as in Europe, for many decades; and it would be folly to imagine that mere declarations of its being “impracticable,” or “contrary to human nature,” will suffice to check it.  Millions of men and women, here in America—­ranging in intellect all the way from the most cultured to the most ignorant—­are filled with an ardent faith that in Socialism, and in nothing else, is to be found the remedy for all the great evils under which mankind suffers; and there is no sign of slackening in the growth of this faith.  When the time comes for a real test of its strength—­when it shall have gathered such force as to be able to throw down a real challenge to the conservative forces in the political field—­it is absurd to suppose that those who are inclined to welcome it as the salvation of the world will be frightened off by prophecies of failure.  They will want to make the trial; and they will make the trial, regardless of all prophecies of disaster, if the people shall have come to believe that the object is a desirable one—­that Socialism is a form of life which they would like after they got it.  The one great bulwark against Socialism is the sentiment of liberty.  If we find nothing obnoxious in universal regimentation; if we feel that life would have as much savor when all of us were told off to our tasks, or at least circumscribed and supervised in our activities, by a swarm of officials carrying out the benevolent edicts of a paternal Government; if we hold as of no account the exercise of individual choice and the development of individual potentialities which are the very lifeblood of the existing order of society; if all these things hold no value for us, then we shall gravitate to Socialism as surely as a river will find its way to the sea.  Socialism—­granted its practicability, and its practicability can never be disproved except by trial, by long and repeated trial—­holds out the promise of great blessings to mankind.  And some of these blessings it is actually capable of furnishing, even if in the end it should prove to be a failure.  Above all it could completely abolish poverty—­that is, anything like abject poverty.  The productive power of mankind, thanks to the progress of science and invention, is now so great that, even if Socialism were to bring about a very great decline of productiveness—­not, to be sure, such utter blasting of productiveness as has been caused by the Bolshevik insanity—­there would yet be amply enough to supply, by equal distribution, the simple needs of all the people.  Besides the abolition of poverty, there would be the extinction of many sinister forms of competitive greed and dishonesty.  To the eye of the thinking conservative, these things-poverty, greed, dishonesty—­while serious evils, are but the blemishes in a great and wholesome scheme of human life; drawbacks which go with the benefits of a system in which each man is free, within certain necessary limits, to do his best or his worst; a price such as, in this imperfect world, we have to pay for