infinitely worse than desertion."

Can there be a greater indictment against patriotism than that it
will thus brand a man a criminal, throw him into prison, and rob him
of the results of fifteen years of faithful service?

Buwalda gave to his country the best years of his life and his very
manhood. But all that was as nothing. Patriotism is inexorable and,
like all insatiable monsters, demands all or nothing. It does not
admit that a soldier is also a human being, who has a right to his
own feelings and opinions, his own inclinations and ideas. No,
patriotism can not admit of that. That is the lesson which Buwalda
was made to learn; made to learn at a rather costly, though not at a
useless, price. When he returned to freedom, he had lost his
position in the army, but he regained his self-respect. After all,
that is worth three years of imprisonment.

A writer on the military conditions of America, in a recent article,
commented on the power of the military man over the civilian in
Germany. He said, among other things, that if our Republic had no
other meaning than to guarantee all citizens equal rights, it would
have just cause for existence. I am convinced that the writer was
not in Colorado during the patriotic regime of General Bell. He
probably would have changed his mind had he seen how, in the name of
patriotism and the Republic, men were thrown into bull-pens, dragged
about, driven across the border, and subjected to all kinds of
indignities. Nor is that Colorado incident the only one in the
growth of military power in the United States. There is hardly a
strike where troops and militia do not come to the rescue of those in
power, and where they do not act as arrogantly and brutally as do the
men wearing the Kaiser's uniform. Then, too, we have the Dick
military law. Had the writer forgotten that?

A great misfortune with most of our writers is that they are
absolutely ignorant on current events, or that, lacking honesty, they
will not speak of these matters. And so it has come to pass that the
Dick military law was rushed through Congress with little discussion
and still less publicity,--a law which gives the President the power
to turn a peaceful citizen into a bloodthirsty man-killer, supposedly
for the defense of the country, in reality for the protection of the
interests of that particular party whose mouthpiece the President
happens to be.

Our writer claims that militarism can never b