and defender of mankind against all its oppressors.

The world, to-day, clamors for deeds, not creeds; for bread, not
dogma; for charity, not ceremony; for love, not intellect.

Some will say the events herein described are absurdly impossible.

Who is it that is satisfied with the present unhappy condition of
society? It is conceded that life is a dark and wretched failure for
the great mass of mankind. The many are plundered to enrich the few.
Vast combinations depress the price of labor and increase the cost of
the necessaries of existence. The rich, as a rule, despise the poor;
and the poor are coming to hate the rich. The face of labor grows
sullen; the old tender Christian love is gone; standing armies are
formed on one side, and great communistic organizations on the other;
society divides itself into two hostile camps; no white flags pass
from the one to the other. They wait only for the drum-beat and the
trumpet to summon them to armed conflict.

These conditions have come about in less than a century; most of them
in a quarter of a century. Multiply them by the years of another
century, and who shall say that the events I depict are impossible?
There is an acceleration of movement in human affairs even as there
is in the operations of gravity. The dead missile out of space at
last blazes, and the very air takes fire. The masses grow more
intelligent as they grow more wretched; and more capable of
cooperation as they become more desperate. The labor organizations of
to-day would have been impossible fifty years ago. And what is to
arrest the flow of effect from cause? What is to prevent the coming
of the night if the earth continues to revolve on its axis? The fool