a nominal one. > > “What characterizes the slave is this, that he is in the hands of his master like a chattel, a tool, and no longer a man. Just so it is with a soldier, an officer, a general, who march to murder and to death without any care as to justice, by the arbitrary will of ministers. … Thus military slavery exists, and it is the worst of slaveries, particularly now, when by means of enforced military service it puts the chain about the necks of all free and strong men of the nations, in order to make of them tools of murder, killers by profession, butchers of human flesh, for this is the only opus servile for which they are chained up and trained. … > > “Rulers, to the number of two or three … united into a secret cabinet, deliberate without control and without minutes which are intended for publicity … consequently without any guarantee for the conscience of those
“The protests against the heavy arming do not date from our day,” says Signor E. T. Moneta. “Listen to what Montesquieu wrote in his time:
“This was written almost 150 years ago; the picture seems to be made for today. One single thing has changed—the system of government. In the time of Montesquieu, and also afterward, they used to say that the cause for the maintenance of great armies lay in the absolute kings, who waged war in the hope of finding in the conquests the means for enriching their private budgets and passing down to history in the aureole of glory. > > “Then they said, ‘Oh, if the peoples could choose themselves those who have the right to refuse the governments soldiers and money, for then the politics of war would come