which holds together the
English-speaking people of the world outside of the United States. Nor
is this charged in a pessimistic spirit. Blood empire is greater than
political empire, and the English of the New World and the Antipodes are
strong and vigorous as ever. But the political empire under which they
are nominally assembled is perishing. The political machine known as the
British Empire is running down. In the hands of its management it is
losing momentum every day.

It is inevitable that this management, which has grossly and criminally
mismanaged, shall be swept away. Not only has it been wasteful and
inefficient, but it has misappropriated the funds. Every worn-out, pasty-
faced pauper, every blind man, every prison babe, every man, woman, and
child whose belly is gnawing with hunger pangs, is hungry because the
funds have been misappropriated by the management.

Nor can one member of this managing class plead not guilty before the
judgment bar of Man. "The living in their houses, and in their graves
the dead," are challenged by every babe that dies of innutrition, by
every girl that flees the sweater's den to the nightly promenade of
Piccadilly, by every worked-out toiler that plunges into the canal. The
food this managing class eats, the wine it drinks, the shows it makes,
and the fine clothes it wears, are challenged by eight million mouths
which have never had enough to fill them, and by twice eight million
bodies which have never been sufficiently clothed and housed.

There can be no mistake. Civilisation has increased man's producing
power an hundred-fold, and through mismanagement the men of Civilisation
live worse than the beasts, and have less to eat and wear and protect
them from the elements than the savage Innuit in a frigid climate who
lives to-day as he lived in the stone age ten thousand years ago.

CHALLENGE

I have a vague remembrance
Of a story that is told
In some ancient Spanish legend
Or chronicle of old.

It was when brave King Sanche
Was before Zamora slain,
And his great besieging army
Lay encamped upon the plain.

Don Diego de Ordenez
Sallied forth in front of all,
And shouted loud his challenge
To the warders on the wall.

All the people of Zamora,
Both the born and the unborn,
As traitors did he challenge
With taunting words of scorn.

The living in their houses,
And in their graves the dead,
And the waters in their riv