In the great gale that sweeps over Europe the few rags that hide the nakedness of monarchy flutter like scarecrows; I find myself watching for the gust that will reveal to the gaze of the least discerning what a dangerous and ridiculous thing the bare bones of kingship have become.

England has filed the teeth of the serpent, it can bite no more—the phrase is Swinburne's not mine. We keep our kings as we keep the Regalia in the Tower, well housed and well looked after, and between the ruler and the ruled there is a pleasant, but indefinite relationship. Kingship for us is the focus of patriotism and loyalty, but we should not go to war because the house of Guelph were jealous of the house of Hapsburg, or on bad terms with the house of Hohenzollern.

Those German pundits who believe that King Edward made the Anglo-German war have never grasped our national attitude toward monarchy, or King Edward's ungrudging recognition of the merits of the German people.

With us monarchy is an abstraction, very little more.

There was a time when it was supposed to be the fountain of honour, but politicians have fouled the waters so much and have bought and sold honours so unblushingly that modern royalty would be a little ashamed to father so large an illegitimate progeny. A business nation, we have a fixed price for everything. We pay our kings so much a year, and if they exceeded their allowance the State would hesitate to make up the deficit. Baronies, baronetcies, knighthoods and the rest have their fixed price, generally, though not invariably, payable to the party whips who consider themselves morally bound to deliver the goods.

When we were on the brink of war in 1914, M. PoincarÉ wrote a touching letter to King George, such as an old-time king might have sent to a brother sovereign. King George signed a reply that has been published—one would wager that nothing save the signature involved his heart or his pen. It was no more than the letter of a greatly harassed minister who was trying to think while he balanced himself on a high and unstable fence. Here was ample evidence that all who run might read of the final surrender of the monarchy, and incidentally, of the desire of England to maintain peace.

Nobody wants more than the shadow of kingship in this country. Everybody with more than the most perfunctory knowledge of history has realised that half the wars of the world have been fought for the gratification of kings, and most of the others have been waged in the name of religion, i.e. to demonstrate the superiority of one orthodoxy over another. Slowly, and at such a sacrifice as the world may well shudder to contemplate, we have come within sight of the end of religious strife. There remain wars of kingship, the present one is little more than that.

Down to a few years ago the old gates were still standing at Temple Bar to divide the City from Westminster. At Warwick Castle the drawbridge is still raised every night. In some of the cities of Southern Spain watchmen, armed with spears and oil lamps, still proclaim the time of night and the state of the weather. The "Miracle" of the Sacred Fire remains an annual spectacle at Eastertide in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that is in Jerusalem.

The world, as though conscious of the ugliness of so much that is modern, still clings to old customs and institutions even when they are absurd. That is why autocratic kingship survives.

The house of Hapsburg has been ruling in Europe since the thirteenth century; in Germany as well as Austria for part of the time; the rule of the Hohenzollerns dates from 1871. A German, Count Berthold, is said to have originated in the eleventh century the house of Savoy that governs Italy. In Spain we find the ubiquitous Hapsburgs and the Bourbons sharing rule. A Hohenzollern is in Rumania, and on the distaff side in Greece. A Princess of the Hohenzollern house was the mother of King Albert of Belgium; Ferdinand of Bulgaria has Coburg and Bourbon blood.

A system of inter-marriage has retained power in the hands of a few houses, but nature is ill-disposed toward inbreeding and has scourged the cunning of kings with insanity and disease. While democracy has grown in stature and in vision, while it has been claiming its own place in the sun, the small privileged class has diminished physically, mentally, morally, but still clings desperately to place. There are a few brilliant exceptions, Albert of Belgium for example, but Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Coburgs, and Bourbons are, generally speaking, no longer qualified from any standpoint to rule the destinies of free peoples. They are a little better than well-connected anachronisms, avid of the power that is passing from them and ready to offer any sacrifice that their subjects are capable of making in order that their time-tarnished prestige may shine again.

The wishes of their people are the last thing to be considered by autocratic monarchs. They will not stand in the scale against the interests of their relatives, and in the courts of Europe it is hard to find a ruler who is not a cousin of some sort to all his fellow-sovereigns. Jealousy, ambition, ill report, dyspepsia, disease, dementia, any one of these evils if it be backed by greed, may avail to plunge innocent nations into the hell of war. Forces that sway a republic are powerless in an absolute monarchy or in one where servility and orthodoxy strive hand in hand. There are few European rulers who have half the sagacity of the chief advisers whom they may override at will. They are not as a rule men and women of great culture, few if any have ideas that belong of right to the twentieth century, their function has outgrown them, and the reverence they demand and receive is founded very largely upon ignorance and superstition.

To plunge Europe into war for purely personal ends has always seemed in the eyes of kings a reasonable action. Frederick the Great admitted that he started the Seven Years' War by stealing Silesia from Austria for "glory," and the records of Spain and Austria are full of similar crimes.

Now that Europe has been shaken from base to summit, will the sober manhood of the twentieth century allow the present system to endure?

On the other hand, I see a great movement toward giving kingship a fresh lease of life, toward perpetuating secret diplomacy and developing clericalism. But men who have stood face to face with the living God should decide to worship henceforth after the inclination of their own hearts. Elderly gentlemen of conservative tendencies are already writing to warn the public that, however awful the chaos now prevailing, democratic rule would have made it worse. I welcome such warnings, for they are a proof that the upholders of tradition are at last aware of the slippery places over which they must so shortly tread.

If the democracy can see the truth, if its eyes refuse to be dazzled by flags, medals, and uniforms and its ears will convey each plausible speech to the brain for sober analysis, this war will not have been waged in vain.

I hold in all seriousness that it is a strife of kings. Gladstone once asked anybody to tell him how the Austrian Empire had been of any service to humanity. The aggregation of uncongenial nationalities has been kept together for the greater glory of the effete house of Hapsburg, a house whose true history, even since Kaiser Franz Josef came to the throne, could not be printed. The genius of the German people, their magnificent education, stern discipline, tireless industry and full nurseries were conquering both hemispheres, but that was not sufficient. Unless the German could pay tribute to the house of Hohenzollern and increase the Imperial prestige, progress was an egg without salt to the palate of the Potsdam hierarchy.

The fruits of forty years of labour and a generation of child-bearing were flung into the scale that the Hohenzollerns might stand more directly in the limelight.

The people whose blood was to be spilt, whose wives were to be widowed, whose wealth was to be squandered, were wilfully deceived and were driven to war as the Pharaohs drove their warrior-slaves.

Their awakening must come, and with it let us hope a further accession of strength to the Social Democracy that is the best hope of Germany.

We know that neither England nor France desired war, that Russia, whatever her interest in the great Slav-Teuton controversy, was not ready for it, and the worst to be said of the Allied Powers is that, conscious of an enormous menace, they united to destroy it. But every thinking man knows that without the ambitions of a few soldiers, statesmen (so-called), and officials this war had never come about.

I have often compared the position of republics with that of monarchies and have cited the American Republics. The United States live in peace, even the South American States, with their mixed population, their Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian blood, are seldom found long at strife.

Royalists have spoken to me glibly about the corruption that is said to be inherent in republics. It is about the only charge they can formulate, and the reply is obvious. In republics corruption is hard to hide, it comes to the surface and is visible to all. In monarchies corruption, no less rife, is hard to expose; all the avenues to light and free speech are closed.

Your republic brings character and brains to the top; your monarchy makes statesmen of courtiers and sycophants, men who will bow the knee to the Baal of the hour.

A republic is open to the air of heaven. A monarchy is a garden enclosed, richer in rank weeds than flowers. If Germany had been a republic, the Social Democrats could have learned the truth and acted upon it; had Austria been a republic, giving equal voice to all the interests it affects to represent, sympathy with the Slavs would have kept the rulers from their disastrous attempt to reduce Serbia to the status of a vassal kingdom.

Kings have served their time. The ruler who rode to war at the head of his troops, who could handle the heaviest sword or battle-axe, who was both the ruler and judge of his people, belongs to a bygone era. His last raison d'Être passed with the era of industry and rapid transit. He became an anachronism when people began to realise that life is a gift to be wisely used, and that racial antagonisms may be cured or dispersed by close relationship. It is for kings and for kings alone that millions of men who have no real quarrel have slaughtered one another under conditions of horror that make description inadequate. Until we understand that simple truth that the natural inclination of civilised man is to live on friendly terms with his neighbour in spite of all divisions of boundaries, whether of place, blood, or religion, civilisation will be rendered null. Kings have ceased to represent their people; the time has come when the people can represent themselves.

Unhappily they do not yet recognise their own power, and nothing is farther from the wishes of Europe's tottering dynasties than that they should do so. Education, their first aid to emancipation, has been grudgingly conceded. Representation is in its infancy and is hedged round with so many safeguards to royalty that in many countries it is still struggling for effective existence. For all our brave talk Europe is still in its first youth, but the tragedy through which we are passing may yet serve to stimulate its growth as surely as the blood shed on its fields will yield return in the fruits of the earth.

Will democracy rise from the conflict not only strong but determined? Will it carry destruction to the source of destruction? Will it assert its inalienable right to the fruits of peace, progress, and utility? I pray that it may, but I do not disguise from myself the enormous difficulty of the task. Demos is yet so unskilled, so easily flattered, so readily deceived, he will be met by men who have all the traditions of humbug at their finger tips; indeed, these traditions are almost their sole inheritance and equipment.

Yet, "all that a man hath will he give for his life," and the democrat will not only be fighting for his own but for his children's lives and for the well being of the human race. He will have faced death, and will have realised that though man may die but once, the condition of rule that makes war possible makes the doom recurrent with every generation. He should know that the old traditions of rule are in the melting pot, and though all the forces of reaction will labour to shape them again as of old, it is in his power, if it is in his will, to frustrate their action.

The United States looks to have a voice in the making of peace. Doubtless it will do useful work, but I cannot conceive of any better task for the great republicans of to-day than to give the western world the lead that may help it most of all. Most of them have seen monarchies at their best and worst; all of them are patriots; they know what republicanism has done for their own fair land. Will they stand silent now while the western world is faced by the danger of the perpetuation of a rÉgime that has little or nothing to justify it? If they do, they have missed the finest possible chance of spreading the light that shone upon them when the Declaration of Independence was signed one hundred and forty years ago.

With the end of the war, if it does not result in the hegemony of Germany, in which case liberty will be no more than a name, all manner of schemes for the regeneration of Europe will be afoot. Few, if any, will go to the root of the evils that have devastated Belgium, Poland, and a part of France. It is safe to say that the disposition to bring about sweeping reforms will not find ready expression. We are all too close to events over here, the blessing of a clear, serene outlook is denied us. The United States has stood far above the turmoil, it has seen more of the truth than has been visible to any combatant nation, it can survey the whole situation sanely.

It seems to me in these circumstances that the greatest republic of the world has a serious duty, a grave responsibility. It has thriven on a gigantic scale without patronage or privileged classes, without titles, without such honours as are merely honours in name. Freed by the Atlantic from the domination of Europe, it has grown in power and given its citizens a life removed from the worst anxieties that beset the Continent. It knows what kingship in its absolute aspect has cost Europe, and it embraces within its wide domain the children of every European nation; they dwell side by side in peace and amity. The freedom enjoyed by the republic would not be bartered for the wealth of the world, for that freedom is the secret of its eternal youth, its boundless energy, its untrammelled progress.

There are men in the States to-day, men I am proud to number among my friends, who might speak in due season the words that would encourage Europe in the only fight that can rightly engage all nations, the fight against the curse of kingship. We who know how much this fight is needed, who have seen in the great republic how it welds together the most diverse faiths and nationalities, believe that nothing but kingship divides man from man in Europe and fills every frontier line with the instruments of death.

All the sympathy of the best elements in the United States is with suffering Europe to-day, but it cannot be expressed without the use of words that will sound harsh to some, impertinent to others, startling to all. Yet these words will not fall upon deaf ears. They will bring hope to many for whom the future is utterly dark, who believe that the forces of reaction will strive desperately to overcome democracy and that democracy needs prompt help if it is to survive.

Granting that America has the right to be heard when the time comes for the re-establishment of peace, she has the right to deliver the message of her own hundred years of freedom. Is it too much to hope that she will rise to the height of this supreme occasion?

If she will not shrink from this duty, she will ensure a victory beside which the ultimate conquest in this war will appear well-nigh insignificant.