as coming.

"I'm not expecting it in my time nor in my children's time, though it
may be sooner than we think. There are two special reasons for it and
one condition. The first reason is, that it is in the nature of man
to want a definite something to love, honor, reverently look up to and
obey; a God and King, for example. The second reason is, that while
little republics have lasted long, protected by their poverty and
insignificance, great ones have not. And the condition is, vast power
and wealth, which breed commercial and political corruptions, and incite
public favorites to dangerous ambitions."

He repeated what I had heard him say before, that in one sense we
already had a monarchy; that is to say, a ruling public and political
aristocracy which could create a Presidential succession. He did not say
these things bitterly now, but reflectively and rather indifferently.

He was inclined to speak unhopefully of the international plans for
universal peace, which were being agitated rather persistently.

"The gospel of peace," he said, "is always making a deal of noise,
always rejoicing in its progress but always neglecting to furnish
statistics. There are no peaceful nations now. All Christendom is a
soldier-camp. The poor have been taxed in some nations to the starvation
point to support the giant armaments which Christian governments
have built up, each to protect itself from the rest of the Christian
brotherhood, and incidentally to snatch any scrap of real estate
left exposed by a weaker owner. King Leopold II. of Belgium, the most
intensely Christian monarch, except Alexander VI., that has escaped hell
thus far, has stolen an entire kingdom in Africa, and in fourteen years
of Christian endeavor there has reduced the population from thirty
millions to fifteen by murder and mutilation and overwork, confiscating
the labor of the helpless natives, and giving them nothing in return
but salvation and a home in heaven, furnished at the last moment by the
Christian priest.

"Within the last generation each Christian power has turned the bulk
of its attention to finding out newer and still newer and more and more
effective ways of killing Christians, and, incidentally, a pagan now and
then; and the surest way to get rich quickly in Christ's earthly kingdom
is to invent a kind of gun that can kill more Christians at one shot
than any other existing kind. All the Christian nations are at it. The
more advanced they a