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Show THE WORLD'S PROGRESS. S H The thrones of the world are disintegrating under the light from our flag. The millions of Russia saw the light and H clamored and rioted until Wjtte returned from H the work of making the peace treaty, and told his H sovereign that despotic power was not good iH either for a people or their king. It is quite jH possible that he drew a picture for his sovereign. On the one side his majesty in his palace sur-rounded sur-rounded by a million of bayonets, but. quaking with fear, he of an ancient lordly house, but d'e-spite d'e-spite his place and his station as the head of the great Russian empire and the head of the great Greek church, out of accord with his people and in constant danger of assassination; on the other B -hand the plain Roosevelt, one of the. cpmmon, people, living in quiet in his summer home, with-out with-out guards and without fear, but whose name was ringing the world because he believed there was no charm in birth, no sovereignty that men should serve except it comes from heart and brain, no accounting that an honest man should make ex-cept ex-cept to his God and himself. fl He may, too, have drawn from the Czar a com- B parison between the conditions in Russia and the United States, the groveling masses of the first, uneducated, mutinous, without hope, though the jj fl empire has been forging out its destiny since j H the Great Ivan put the empire in form five hun- H dred years ago, and the picture which the United -1 H States presents to the world, where a free people ifl have in one hundred and twenty years, from a lit-tie lit-tie f nge of settlements along the shore of the IH Atlantic, doubled in numbers five times, have ex- III panded until they have subdued, ribbed with rail- H roads and converted into smiling fields and happy IB homes a continent; how the land is filled with II free schools, how every boy Jearns while yet in IB his kilts, that he may do any legitimate thing, say ' IB any legitimate thing, write any legitimate thing, ill aspire, to any honor and seize upon any oppor- tf 9 tunity that the grer' land offers, without dis- 41 wM tinction or restriction to his children, and that Hp those who have won most fame and have been trusted most have come 7 om the common people. B He may have reminded him of the equalor of H Abraham Lincoln's birth and childhood, of the H splendor of .his manhood, of the infinite pathoi B of his death of the immortality which surrounds H his name with an ever-increasing and ever-bright- H ening light, and that the way to make a people B great is to trust them and' to divide with them B the responsibilities of government. B At all events the great white czar has ex- H alted himself by a new recognition of the rights H of the people to help to make the laws which they H are called upon to submit to, and in time of dan- H ger to uphold. H The emperor of Austria-Hungary has listened H to the same demand and responded in the af- H firmative. HI The manhood and womanhood of the world B are coming to the front as never before, heart B and brain are taking more prizes than ever before. . MM. Even far-off Japan, that slept so long in its HIH isolation, when, at last awakened by the H thunder of Commodore Perry's guns, reorganized B her government and while remembering their B sovereign as almost or quite divine, from our B constitution gathered some clauses and in- B corporated them in its own constitution. We B read of a great riot in Tokio a few weeks ago, Hj caused by the closing of a public square on B which the people were wont to meet, against the B populace. They insisted upon the right of public assemblage and of petition. They thought of the B thousands and tens of thousands that had just B died in defense of their emperor and native land, B and that if soldiers were so necessary then citizen- B ship was worth something. It is only in Utah fl that there are large bodies of people who are B content to believe that it is right for other men B to make rules for their guidance and to assume B a divine right to rule them. Assuredly this cannot always be. There will come a time when even these self-constituted leaders will see that the B best weapon of sovereignty is not given to men by B virtue of a superstitious fear. |