Strangling a Republic by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 18, 1913

Strangling a Republic

By Editor

The Awful Incubus of Debt

The following from the New York “World” touches a great and vital question which burdens the world at the present time:

“A new republic seems to stand about as much chance in the world as a poor and honest competitor of one of our American trusts. China discovers that the price of liberty and recognition is not eternal vigilance but a foreign loan. It has refused the loan thus far, and a London newspaper, speaking for the money power, says that the time has arrived to ‘terminate the present amateur régime,’ and that ‘disruptive foreign action’ is imminent.

“It was something like ‘disruptive foreign action’ that Standard Oil resorted to when it wanted to put a rival out of business. There was a time in our history when we objected seriously to the coercion and enslavement of new and struggling republics. Now, thanks to the dollar diplomacy, . . . we are leading spirits in the enterprise.”

Great national debts press heavily upon the peoples of the nation. Increasing taxes and tariffs bring increasing cost of living, increased cost of living increases discontent; and constant, persistent discontent breeds revolution, lawlessness, anarchy. Wars have been fermented to involve nations in debt for the benefit of the “invisible empire,” the money power. The debt incubus is a curse everywhere, in nation, in state, in municipality, in corporations, in individual life. It is yielding to the temptation in credit offered, that has enabled men to pile up vast sums of money, as has been done in these days. It is to this that the prophecy in James 5 points,—to the riches that are “heaped together” in the last days; and it is the greed behind the heaping up of these riches which will recoil at last upon the money power, and bring them the woes predicted by the prophet. We plead with our readers everywhere to shun debt as they would shun the plague.