The Bishop comes; and I take up the “Times”—­the labor-hating, labor-baiting, fire-and-slaughter-breathing “Times”—­and here is the episcopal picture on the front page, the arms stretched four columns wide in oratorical beneficence.  How the shepherd of Jesus does love the Merchants and Manufacturers!  How his eloquence is poured out upon them!  “You represent, gentlemen, the largest and the most civilizing secular body in the country.  You are the pioneers of American civilization....  I am glad to be among you; glad that my lines have fallen in this glorious land by the sunset sea, and honored to meet in intimate acquaintance the big men who have raised here in a few years a city of metropolitan proportions.”

And then, bearing in mind his responsibilities as guardian of Exploitation, the Bishop goes on to tell them about the coming class-war.  “On the one side a statesman preaching patience and respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith; on the other a demagog speaking about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers.”  And then, of course, the inevitable religious tag:  “How will men obey you, if they believe not in God, who is the author of all authority?” At which, according to the “Times”, “prolonged applause and cheers” from the Merchants and Manufacturers!  The editor of the “Times” goes back to his office, and inspired by this episcopal eloquence writes a “leader” with the statement that:  “#We have no proletariat in America!#”

#Das Centrum#

In order to see clearly the ultimate purpose of this Unholy Alliance, this union of Superstition and the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association, we have to go to Europe, where the arrangement has been working for a thousand years.  In Europe to-day we see the whole world in conflict with a band of criminals who have been able to master the minds and lives of a hundred million highly civilized people.  As I write, the Junker aristocracy is at bay, and soon to have its throat cut; but there comes a Holy Father to its rescue, with the cross of Jesus uplifted, and a series of pleas for mercy, written in Vienna, edited in Berlin, and sent out from Rome.  The Holy Father loves all mankind with a tender and touching love; his heart bleeds at the sight of bloodshed and suffering, and he pleads the sacred cause of peace on earth and good-will toward men.

But what was the Holy Father doing through the forty-three years that the Potsdam gang were preparing for their assault on the world?  How was the Holy Father manifesting his love of peace and good will?  He is, you understand, the “sole, last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong,” and his followers obey him with the utmost promptness and devotion—­they express themselves as “prostrate at his feet.”  And when the masters of Prussia came to him and said:  “Give us the power to turn this nation into the world’s greatest military empire”—­what did the Roman Church answer?  Did it speak boldly