empty hands and under police surveillance was abandoned, but all too
late. From its fatuous dream the nation was awakened by the noise of arms,
the shrieks of women and the red glare of burning cities.

Beginning with the slaughter at St. Louis on a night in the year 1920,
when no fewer than twenty-two thousand citizens were slain in the streets
and half the city destroyed, massacre followed massacre with frightful
rapidity. New York fell in the month following, many thousands of its
inhabitants escaping fire and sword only to be driven into the bay and
drowned, "the roaring of the water in their ears," says Bardeal,
"augmented by the hoarse clamor of their red-handed pursuers, whose
blood-thirst was unsated by the sea." A week later Washington was
destroyed, with all its public buildings and archives; the President and
his Ministry were slain, Congress was dispersed, and an unknown number of
officials and private citizens perished. Of all the principal cities only
Chicago and San Francisco escaped. The people of the former were all
anarchists and the latter was valorously and successfully defended by the
Chinese.

The urban anarchists were eventually subdued and some semblance of order
was restored, but greater woes and sharper shames awaited this unhappy
nation, as we shall see.

In turning from this branch of our subject to consider the causes of the
failure and bloody disruption of the great American republic other than
those inherent in the form of government, it may not be altogether
unprofitable to glance briefly at what seems to a superficial view the
inconsistent phenomenon of great material prosperity. It is not to be
denied that this unfortunate people was at one time singularly prosperous,
in so far as national wealth is a measure and proof of prosperity. Among
nations it was the richest nation. But at how great a sacrifice of better
things was its wealth obtained! By the neglect of all education except
that crude, elementary sort which fits men for the coarse delights of
business and affairs but confers no capacity of rational enjoyment; by
exalting the worth of wealth and making it the test and touchstone of
merit; by ignoring art, scorning literature and despising science, except
as these might contribute to the glutting of the purse; by setting up and
maintaining an artificial standard of morals which condoned all offenses
against the property and peace of every one but the condoner; by
pitilessly cru