[unclear: War], Hate, Anarchy, and Chaos,

[unclear: At] quite synonymous terms, at least [unclear: ote] analogous conditions, and the world has had them all in a pretty full measure during recent years, and unfortunately still has them over a wide range. When I last addressed you the American war with Spain, undertaken for the ostensible purpose of liberating the Cuban people, was still in progress. Its baneful effects on the American people were only revealed at a later date. During the same year the British war against the Boers in South Africa was begun, and lasted for nearly three years, costing a fabulous amount in blood and treasure. I believe the verdict of the civilised world will be that both wars were unnecessary, that both were prompted by selfishness and greed on the part of a few interested people, and that both were promoted by a press campaign of exaggeration and mendacity. Both, in-deed, might be designated monopolistic press wars. In both cases the people were misled and the worst passions of the human heart were stirred into activity, leaving behind a dreadful legacy of hatred and ill-will. In my judgment these two wars set back the hands on the clock of human progress by at least 25 years. It appeared for a time as if the result would be to displace the two English-speaking nations from the position of leadership of the great movement for the establishment of social justice and the realisation of the new and greater freedom.

In the case of America, the war spirit allowed the Government, with the apparent consent of a majority of the people, to trample under foot for a time the great ethical principle on which the Re-public was founded, viz., that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Of course the Philipinos were not fit for self-government in the opinion of American Jingoes, neither were American colonists fitted for self-government in the opinion of King George and his advisers. The election of Woodrow Wilson as President of the United States, with the declared intention of granting self-government to the Philipine Islands and the partial liberation of the American people by the reduction of robber, tariffs, gives a ray of hope that the great Republic has grown sick of wallowing in the mire of a military imperialism, and may once more page 2 assume a position of leadership among the nations in the march towards the new freedom.

In Great Britain the erstwhile Radical, Mr. Chamberlain, in order to cover up his South African tracks, tried to induce the people of the Homeland to turn their backs on the fiscal light which they had seen and followed for so many years, and to lead them back into the miry clay of tariff taxes. That ill-used word, "Protection," has covered up a multitude of sins in the past, and still continues to hide from the eyes of multitudes the infamy of a system of taxation which involves