ose who live in the smaller countries that are minding
their own affairs and letting their neighbors alone.

4. _The Long Trail_

The workers of the United States are to-day following the lead of the
most powerful group of financial imperialists in the world. The trail is
a long one leading to world conquest, unimagined dizzying heights of
world power, riches beyond the ken of the present generation, and then,
the slow and terrible decay and dissolution that sooner or later
overtake those peoples that follow the paths of empire. The rulers will
wield the power and enjoy the riches. The people will struggle and
suffer and pay the price.

The American plutocracy is out to conquer the earth because it is to
their interest to do so. The will-o'-the-wisp of world empire has
captured their imaginations and they are following it blindly.

The American people, on November 2, 1920, gave the American imperialists
a blanket authority to go about their imperial business--an authority
that the rulers will not be slow to follow. First they will clean house
at home--that housecleaning will be called "the campaign for the
establishment of the open shop." Then they will go into Mexico, Central
America, China, and Europe in search of markets, trade and investment
opportunities.

Behind the investment will come the flag, carried by battle-ships and
army divisions. That flag will be brought front to front with other
flags, high words will be spoken, blood will flow, life will ebb, and
the imperialists will win their point and pocket their profit.

Behind them, in November, and at all other times of the year, there
will be the will, expressed or implied, of the working people of the
United States, who will produce the surplus for foreign investment; will
make the ships and man them; will dig the coal and bore for the oil;
will shape the machines. Their hands and the hands of their sons will be
the force upon which the ruling class must depend for its power. They
will produce, while the ruling class consumes and destroys.

The trail is a long one, but it leads none the less certainly to,
isolation and death. No people can follow the imperial trail and live.
Their liberties go first and then their lives pay the penalty of their
rulers' imperial ambition. It was so in the German Empire. It is so
to-day in the British Empire. To-morrow, if the present course is
followed, it will be equally true in the American Empire.

5. _The New