him—­priceless gift of liberty and light that is neither mine nor his, but is the heritage of the soul of man!  Working-men, working-men—­comrades! open your eyes and look about you!  You have lived so long in the toil and heat that your senses are dulled, your souls are numbed; but realize once in your lives this world in which you dwell—­tear off the rags of its customs and conventions—­behold it as it is, in all its hideous nakedness!  Realize it, realize it!  Realize that out upon the plains of Manchuria tonight two hostile armies are facing each other—­that now, while we are seated here, a million human beings may be hurled at each other’s throats, striving with the fury of maniacs to tear each other to pieces!  And this in the twentieth century, nineteen hundred years since the Prince of Peace was born on earth!  Nineteen hundred years that his words have been preached as divine, and here two armies of men are rending and tearing each other like the wild beasts of the forest!  Philosophers have reasoned, prophets have denounced, poets have wept and pleaded—­and still this hideous Monster roams at large!  We have schools and colleges, newspapers and books; we have searched the heavens and the earth, we have weighed and probed and reasoned—­and all to equip men to destroy each other!  We call it War, and pass it by—­but do not put me off with platitudes and conventions—­come with me, come with me—­realize it!  See the bodies of men pierced by bullets, blown into pieces by bursting shells!  Hear the crunching of the bayonet, plunged into human flesh; hear the groans and shrieks of agony, see the faces of men crazed by pain, turned into fiends by fury and hate!  Put your hand upon that piece of flesh—­it is hot and quivering—­just now it was a part of a man!  This blood is still steaming—­it was driven by a human heart!  Almighty God! and this goes on—­it is systematic, organized, premeditated!  And we know it, and read of it, and take it for granted; our papers tell of it, and the presses are not stopped—­our churches know of it, and do not close their doors—­the people behold it, and do not rise up in horror and revolution!

“Or perhaps Manchuria is too far away for you—­come home with me then, come here to Chicago.  Here in this city to-night ten thousand women are shut up in foul pens, and driven by hunger to sell their bodies to live.  And we know it, we make it a jest!  And these women are made in the image of your mothers, they may be your sisters, your daughters; the child whom you left at home tonight, whose laughing eyes will greet you in the morning—­that fate may be waiting for her!  To-night in Chicago there are ten thousand men, homeless and wretched, willing to work and begging for a chance, yet starving, and fronting in terror the awful winter cold!  Tonight in Chicago there are a hundred thousand children wearing out their strength and blasting their lives in the effort to earn their bread!  There are a hundred thousand mothers who are living in misery