THE WAR AND THE NEW AGE YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY The transition from one era to another is not seen clearly as a rule until long after. We talk glibly now of the beginning of Modern history, or of the Renaissance; but the men who lived in the year 400 A.D., or 1300, were not many of them at that time aware of unusual change. To-day, however, as never before in human history, old institutions and customs and ideas are visibly tottering and sliding into ruin, and new arrangements in society and government are springing into life. Before our eyes, the world is passing into a new age. The event that especially marks the end of the old era is the World War of 1914-1918. That war discredited the old balanceof-power theory, the age-long system of military preparedness by hostile groups of allied nations, as the best safeguard of world peace; and, indirectly, it overthrew autocracy in government and infinitely weakened autocracy in industry. It proved a war for democracy and for peace. And the event that especially marks the opening of the new era is the adoption of the plan for a League of Nations by the Peace Congress of 1919. These two mighty events, with closely related movements, are the theme of this small volume. How Prussia found profit in war German CHAPTER I PRUSSIAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM - THE TWIN MONSTERS THAT THREATENED THE WORLD The national industry of Prussia is war. - MIRABEAU. Every student knows how Bismarck, supported by the divine-right monarch, William I of Prussia, forged and refashioned the Prussian army in 1861-1864. Bismarck did this by overriding the Prussian constitution for four years, against the valiant opposition of the Prussian parliament. At any moment, if the King had weakened, or if revolution had begun, the Liberals would have sent Bismarck to the scaffold as they constantly threatened. Bismarck knew that he must show his new tool profitable quickly; and ruthlessly and trickily he forced war against Denmark in 1864 and against Austria in 1866. These wars doubled Prussia in size and wealth, and made her mistress of Germany. To their shame, the old Prussian Liberals accepted this dazzling bribe: since militarism and for its profits autocracy had proven profitable, they ceased to oppose and be too, accept militarism The German Empire an autocracy gan to applaud. Then in 1870-1871, Bismarck crushed France, and made Germany, so long weak and despised, the mightiest force in European politics. And, to their shame, German Liberals accepted Prussianism greedily for the sake of these profits. 66 The German Empire, which lasted from 1871 to 1918, was Bismarck's work as the product of these wars. It was a federal state, but not a free" state. Its substates were mostly monarchies, and the greatest of them, Prussia, equal to three fifths of all, was virtually a divine-right autocracy. The King of Prussia was ex-officio Emperor; and his autocratic power |