"The rulers of the State furnished us an example of 'anarchy,' according to their own definition of the term."
In times like these it brings out what is in the man, and these murders and lesser brutalities of the soldiers while policing San Francisco tell us that the soldier is but an infuriated thug, ready to do murder and rapine at the first opportunity; the civic authorities of Oakland recognized this as a fact when they finally allowed the reopening of the saloons, for the barkeepers were specially interdicted from selling or giving liquor to soldiers; they were already loaded too heavy with murderous instincts and propensities and it would not do to run the risk of touching off that magazine of murder with the match of whisky.
These brutal butcheries and rapine by the soldiers while thus in control of San Francisco are the legitimate fruits of governmental control, and it would be well for those who are so strenuously advocating militarism—the true name for Governmental Control—to bear these things in mind, for such horrors would be the daily menu under such system, for there is lots of the savage in the most of us and it needs but to put a gun in the hands of some and decorate them with brass buttons with U. S. inscribed thereon to bring to the surface—like a plaster on a boil—all the native savagery there is in the man; personally, I would prefer to run my chances among the Head Hunters on the Isle of Borneo than among uniformed thugs protected and encouraged by martial law to carry out their natural murderous propensities as was the case in San Francisco, following the earthquake on the morning of April 18, 1906.
THE GENIUS OF WAR
By John Francis Valter.
I am the Genius of War.
My standard's the Skull and the Bones.
I raise my voice—I stamp my foot,
And legions rise out of the ground.