Frontispiece.......................................................................................... 2.

Introduction.......................................................................................... 3.

Dedication---Prologue......................................................................... 4.

Chapter I.--Prefatory Note from On the Firing Line.........................15.

Our Staff Correspondent..........................................................16.

Unmasking the Beast in Kansas City.......................................17.

The Papacy................................................................................21.

Chapter II.--A Vacant Chair...............................................................22.

An Interview with Father Crowley..........................................28.

From a Catholic Writer............................................................33.

Chapter III.--The Torture Tunnel.......................................................34.

Watch the Menace.....................................................................45.

Changeless Catholic Cathedrals...............................................46.

Chapter IV.--Thrilling Escape from Cincinnati Convent..................47.

Lecky's Estimate of Catholicism.............................................56.

Chapter V.--On the Firing Line..........................................................57.

Back to the Night.....................................................................60.

Chapter VI.--Cecilia and the Yellow Silk Kimono...........................61.

Reproduction from "Catholic Monthly Magazine"................70.

Chapter VII.--Victor Hugo on Priestcraft.........................................75.

The Catholic Creed of Crime..................................................78.

Chapter VIII.--Proud Kentucky State Suinely Stoops

to Serve Her Romish Masters at Louisville.......................79.

The Two Voices......................................................................90.

Chapter IX.--Rome Militant...............................................................91.

Priest Phelan on Catholic Products.......................................99.

Chapter X.--Priests and Puppets Defame Liberty...........................100.

To Caesar Only That Which is Caesar's..............................109.

Chapter XI.--Hierarchy Curses U. S. Government..........................111.

Priest Phelan as Pictured in "Globe Democrat".................120.

American Liberty and Religious Bigotry............................132.

Stone, the Catholic Apologist.............................................134.

Chapter XII.--Maud Wilbur, alias "The Ghost"...............................135.

Alice, the Cincinnati Convent Slave..................................140.

The Spider and the Fly........................................................145.

Priest or Patriot---Which?.................................................146.

Patriot Washington.............................................................147.

Chapter XIII.--Catholic Lottery at St. Louis...................................148.

Wanted---A Modern Luther...............................................154.

Chapter XIV.--Dorothy---The Stolen Witness................................155.

Lectures on Catholic Convents.........................................169.

Chapter XV.--Chicago Convent Prison Bazaar..............................170.

Announcement to our Readers..........................................173.

O'Bonnor and the Bloodhounds.......................................176.

The Fool Commands the Wise...........................................181.

Chapter XVI--Rome at the Nation's Capital...................................182.

The God of the Godsmiths................................................188.

Chapter XVII.--The Bugles are Calling...........................................189.

Immigration Bill Passes....................................................192.

Message of a Modernist to the Man-God.........................204.

Chapter XVIII.--Rome at the Nation's Capital--Cont'd..................205.

Romish Priest Hallows Benedictine Nun's Bed..............213.

Chapter XIX.--Nun Beggars Obstruct Bureau Gates.....................219.

Two Old Maids in Black..................................................221.

That Mutilated Police Record at Nation's Capital.........224.

The Catholic Fair at Los Angeles...................................229.

Scribner's Editorial on Romanism.................................231.

Absolution......................................................................232.

Chapter XX.--Congress Prints the Knights of Columbus

Oath................................................................................233.

More Romish Oaths.......................................................237.

The Layman's Oath.........................................................240.

The Romish Priests' Oath..............................................242.

The Romish Bishop's Oath........................................... 244.

The Romish Cardinal's Oath.........................................245.

Chapter XXI.--Wm. Lloyd Clark's Powerful Lecture to

Guardians of Liberty......................................................248.

Side-Lights on that Immigration Fight.........................250.

Rome's Unknown Gods Triumphant at

Washington...................................................................253.

Tumulty---Wilson's Roman Director...........................258.

Government's Gates Blocked by Rome's Beggars

Again..............................................................................259.

Great Patriotic Lecture at Brunswick, Md....................260.

Lincoln on Liberty, L'Envoi...........................................261.

____________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION

______

By WM. LLOYD CLARK

_______

Viewing in the light of present-day events the Romeward tide of bigoted ignorance and pagan superstition, I am led to examine in the words of Gladstone, "No more cunning plot was ever divulged against the intelligence, the freedom, the happiness and virtue of mankind than Romanism!" And again, confronted by the blind, fanatic malignity that Rome couples with her political conspiracy which cancer-like is eating its way into the heart of this Government, I cannot better voice my warning than in this terse statement of the same statesman, "If there ever has been, and if there ever will be, a question reaching far into the future, it is the question of church power, and of its monstrous exaggeration into Papal power."

Because this book, written by my personal friend and fellow-patriot, H. George Buss, heralds to the deceived Non-Catholic convent system that degrades defenseless Woman, blinded by superstition, into a groveling slave garbed in grave-like black to that damning political power of Romish priest-craft that debauches congressmen, senators, and even presidents in arrogant triumph and makes sycophants and cowards of those whom the people have thus honored, a priest-craft that mocks and curses our splendid public schools, even the while this foreign-ruled band of image worshippers seek to stealthedly pry open the public treasury for funds to support its "parochial"

ventures, ---because of this I gladly write this introduction.

Sir Robert Peel was right when he said, "the day is not distant, and it may be very near, when we shall all have to fight the battle of the Reformation over again." And the great issue will be simply: Is America dominantly Catholic or dominantly, changelessly AMERICAN? Shall Pope or people rule? Bloody rags of yellow and white or silken folds of Old Glory---which? That "little red schoolhouse"---symbol of our mighty educational system that was born of Freedom---or cross-beckoned schools of crime and hotbeds of brutish fanaticism?

For Romanism is only paganism spelled another way. The Romish priesthood is only a survival of heathen priestcraft. This is the warning which History cries aloud from her every page of the days of pagan orgies! Popery is the poisonous poppy that grew rank from the soil of the Seven Hills, fed fat among the gorgeous but unspeakable rites of a polluting polytheism. The old idolatries are the builders of the second Babel which is but thinly disguised as papacy. This Romish politico-religio system is a sort of Pantheon housing the cast-off superstitions of ages past and buried amid the tombs of unnumbered victories. From these tombs the disembodied and devilish spirits of dead paganisms still live in popery and fain would govern the nations of the world from their putrid graves.

In the Catholic monastic and conventual system it is easy to trace a crude and glaring imitation of the Magian philosophy. With sensuous ritual, amid gross licentiousness coupled with the subtle deceit taught in the Jesuit schools we can trace their resurrected shades of the latter philosophies of the Greeks. There is positively nothing new about these old idolatries that thus are living again in Romanism except

the names and masking titles---and the plan of the system which through priestcraft herds these idol-driven devotees into Rome's temples. Popery, then, as any student of history can easily prove for himself, is but the aftergrowth of silenced oracles, of demolished shrines, and of the gods that slept a long sleep of oblivion.

And what a vast collection of old gods under new names these Catholic "god-smiths" have---for sale to the dupes! Under the title of saints we find amid the Catholic category and images all the gods and goddesses of ancient Rome and of her neighboring nations!

And so Paganism, masking as Christianity, has become the world's greatest god-smith!

In Peru, Rome, Babylon, Egypt, ----in fact, in all the pagan nations of History, the ruler was the Pontifex Maximus. So with Rome's present pagan pope. And these heathen rulers of antiquity were worshipped as gods and as the agents of gods. The pope also claims this modest pre-requisite! The pontiff kings of Chaldea wore slippers for the dupes to kiss---so does the pope!

"Sacrifice to Caesar, or Death!"

"Our Most Holy Lord!"---"Our Lord God The Pope!"---"His Divine Majesty, Vice-God!"

The popes mitre slit down the middle, represents a fish's head, and was politely "borrowed" from Egypt by these Catholic dupesters, where it stood as a symbol of Oannes, the fish-god.

And where do you suppose the pope's wonderful keys came from? Janus and Cybele, gods of pagan Rome, each bore a key, and as high priest of these gods the pontiff of those days carried keys to show that he was the representative of the gods on earth!

The Lituus of the pagan augurs does duty today as the "crozier" of the pope and Catholic bishop!

Catholicism is the direct descendent of the priestcraft of ancient Babylon and pagan Rome---her orders, images, offices, sacredotal dresses, teachings, orgies, sorceries, idolatries, all are the same. And what a subtle, what a damnable cunning system is this of the pagan Catholic!

And as in pagan days, the poor human dupes encounter priestcraft in every relation in life. Always---the priest. Everywhere, the priest. And always and everywhere the priest's hand is outstretched for the price. Between man and woman, in wedlock, stands always the priest, who determined the destiny in the "interests of mother-church." Then between the infant of the devotees and the same mother church stands the priest in that sprinkling called baptism; between the child and the Bible, the priest and so-called instruction; in the confessional sits the priest between the sinner and supposed absolution; between the gapping mouth of the dupe and the wafer-god in the mass is the hand of the priest; between the dying and his future stands the priest in extreme unction; and even after death the inevitable price-grabbing priest chases the souls of the damned through hell with "masses for the dead!"

And the dangerous part of it all is that this whole pagan power of superstition and out-worn mummeries of the past is the hammer of the gods-that-were that is battering down, now slowly and again yet more rapidly, the erstwhile sturdy bulwarks of American liberty!

That this book may go forth into the battle for true patriotism---another Richmond in the field---carrying the message that shall arouse the unafraid, enlist the dauntless, and nerve the true, American and loyal citizens who shall read the pages that follow to that sudden and decisive political defeat of every attempted Catholic encroachment that alone can stay

the dawning of that day "when we shall all have to fight the battle of the Reformation over again," is my sincere prayer.

Sylvester Mazzolini of Prierio, a Roman Dominican, gave the unchanging definition of the word "heretic" thus: "Whoever relies not on the teaching of the Roman Church, and of the Roman pontiff, as the infallible rule of faith, from which the Holy Scriptures themselves derive their strength and their authority, is a heretic."

To the rest of the free-born, liberty loving and truly American Patriots, proscribed by Rome as "heretics" this book is faithfully dedicated by The Author.

Kansas City, Mo. November 1, 1913.

"And there are quacks and soothsayers who flock to the rich man's door and try to persuade him that they have a power at command which they procure from heaven and which enables them, by sacrifices and incantations performed amidst feasting and indulgences, to make amends for any crimes committed either by the individual himself or any of his ancestors; and that should he desire to do a mischief to anyone, it may be done at a trifling expense whether the object of his hostility be just or an unjust man, for they profess that by certain invocations and spells

they can prevail upon the gods to do their bidding. And they produced a host of books written by Marseus and Orpheus, children, as they say, of Selene and of the Muses, which form their ritual---persuading not individuals merely, but whole cities also, that man may be absolved and purified from crimes, both while they are still alive and even after they are decease, by means of certain sacrifices and pleasurable amusements which they call mysteries, which deliver us from the torments of the other world, while the neglect of them is punishable with an awful doom."

------from Plato's "Republic," Book 2, page 47.

Chapter 1