to visit condign punishment upon such individuals.

A CITIZEN'S DEFENSE

It is the citizen's responsibility that he defend himself against usurpation. How he is to defend himself is, under the constitution, a matter of the greatest latitude. If you are being assaulted you have a right to protect yourself; and if you have to kill a criminal to preserve your own life you should not feel any qualms about it.

I imagine that the expedient course is for the citizen to retain competent counsel; and as no man knows when he will need a lawyer (and is liable, when the time comes, to find it inconvenient or impossible to get one), he should retain legal service long before he has reason to suppose he may need it.

How practical is it to hire attorneys as people are coming to hire their doctors, on long-term contracts? Can the dangers and damages of unconstitutional prosecution be coped with by means of insurance? Is any actuary prepared to say how much the average man would be justified in paying into a personal-freedom league against the possibility of his being molested by some usurper? Liability insurance seems a logical recourse.

So far have we wandered from the constitution that we are liable to be surprised at some of its implications. In the case of a man fired from the government because he did something that offended his superiors' religious tenets, there is a patent injustice in that religious concerns are confused with the law; but there is also the fact that the man fired was probably illegally employed in the first place —as was, I admit, his superior.

Article 4, section 4, guarantees a republican form of government. That provision has been violated much as Hitler violated the German constitution. If I remember aright, Hitler

claimed the German parliament's powers because the parliament by enactment delegated its powers to him and then voted itself out of existence. Similarly our legislatures have delegated their powers unlawfully.

We are bound by the constitution to maintain a republican form of government-though "form" is not enough and the constitution's intent is that our government will be republican both in form and substance. Now then, if the people elect A to office and A appoints B, I suppose the republican principle is not violated. But suppose B appoints C, C appoints D, and so on until Y appoints Z. Somewhere in that alphabet, even if I can't say exactly where, the republican form of government has been destroyed; and that is where our government stands today.

Out of the 15 million people on the federal payroll, the great majority is there in violation of the law. The people of the nation know that: that is one reason why they are glad to see any excuse whether good or bad.

Our nation's situation, then, is desperate. If we are to have the deuteronomy I propose (and every hour that we postpone it will make its urgency the greater) some ten per cent of our poulation must find legitimate occupation, must quit being tax-eaters and become taxpayers to a degree new to them and onerous.

LEGITIMATE OCCUPATION

Conscription is an abomination: it is slavery, and slavery, be it remembered, is bad. As things are, though, many an American boy comes to welcome slavery because his lot as a civilian man between ages 14 and 21 is miserable. Military service promises him some semblance of economic justification; hitherto he has been a begrudged parasite upon his family and his neighbors, and now he can pretend to himself that he is earning a wage, supporting himself. Actually of course he