"This is fertile soil where crime and vice are born and flourish, where venereal diseases are rampant, and where many of their daughters and wives are forced or enticed to become drunkards and prostitutes. Vice, disease and crime wave epidemics that begin in these slums, spreads quickly to and within your own neighborhood and you are not immune from its contamination, suffering or falling its victim.
"Your money is the primary and only cause which creates some of your greedy and hard driving executives and employers, disloyal, distrustful, malicious, and wastefulness in some employees, false friends, extreme envy, dangerous, and criminal covetousness, undue influence, bribery, corruption, extortion, and brings into existence among some of your so-called educated, ruling and leader classes prejudices to an irrational influence and selfishness; in their social intercourses, class struggles and human exploitation resulting in all the evils of your world. From your infancy your cruel taskmasters inculcated and built up in you a deeply rooted man-made system like a quagmire into which you sink deeper and deeper.
"You are completely under the spell of your Octopus. You yield to its will and influence. Your reason, intelligence, will, conscience, emotions, in fact, even your soul is directed by its grasping tentacles. He is the Godfather of 'Mammon' the Demon you worship, above mother love, children's love, parent love, mate and brother love.
"Unless you drive these money changers out of your temple, chaos, terror, forced slavery, annihilation of most of your humanity, complete destruction of your present culture, inventions, and discoveries, all that you have built and created will become rubble, and deeply buried and earth covered. The few left of you will revert to the primitive status of your primordial life.
"Indications point that the Octopus now even in his own stronghold, there is the beginning of decay, but he is still all powerful, and full of fight.
"My mental vision discerns beyond the distant horizon, after the storm a rainbow, a ray of hope, with symptoms of a gradual change in his fundamental functions."
Addressing himself to me, Sun-Rank Banard said, "Now Lieutenant Balmore, I want to let you know that the President of our planet is to tender you a farewell dinner before your departure.
"Among those invited will be the highest dignitaries, of all races of Mars; they will include the President, his cabinet members, supreme court judges, congressional leaders, representatives of some professional and craft academies, including some of our top scientists, and some of our highest Sun Rank members, and not forgetting also myself.
"They all look forward and are very desirous to meet and make the acquaintance of men of their sister planet. You and your friends may be called on and are expected to speak; especially on matters pertaining to Earth conditions.
"We are aware that certain members of your crew were active in Germany before and during the last War. Being that we all know in detail of all the atrocious happenings, we would prefer that they would recount them to us.