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CHRISTMAS MORN.

The Christmas light is falling in a flood

Of rose-red radiance over land and sea.

O strange Christ-love! O winged mystery!
A new seraphic joy, half understood,
Pervades the nations;—while, in lowliest mood,

Illumined souls face the divine decree

Which links sweet Bethlehem to Calvary
And leads its sinless babe to holy Rood.

Thou comest ever, Blessed Babe Divine,

To glorify our sad humanity!

Like Herod, evil men, still hating Thee, Have hardened hearts. Oh, melt and make them Thine, . Jesus Omnipotent! Thy morn is come;

With virgin souls, like Mary's, make thy home!

Caroline D. Swan.

REPUBLICANISM AND TYRANNY.

Disguise it and apologize for it as we may, the palpable fact remains incontrovertable that the two great Republics of the world have become the two greatest tyrannies of the world. What does it mean,—how can we explain it? Can the course of France and the United States toward, first, the Religious Orders, and, second, toward the ideals of human liberty as defined in the very origins of these governments, be explained, tolerated, or even endured?

It is a matter of common history that the cruel and inhuman brutalities connected with the French Revolution out-brutalized any cruelties ever perpetrated on this earth by any Pope or monarch, or by any papal or monarchial power. But the charity of the race at first attributed all that to the excitement incident to revolutions and did not at all admit or suspect that a new and demonic form of government had arisen in the world. Carlyle, alone, suspected this at the time and wrote it plain in his French Revolution. To-day even thinking men are slow to admit the latter interpretation, but the facts that force this view upon the world are so numerous, so constant, so subtle, and yet so open and devilish; so respectable, presuming and full of confidence, of high-banded and high-headed bluffery,—possessing and controlling the actions of Presidents and Ministers of State, in both the nations named, that the facts can no longer be attributed to or excused by the uprising of sudden passions incident to revolutions and must be attributed to the deep-laid and pnrposeful schemes of the leading, that is, the dominating minds of the two Republics in question.

In fact the American Revolution, though having cruelties enough of its own—as all wars are brutal and born of hell—was not notable especially for any unusual display of the lower instincts of humanity, but rather the contrary. Washington and Franklin and Jefferson, though at heart and in actual position toward the equities of law and order holding precisely the same position as that held by Robespierre, Mirabeau and Danton, nevertheless managed to put a curb upon the hellish instincts out of which their actions came and so made revolution respectable. But the Roosevelts, Roots and Tafts of our day have thrown aside the old caution of their ancestors and have of late pursued such inhuman methods as are a disgrace to civilization and an insult to religion, to God and to humanity. Yet they are doing all this as if in the interests of liberty, and to my mind in this very deception lies the blackest baseness of their crime.

I am neither socialist nor anarchist. I advocate no acts of cruelty or vengeance in return for the recent barbarities of the French or of the United States governments. My mission alone is to speak the truth, to bear witness to this truth; to point out the heinousness and the inhumanity of their human acts and let the brutal elements on all sides fight out the battle in their own way. I know what is coming, but I regret it more than the gentlemen who have forced it on the world.

Here is the last paragraph from an article by D. Lynch, S. J., in the September issue of The Messenger, under the general title of '' Freemasonry in France,'' which paragraph seems to centralize the source and the inherent lie of all the trouble in question:

"Each Freemason binds himself ' to labor always, during his whole life,' for the objects of the organization, promising 'a lifelong secresy, silence and fidelity.' Such is the Masonic liberty he must forever enjoy. Yet those secret and irresponsible schemers had the insolence to say, in drawing up their Associations Bill, that 'the laws of France proscribe every abdication of individual rights, still is the dominating force in the republic. There are hundreds of thousands of most pious, devout, charitable and reasonable men and women in France. I am speaking of the forces that control the government there and here; and the recent bestial actions of these latest and noblest knights of humanity, the persecutors and ostracisers, ejectors and oppressors of defenceless, virtuous and saintly women are only the legitimate outcome of the entire hellborn and darkened and devouring instincts of the nation.

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Such action in this country, hardened and reckless as we are in our commercialism, would nevertheless produce a religious and civil war within a year.

The French have had enough of revolution, and, as women and friars are only or mainly concerned and those women who sympathize with such, the brutalities of the brutal government of the French Republic, so-called, are allowed to go on without other protests than cries and prayers and tears; but these are heard in heaven, and, after a little, the avenging forces of nature, the counter-irritants of deeper volcanoes will express themselves and the blood of the nations flow in rivers as of old.

With us the method is different, but the principle precisely the same. The government of the United States is as tyrannical as that of France. The spirit of inhuman tyranny is in all ranks and conditions of American society and the hypocrisy of doing our worst infamy in the name of humanity is also precisely the same The laws of the nation and of the various commonwealths aid and abet in this tyranny.

If, however, Congress, under any guise or disguise whatever, were to enact in this country such a law as the French Associations Bill—a law that would in its natural interpretation and execution force the various religious orders of priests and nuns to quit their monasteries, colleges and convents, give up their sacred work of teaching and their sacred rights as American citizens and residents, the ten millions of so-called practical Catholics in the land, plus the ten or more millions of Catholic renegades of all kinds, plus again the ten millions more, of all sects and of no sect, who believe in God and human rights and common justice more than they believe in any political party—these thirty millions more or less would to a man all, except Archbishop Ireland of St. Paul, rise up as one man in mighty indignation and demand the repeal of such law, and in case it was not repealed, they would hurl the present governmerit from powei with less ado than the English made about taking oB the head ot Chai\es Stuart a few years ago. But our Congress will not attempt such infamy.

The purpose of this government is plainly just the same, but we begin our inhuman humanity afar off where it takes on the guise of aiding the cause of liberty and general civilization.

Thus we agitated for and organized and declared the AmericanSpanish war—at the dictation of Freemasonry, it is true—but I hold the McKinley government and not the American Free Masons responsible. It was a big and brutal crime. It was a murderous and damnable crime, done and needlessly done in the name of liberty and humanity. Our rough-riders and other demons devastated the beautiful island of Cuba and drove the true rulers and owners of the island out of house and home. Then, by utterly arbitrary and tyrannical methods the government and its masters, the oligarchs, reorganized society in the island and arranged with our commercialism such methods of law and lawlessness that American traders there could control the paying trade of the island —and all this under the arbitrary control of a military governor, he again under the dictation of the President—both of which great men have of late undertaken to praise each other's tyranny—all this in the assumed name of liberty and humanity, until the native half-breeds of the island had in their misery to appeal to European nations for aid in their distress. There was not only tyranny but bribery and winked-at American rascality of the lowest grade; finally, as a sop to Cerberus, there was a pretended effort toward American and Cuban reciprocity in trade—and that being given up there was nothing but their unconstitutional and brutal tyranny towards Cuba to commend Wood and Roosevelt. But these pious huntsmen bluffed the game and are still at large.

In the Philippine war, at first, the American army of adventurers, generals and men, pillaged and desecrated churches; then, brutalized and persecuted and sacrificed human lives by '' watercure '' and other kill and burn methods; then deluged the Islands with a lot of fledgling and ignorant and tyrannical public-school teachers; then under the trumped-up clamor of a few infidel natives, sent to our immaculate American newspapers report after report that the Friars, the only true and faithful civilizers and teachers in the Island, were hated by the natives and must go—and His Grace of St. Paul defended the whole infamy, thus the American

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