The chief thing to be secured is the safe-guarding, by legal enactment and policy, of private property.  Most of all it is essential in these times of covetous greed, to keep the multitude within the line of duty; for if all may justly strive to benefit their condition, yet neither justice nor the common good allows any one to seize that which belongs to another, or, under the pretext of futile and ridiculous equality, to lay hands on other peoples’ fortunes.

And this, you understand, in lands where rapine and conquest, class-tyranny and priestly domination have been the custom since the dawn of history; in which no property-right can possibly trace back to any other basis than force.  In Austria, for example—­Austria, the leader and guardian of the Holy Alliance—­Austria, which had no Reformation, no Revolution, no Kultur-kampf—­Austria, in which the income of the Catholic Primate is $625,000 a year!  In other words, Austria is still to a large extent a “Priestly Empire;” and it was Austria which began the war—­began it in a religious quarrel, with a Slav people which does not acknowledge the Holy Father as the ruler of the world, but persists in adhering to the Eastern Church.  So of course to-day, when Austria is learning the bitter lesson that they who draw the sword shall perish by the sword, the heart of the Holy Father is wrung with grief, and he sends out these eloquent peace-notes, written in Vienna and edited in Berlin.  And at the same time his private chaplain is convicted and sentenced to prison for life as Austria’s Master-Spy in Rome!

It is a curious thing to observe—­the natural instinct which, all over the world, draws Superstition and Exploitation together.  This war, which is hailed as a war against autocracy, might almost as accurately be described as a war against the clerical system.  Wherever in the world you find the Papal power strong, there you find sympathy with the Prussian infamy and there you find German intrigue.  In Spain, for example; in Ireland and Quebec, and in the Argentine.  The treatment of Belgium was a little too raw—­too many priests were shot at the outset, and so Cardinal Mercier denounces the Germans; but you notice that he pleads in vain with the Vatican, which stands firm by its beloved Austria, and against the godless kingdom of Italy.  The Kaiser allows the hope of restoration of the temporal power at the peace settlement; and meantime the law forbidding the presence of the Jesuits in Germany has been repealed, and all over the world the propagandists of this order are working for the Kaiser.  Sir Roger Casement was raised a Catholic, and so also “Jim” Larkin, the Irish labor-leader who is touring America denouncing the Allies.  The Catholic Bishop of Melbourne opposed and beat conscription in Australia, and it was Catholic propaganda of treachery among the ignorant peasant-soldiers from Sicily which caused the breaking of the Italian line at Tolmino.  So deeply has this instinct worked