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There are crises when the truth must be told. This is one of them. Never was there more elusive duplicity in any movement than in the whole pension agitation since 1879. It is a time which calls for men fixed in principle and conduct, fearless to proclaim the truth when branded as pessimistic and un-American, words which are nearly worn out in the service of wire- pullers and job-masters. As Burke said of the repeal of the stamp act -- done "in the teeth of all the old mercenary Swiss of state, in despite of all the speculators and augurs of political events, in defiance of the whole embattled legion of veteran pensioners and practiced instruments of the court, we have powerful enemies but we have faithful and determined friends and a glorious cause. We have a great battle to fight, but we have the means of fighting."

What are these means? Above all, the great Irish leader said: "Agitate, agitate, agitate." The country is not rotten: "tidal" waves or, as the phrase now is, "land-slides," of sterling honesty and sound sense still occur at regular intervals on the sluggish surface of politics. And the first one to be set in motion must be that of economy. Let us be mean, stingy, if need be, in our federal taxation. After all, the chief functions of government throughout this Union are entrusted to the State members of it. In them taxation is direct and, being so, is promptly felt and carefully regulated. Last year the total of taxes levied by the States was about $70,000,000, a very reasonable sum for 62,000,000 people. Of course we may not hope under our system for direct federal taxes in the immediate future, but we may so far rouse ourselves as to demand that the sums raised indirectly shall but suffice, and barely suffice, for the expense of government. This is no place to unfold a plan, but there are able men who can and do explain feasible methods, and the necessity cannot be too strongly urged.

But agitation is not sufficient without organization. We want no new parties; constitutional government is not only hampered, it is endangered by the existence of minor political groups. But a well considered and easily understood appeal for a tax-payers' league to watch and expose the conduct of members of Congress who bind burdens of extravagance and folly on the public ought to be tried. There never was a time when free government owed more to a free press in the exposure of shams than now. Let everything be done to uphold the hands of journalists by displaying the public appreciation of fearlessness whenever shown. A group of right-minded men in every city, willing to unite and pay for the services of an active secretary to collect and disseminate abundant, ungarbled, and trustworthy evidence concerning the disability or service pension sham, would very soon correct the socialistic tendencies of pension expenditure, and shatter the false pretence of veneration which masks it. If to that were added the courage of conviction in the action of the same and similar men inside of party and out, our present well-grounded fears would shortly vanish.

And then it seems as if we must make a passionate appeal to the hitherto unheard sane majority in the Grand Army to save their comrades from themselves. So far there have been a few influential and manly protests, (4) but they have been inoperative. We can easily understand that those who make them shrink from unpopularity with comrades whose virtues all men admire. But blindness to fault and feebleness in action sometimes become criminal. Let us have, if necessary, reform from without. I can conceive of no more helpful institution to the country than a compact association of the soldiers who are self-respecting, modest, God-fearing citizens -- and there are tens of thousands of them -- pledged to redeem the good fame of our military service by opposition to both disability and service pensions, by demanding that the case of any deserving applicant shall be adjudicated by local officials, judges, or State officers, without regard to technicalities of evidence, and by securing, where disability not caused by service must be relieved, the necessary legislation in State legislatures to establish proper homes or retreats for the very exceptional cases of those soldiers who, through no vicious habits, but by misfortune or sickness have become unable to earn a living.