fathers. He
demanded to know how it is that the God who spoke to him of goodness
and love would mar the sleep of the innocent child with dread and awe
of tortures, of suffering, of hell. Alert and of a vivid and
investigating mind, it did not take him long to discover the
hideousness of that black monster, the Catholic Church. He would
have none of it.

Francisco Ferrer was not only a doubter, a searcher for truth; he was
also a rebel. His spirit would rise in just indignation against the
iron regime of his country, and when a band of rebels, led by the
brave patriot, General Villacampa, under the banner of the Republican
ideal, made an onslaught on that regime, none was more ardent a
fighter than young Francisco Ferrer. The Republican ideal,--I hope
no one will confound it with the Republicanism of this country.
Whatever objection I, as an Anarchist, have to the Republicans of
Latin countries, I know they tower high above the corrupt and
reactionary party which, in America, is destroying every vestige of
liberty and justice. One has but to think of the Mazzinis, the
Garibaldis, the scores of others, to realize that their efforts were
directed, not merely towards the overthrow of despotism, but
particularly against the Catholic Church, which from its very
inception has been the enemy of all progress and liberalism.

In America it is just the reverse. Republicanism stands for vested
rights, for imperialism, for graft, for the annihilation of every
semblance of liberty. Its ideal is the oily, creepy respectability
of a McKinley, and the brutal arrogance of a Roosevelt.

The Spanish republican rebels were subdued. It takes more than one
brave effort to split the rock of ages, to cut off the head of that
hydra monster, the Catholic Church and the Spanish throne. Arrest,
persecution, and punishment followed the heroic attempt of the little
band. Those who could escape the bloodhounds had to flee for safety
to foreign shores. Francisco Ferrer was among the latter. He went
to France.

How his soul must have expanded in the new land! France, the cradle
of liberty, of ideas, of action. Paris, the ever young, intense
Paris, with her pulsating life, after the gloom of his own belated
country,--how she must have inspired him. What opportunities, what a
glorious chance for a young idealist.

Francisco Ferrer lost no time. Like one famished he threw himself
into the various liberal movements, met all kinds of