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Wisconsin, has the following to say,-"The future historian will find many things of surpassing interest when he comes to review the opening decades of the twentieth century, but he will find nothing more interesting or significant than the great wave of democracy which is now sweeping over the earth. . . . This remarkable world movement must be apparent to the most superficial present day observer of the signs of the times. Let any such observer take the world's map and put his finger where he will, he will find some phase of it. In Great Britain it takes the form of nullifying the powers of the House of Lords and curbing the privileges of birth; in France and Germany it appears in the garb of socialism; in China a republic supplants the rule of the Manchu dynasty, and in other countries it appears in various movements, all directed with greater or less wisdom to the wiping out of one form or another of privilege. . . . In our own country the democratic drift is, perhaps, more marked than anywhere else. . . . Unless every sign fails, we shall have democracies . . . before many years such as the world has never seen on any scale before; at least, we shall experiment with them.” Greater weight attaches to this statement of Judge Winslow from the fact that it was made before democracy over the world made itself so potently felt in the present conflict.

We can better understand the illusions of the German

people and their ignorance of the true science of government (an ignorance or incapacity which many of their own statesmen have avowed) when we note the character of their leaders, no matter how great statesmen they may have been. The people of the whole empire practically have been nurtured politically on illusions, false principles and pretexts, not on principles of justice in State and world affairs. Frederick the Great furnishes a case in point. In his memoirs he makes this statement: "My troops being always ready to act, my treasury well filled, the vivacity of my character, my ambition, the desire to have myself spoken of,-were the

reasons that I went to war with Marie Therese,”—i. e., when he took the Austrian province of Silesia away from her by force and involved all Europe in war. Many German militarists, both in the army and the navy, several great German authors of political science texts, as well as responsible heads of the great commercial concerns,-have persistently held forth this same soulless principle to the German nation. These things are perhaps too well known to need specific instances given here. It is true that other European governments acted upon quite similar theories a century ago; but that the German Kaiser and government still cling to it, is their peculiar crime in our day. Napoleon Bonaparte, after his campaign of 1812, made this remark concerning his own aggressiveness: "Alexander (of Russia) and myself were like two cocks, ready to go into battle without knowing why"—a statement which was false as to Napoleon's designs-but which nevertheless acknowledges that neither sovereign had just cause for precipitating that terrible year of conflict. Ambition, wholly selfish, was the real cause, of course. Napoleon's desire was that all kings might assist at his final imperial coronation. He took the worldconqueror, Alexander the Great, as his model. And today, the German Crown Prince, it seems, is not so far removed from the same folly as we were content to believe a couple of years ago. That the ambition of monarchs and leaders no longer plays the part in war that it once did, however, is a distinct step in the progress of the people's rule.

As a final word let me repeat: the important differences between fundamental causes of war, and the immediate causes and pretexts cannot be too strongly emphasized. The writer doubts if the present generation will bring elimination of the fundamental causes. A great deal, on the other hand, may be done to eradicate the immediate causes and pretexts. Secretary Bryan did a noble thing along this line, in securing the twenty-odd arbitration treaties between the United States and other countries, to prevent wars until at least a

year's consideration is made. Another instance a few years ago was the agreement between Argentine and Chili that they would not go to war for five years over boundary disputes that were about to lead to a clash of arms. They kept their agreement. Eradication of the vital causes, however, we may well question coming, except by the long, gradual, but sure process of political evolution. Stricter regulations may be made and enforced through international law and agreement, backed by the "League to Enforce Peace." But, like the "Balance of Power," to which it is similar, this cannot be permanent, in itself—it can serve only for a time. Yet, it is true that the coming peace is fraught with great possibilities in this direction, while revulsion at the present horrors leads many to "faintly trust the larger hope" of permanent peace hereafter. Do not such persons forget, however, that the whole process of civilization has been a development through continuous conflict toward comparative peace? This condition has been brought about by a slow process of education of the minds and conscience of men; and this we must realize in its final consummation before there can be lasting peace for mankind. That the present tragedy of nations may lend impetus to and hasten the day of peace is the reasonable hope of most men, though many doubt its realization in the near future.

The Europe of 1920 will little resemble that of 1914, just as the Europe of 1914, little resembled that of a century earlier. Greece was the first in the nineteenth century to recover her national life; and now she is recovering it anew. Belgium was separated in 1830 from her unnatural incorporation with Holland; now, she must be resurrected to a newer, greater life, and guaranteed a free existence and development. Hungary received a constitution of her own, in the dual monarchy in 1848, if she did not gain the independence the patriot Kossuth dreamed for her; she must now be given an even freer hand, if not complete independence. Bohemia at that time struggled for self government; she

must be given complete "home rule," if not more this time. The Bohemians have already raised their voice in a menacing way toward German Austria. Poland more than once rose in revolt against those who destroyed her independence. As President Wilson so timely pointed out in his war message, last year, the Poles must once more breathe as an independent people. The great crime of partitioning in the eighteenth century must be atoned for, and the penalty paid and loss sustained, by her despoilers. The peoples of the world, with friendly help and oversight in some instances of course, must be left to work out their destinies and "the world must be made safe for democracy." The influence of the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs must be made as harmless as that of the Hanovarians in England today, or like them, must turn their influence into the current of democracy.

War, we have said, assumes the survival of the fittest, the most apt, the best. But, the best for what? The fittest for what? That is the capital question now. It is not easy for one people to modify the wish, the interests, and still less the national characteristics of another. The failure at many efforts at it has helped to bring on this colossal war. Once it could be done by war and the conqueror after the war; but in so far as this transformation is possible today, it is not by war and force that it is to be accomplished. Free intercourse between nations, social and commercial, is perhaps the most powerful pacifying influence. When nations and races come to mingle with each other more vitally, like individuals they will come to understand and appreciate one another better, and will at last learn to heed that most costly and precious lesson, that peace, and not war, is to be the true and only rational basis of civilized human society.

CHAPTER VI

THE IMMEDIATE BACKGROUND OF THE WAR IN EUROPE

10 a considerable extent the conditions that brought

n in 1914,

ent century, can be traced to the work of the Congress of Vienna, at the end of the Napoleonic era, a century before. The present decade, consequently, has often been compared and contrasted with the Napoleonic period, a little over a century ago. And in no other respect, perhaps, has the contrast been so sharply drawn as in the difference of motive that actuated Prince Metternich and his autocratic congress of princes and their minions, on the one hand, and the motives which have been the impelling force in the liberal nations in the World War of 1914-1918, on the other; and the contrast continues in the spirit and work of the peace conference at Versailles.

Since the above is true, in our brief review of the immediate background of the great World War we cannot stop short of the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) and its immediate outgrowth, the Holy Alliance, a hundred years agone. There were two cardinal principles of this notorious Vienna congress that were responsible in so large a degree for the terrible woes of the present time, namely (1), the bargaining about of territories and nationalities as if they were “mere chattels and pawns in a game,” and (2), the restoration of oppressive and autocratic kings upon their thrones, against the flame of democracy enkindled by the French Revolution, and the repression of all democratic aspiration of the people of the nations. One needs but to examine the history of the first half of the nineteenth century and recall

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