbiter of his
own conduct.

Side by side with these serious words, a large place, in the combat of
thought, is given to humour, that bright and beauteous weapon. Charles
Scott Wood writes amusing Voltairian dialogues. Here we see Billy Sunday
in heaven, filling the place with clamour. He preaches a sermon full of
Billingsgate, a sermon addressed to God, represented as an old gentleman
with suave and dist