Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 161, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1917 — Kick Out the Kings. [ARTICLE]

Kick Out the Kings.

Economist, July 21, 1917. Kick out the kings and cut the armies down. Humanity has suffered enough in these centuries, it has been obedient to the point of stupidity, it has worshiped idols of flesh and blood. No longer is there a place for patience. Better the unintelligent nambypambyism of William Jennings Bryan than the curse of violence, of hate and the hog disposition in the heart of man. Pull down the rotten throne and see the rats scuttling from a false structure, gilded without and hollow within. Throw out of their palaces the mildewed remnants of medievalism. Send these men to their insane asylums or their penitentiaries. Place among the the pariah class a body of men, members of an imperial trust, now fighting among themselves and fighting only their own battles, who have arrogated to themselves superiority, born of heredity, based on the achievements of men hundreds or thousands of years dead, and depending not at all on statesmanship or any good accomplished for those over whom they rule. It is right that every man shall receive a reward for what he achieves, but is it right to take a child from his nursery, a youth from his dissipations, a woman from her frivolous pleasures and place that person on a throne to rule honest and industrious men, to drag those men to slaughter in pursuit of the wicked ambition of a ruler? The king of the present day is incompetent to rule his people. He has not been selected for his qualifications as a statesman. He is chosen because chance has made him the son of a former ruler and one probably as incompetent as he is. Nature makes no such selection of forces to achieve its purposes, nor do wise men in their business affairs choose for a responsible position a person who happens to be, as the phrase goes, “well born.” . ... It is the medieval worship of kings that ails the world, the superstition that attaches to kinghood. Little ground has Europe to criticise the heathen man who bows down to a wooden idol of hideous face and offensive proportions. But man rises occasionally to a sense of his own error. It was a terrible uprising that we call the French revolution, a strong assertion of manhood that we call the American revolution. We have the results in a sense.of freedom among the western nations sue has our predecessors knew nothing of. Astronomy has given us a new heaven ; democracy is f jving us a new earth. But the proess ip Europe is too slow. It is not right to murder a king, because murder of everybody is wrong, but kick them out. Kick the kings from their offices. They are marplots of human fife; ±hey are an obstacle to progress, they are a reminder of human folly. The time has come. The war must be fought to its finish. Then, when you, the masses of Europe, come to yourselves, come to your own, kick them out- —kick out the kings. A number of kings have passed into nonentity since this article was published and certain of those remaining accept the democratic ideas of the day, notably those of Great Britain and Italy, but further compulsion against this class of individuals is a world necessity. "