dding of
insatiable ambition. You have posed as the peace-keeper of Europe
until the train of war was laid, as you and your allies thought, in
secret, and then you let loose the forces of havoc upon your
fellow-men without ruth or scruple. Your path of victory has been
traced in blood and flames from one end of Europe to the other; you
have sacrificed the lives of millions, and the happiness of millions
more, to a dream of world-wide empire, which, if realised, would have
been a universal despotism.

"The blood of the uncounted slain cries out from earth to heaven
against you for vengeance. The days are past when those who made war
upon their kind could claim the indulgence of their conquerors. You
have been conquered by those who hold that the crime of aggressive
war cannot be atoned for by the transfer of territory or the payment
of money.

"If this were your only crime we would have blood for blood, and life
for life, as far as yours could pay the penalty. But there is more
than this to be laid to our charge, and the swift and easy punishment
of death would be too light an atonement for Justice to accept.

"Since you ascended your throne you have been as the visible shape of
God in the eyes of a hundred million subjects. Your hands have held
the power of life and death, of freedom and slavery, of happiness and
misery. How have you used it, you who have arrogated to yourself the
attributes of a vicegerent of God on earth? As the power is, so too
is the responsibility, and it will not avail you now to shelter
yourself from it behind the false traditions of diplomacy and
statecraft.

"Your subjects have starved, while you and yours have feasted. You
have lavished millions in vain display upon your palaces, while they
have died in their hovels for lack of bread; and when men have asked
you for freedom and justice, you have given them the knout, the
chain, and the prison.

"You have parted the wife from her husband"--

Here for the moment the voice of Natas trembled with irrepressible
passion, which, before he could proceed, broke from his heaving
breast in a deep sob that thrilled the vast assembly like an electric
shock, and made men clench their hands and grit their teeth, and
wrung an answering sob from the breast of many a woman who knew but
too well the meaning of those simple yet terrible words. Then Natas
recovered his outward composure and went on; but now there was an
angrier gleam in his eyes, and a fi