ributable the spread of governmental principles of equity
and liberty. He would seek to stamp with failure those hitherto
successful and self-rewarding methods, and so strike an effective blow
against their further adoption as being goody-goody, weak and
inefficient.
We see civilized humanity congested with over-population, excess of
energy and of production and suffering from a plethora of capital, the
entire condition rife on the one hand with prodigal waste and on the
other fraught with the cruel want of toiling and jostling millions
vainly fighting for space and the most modest means of
existence--conditions which presage an inevitable and universal crash
unless checked by a Malthusian or else by a beneficent and humane
remedy. We know the right remedy for at least staving off the impending
universal crisis lies in the manifold opportunities of creating outlets.
These exist to the full in the vast fallow regions of Africa, and in the
scope for industries and commerce in Asia and elsewhere. Each
well-devised colonizing scheme, every railway built, and every other new
investment would afford improved employment and relieve the general
strain; every true convert gained by the spread of Christianity would
become an obedient and reliable unit towards the menaced stability of
authorized Governments. We see capital impelled to vast enterprises, as
it were by secret forces;[13] we are aware of the activity of nations
singly and in co-operation in promoting and sustaining such projects.
All those efforts and outlets would serve as safety-valves for the
discontent of the ill-provided masses, and their success would render
them governable at a lesser cost, and even admit the reduction of
standing armies and other objects treated by the recent Peace Conference
at the Hague. The essential thing, indeed, is peace, and that in turn
would consolidate security and progress. But the enemy is interested
exactly the other way. His ascendancy is coincident, not with the
mitigation of the conditions of human existence, but in accentuating the
misery of the masses, driving them to desperation and to embrace illogic
and deceptive maxims of socialism and violent anarchy. It is with those
forces that he intends to uproot and usurp divinely instituted authority
expressly set up to repress evil and to protect person and property. He
wants by licence and not liberty to hasten the advent of that murderous
political power prophetically depicted
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