The starved slave begins to ask questions of the fat statesman.
The ship of state begins to rock in the growing storm.
Statesmanship!
Industrial democracy stands by to seize its opportunity.
The producers will be the successors to plutocracy.
Despotism is digging its own grave.
Anent this matter a truly great authority, Professor J. E. Thorold Rogers, says:[[63]]
“Many parts of the earth were once occupied by rich and industrious peoples which are now wholly waste. Such a decline may come from the effects of a destructive conquest, of long and ruinous wars. But in almost all cases, the ruin of a race is the fault of its government.... Nations will not ruin themselves, said Adam Smith, but governments may ruin them.... I will not say that spectacles of this kind will never be seen again, of nations perishing by the vices of those who administer their affairs.... Governments may borrow for the purpose of carrying on a war, or of defending themselves against aggression. The government generally asserts that it is the latter motive which influences it, when every one sees it is the former. Whether their subjects or citizens see it or not, governments generally, almost invariably, avow it so persistently or savagely that their subjects are brought to agree with them.”
What is the significance of the present cost of militarism for the world annually? No human mind can discern or take in the vast meaning of the blood-and-profit-lust politics that holds and damns the world today.
$8,000,000,000—Eight Billion Dollars!