the law," "dictates of conscience," "free speech" and all manner of such
incantation to exorcise the spirits of the night. And when they could no
longer close their eyes to the dangers environing them; when they saw at
last that what they had mistaken for the magic power of their form of
government and its assured security was really its radical weakness and
subjective peril--they found their laws inadequate to repression of the
enemy, the enemy too strong to permit the enactment of adequate laws. The
belief that a malcontent armed with freedom of speech, a newspaper, a vote
and a rifle is less dangerous than a malcontent with a still tongue in his
head, 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