ed by millions; the republican forms are
almost intact, but the relations of the United States to its conquered
territory and its subject peoples; the rapid maturation of the
plutocracy as a governing class or caste; the shamelessness of the
exploitation in which the rulers have indulged; and the character of the
forces that are now shaping public policy, proclaim to all the world the
fact of empire.

The chief characteristics of empire exist in the United States. Here are
conquered territory; subject peoples; an imperial, ruling class, and the
exploitation by that class of the people at home and abroad. During
generations the processes of empire have been working, unobserved, in
the United States. Through more than two centuries the American people
have been busily laying the foundations and erecting the imperial
structure. For the most part, they have been unconscious of the work
that they were doing, as the dock laborer, is ordinarily unconscious of
his part in the mechanism of industry. Consciously or unconsciously, the
American people have reared the imperial structure, until it stands,
to-day, imposing in its grandeur, upon the spot where many of the
founders of the American government hoped to see a republic.

The entrance of the United States into the war did not greatly alter
the character of the forces at work, nor did it in any large degree
change the direction in which the country was moving. Rather, it brought
to the surface of public attention factors of American life that had
been evolving unnoticed, for generations.

The world situation created by the war compelled the American imperial
class to come out in the open and to occupy a position that, while
wholly inconsistent with the traditions of American life, is
nevertheless in keeping with the demands of imperial necessity. The
ruling class in the United States has taken a logical step and has made
a logical stand. The masters of American life have done the only thing
that they could do in the interests of the imperial forces that they
represent. They are the victims, as much as were the Kaiser and the Czar
on the one hand, and the Belgians and the Serbs on the other, of that
imperial necessity that knows no law save the preservation of its own
most sacred interests.

Certain liberal American thinkers have taken the stand that the
incidents of 1917-1918 were the result of the failure of the President,
and of certain of his advisers, to follow the th