The Story of Mankind

by Hendrik van Loon

THE STORY OF MANKIND

BY HENDRIK VAN LOON, PH.D.

Professor of the Social Sciences in Antioch College.

Author of The Fall of the Dutch Republic, The Rise of the Dutch

Kingdom, The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators,

A Short Story of Discovery, Ancient Man.

To JIMMIE

``What is the use of a book without pictures?'' said Alice.

FOREWORD

For Hansje and Willem:

WHEN I was twelve or thirteen years old, an uncle of

mine who gave me my love for books and pictures promised

to take me upon a memorable expedition. I was to go with

him to the top of the tower of Old Saint Lawrence in Rotterdam.

And so, one fine day, a sexton with a key as large as that

of Saint Peter opened a mysterious door. ``Ring the bell,''

he said, ``when you come back and want to get out,'' and with

a great grinding of rusty old hinges he separated us from the

noise of the busy street and locked us into a world of new and

strange experiences.

For the first time in my life I was confronted by the phenomenon

of audible silence. When we had climbed the first

flight of stairs, I added another discovery to my limited

knowledge of natural phenomena--that of tangible darkness. A

match showed us where the upward road continued. We went

to the next floor and then to the next and the next until I had

lost count and then there came still another floor, and suddenly

we had plenty of light. This floor was on an even height with

the roof of the church, and it was used as a storeroom. Covered

with many inches of dust, there lay the abandoned symbols

of a venerable faith which had been discarded by the good

people of the city many years ago. That which had meant life

and death to our ancestors was here reduced to junk and rub-

bish. The industrious rat had built his nest among the carved

images and the ever watchful spider had opened up shop between

the outspread arms of a kindly saint.

The next floor showed us from where we had derived our

light. Enormous open windows with heavy iron bars made

the high and barren room the roosting place of hundreds of

pigeons. The wind blew through the iron bars and the air was

filled with a weird and pleasing music. It was the noise of the

town below us, but a noise which had been purified and cleansed

by the distance. The rumbling of heavy carts and the clinking

of horses' hoofs, the winding of cranes and pulleys, the hissing

sound of the patient steam which had been set to do the work

of man in a thousand different ways--they had all been

blended into a softly rustling whisper which provided a beautiful

background for the trembling cooing of the pigeons.

Here the stairs came to an end and the ladders began. And

after the first ladder (a slippery old thing which made one feel

his way with a cautious foot) there was a new and even greater

wonder, the town-clock. I saw the heart of time. I could hear

the heavy pulsebeats of the rapid seconds--one--two--three--

up to sixty. Then a sudden quivering noise when all the wheels

seemed to stop and another minute had been chopped off eternity.

Without pause it began again--one--two--three--until

at last after a warning rumble and the scraping of many wheels

a thunderous voice, high above us, told the world that it was

the hour of noon.

On the next floor were the bells. The nice little bells and

their terrible sisters. In the centre the big bell, which made

me turn stiff with fright when I heard it in the middle of the

night telling a story of fire or flood. In solitary grandeur it

seemed to reflect upon those six hundred years during which

it had shared the joys and the sorrows of the good people of

Rotterdam. Around it, neatly arranged like the blue jars in

an old-fashioned apothecary shop, hung the little fellows, who

twice each week played a merry tune for the benefit of the

country-folk who had come to market to buy and sell and hear

what the big world had been doing. But in a corner--all alone

and shunned by the others--a big black bell, silent and stern,

the bell of death.

Then darkness once more and other ladders, steeper and

even more dangerous than those we had climbed before, and

suddenly the fresh air of the wide heavens. We had reached

the highest gallery. Above us the sky. Below us the city--

a little toy-town, where busy ants were hastily crawling hither

and thither, each one intent upon his or her particular business,

and beyond the jumble of stones, the wide greenness of the

open country.

It was my first glimpse of the big world.

Since then, whenever I have had the opportunity, I have

gone to the top of the tower and enjoyed myself. It was hard

work, but it repaid in full the mere physical exertion of climbing

a few stairs.

Besides, I knew what my reward would be. I would see the

land and the sky, and I would listen to the stories of my kind

friend the watchman, who lived in a small shack, built in a

sheltered corner of the gallery. He looked after the clock

and was a father to the bells, and he warned of fires, but he

enjoyed many free hours and then he smoked a pipe and

thought his own peaceful thoughts. He had gone to school almost

fifty years before and he had rarely read a book, but he

had lived on the top of his tower for so many years that he had

absorbed the wisdom of that wide world which surrounded him

on all sides.

History he knew well, for it was a living thing with him.

There,'' he would say, pointing to a bend of the river, there,

my boy, do you see those trees? That is where the Prince of

Orange cut the dikes to drown the land and save Leyden.''

Or he would tell me the tale of the old Meuse, until the broad

river ceased to be a convenient harbour and became a wonderful

highroad, carrying the ships of De Ruyter and Tromp upon

that famous last voyage, when they gave their lives that the

sea might be free to all.

Then there were the little villages, clustering around the

protecting church which once, many years ago, had been the

home of their Patron Saints. In the distance we could see the

leaning tower of Delft. Within sight of its high arches,

William the Silent had been murdered and there Grotius had

learned to construe his first Latin sentences. And still further

away, the long low body of the church of Gouda, the early home

of the man whose wit had proved mightier than the armies of

many an emperor, the charity-boy whom the world came to

know as Erasmus.

Finally the silver line of the endless sea and as a contrast,

immediately below us, the patchwork of roofs and chimneys

and houses and gardens and hospitals and schools and railways,

which we called our home. But the tower showed us

the old home in a new light. The confused commotion of the

streets and the market-place, of the factories and the workshop,

became the well-ordered expression of human energy

and purpose. Best of all, the wide view of the glorious past,

which surrounded us on all sides, gave us new courage to face

the problems of the future when we had gone back to our daily

tasks.

History is the mighty Tower of Experience, which Time

has built amidst the endless fields of bygone ages. It is no easy

task to reach the top of this ancient structure and get the benefit

of the full view. There is no elevator, but young feet are

strong and it can be done.

Here I give you the key that will open the door.

When you return, you too will understand the reason for

my enthusiasm.

                               HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON.

CONTENTS

THE SETTING OF THE STAGE
OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS
PREHISTORIC MAX BEGINS TO MAKE THINGS FOR HIMSELF
THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF WRITING AND THE RECORD

OF HISTORY BEGINS
THE BEGINNING OF CIVILISATION IN THE VALLEY OF THE NILE
THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT
MESOPOTAMIA, THE SECOND CENTRE OF EASTERN CIVILISATION
THE SUMERIAN NAIL WRITERS, WHOSE CLAY TABLETS TELL US

THE STORY OF ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA, THE GREAT SEMITIC

MELTING-POT
THE STORY OF MOSES, THE LEADER OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
THE PHOENICIANS, WHO GAVE US OUR ALPHABET
THE INDO-EUROPEAN PERSIANS CONQUER THE SEMITIC AND THE

EGYPTIAN WORLD
THE PEOPLE OF THE AEGEAN SEA CARRIED THE CIVILISATION

OF OLD ASIA INTO THE WILDERNESS OF EUROPE
MEANWHILE THE INDO-EUROPEAN TRIBE OF THE HELLENES WAS

TAKING POSSESSION OF GREECE
THE GREEK CITIES THAT WERE REALLY STATES
THE GREEKS WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE TO TRY THE DIFFICULT

EXPERIMENT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT
HOW THE GREEKS LIVED
THE ORIGINS OF THE THEATRE, THE FIRST FORM OF PUBLIC

AMUSEMENT
HOW THE GREEKS DEFENDED EUROPE AGAINST AN ASIATIC INVASION AND

DROVE THE PERSIANS BACK ACROSS THE AEGEAN SEA

HOW ATHENS AND SPARTA FOUGHT A LONG AND DISASTROUS WAR

FOR THE LEADERSHIP OF GREECE

ALEXANDER THE MACEDONIAN ESTABLISHES A GREEK WORLD

EMPIRE, AND WHAT BECAME OF THIS HIGH AMBITION

A SHORT SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1 TO 20
THE SEMITIC COLONY OF CARTHAGE ON THE NORTHERN COAST OF

AFRICA AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN CITY OF ROME ON THE WEST

COAST OF ITALY FOUGHT EACH OTHER FOR THE POSSESSION OF

THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND CARTHAGE WAS DESTROYED

HOW ROME HAPPENED
HOW THE REPUBLIC OF ROME, AFTER CENTURIES OF UNREST AND

REVOLUTION, BECAME AN EMPIRE

THE STORY OF JOSHUA OF NAZARETH, WHOM THE GREEKS CALLED

JESUS

THE TWILIGHT OF ROME
HOW ROME BECAME THE CENTRE OF THE CHRISTIAN WORLD
AHMED, THE CAMEL DRIVER, WHO BECAME THE PROPHET OF THE

ARABIAN DESERT, AND WHOSE FOLLOWERS ALMOST CONQUERED

THE ENTIRE KNOWN WORLD FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF

ALLAH, THE ``ONLY TRUE GOD''

HOW CHARLEMAGNE, THE KING OF THE ~ RANKS, CAME TO BEAR

THE TITLE OF EMPEROR AND TRIED TO REVIVE THE OLD IDEAL

OF WORLD-EMPIRE

WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE TENTH CENTURY PRAYED THE LORD

TO PROTECT THEM FROM THE FURY OF THE NORSEMEN

HOW CENTRAL EUROPE, ATTACKED FROM THREE SIDES, BECAME

AN ARMED CAMP AND WHY EUROPE WOULD HAVE PERISHED

WITHOUT THOSE PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS AND ADMINISTRATORS

WHO WERE PART OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM

CHIVALRY
THE STRANGE DOUBLE LOYALTY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE

AGES, AND HOW IT LED TO ENDLESS QUARRELS BETWEEN THE

POPES AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPERORS

BUT ALL THESE DIFFERENT QUARRELS WERE FORGOTTEN WHEN

THE TURKS TOOK THE HOLY LAND, DESECRATED THE HOLY

PLACES AND INTERFERED SERIOUSLY WITH THE TRADE FROM

EAST TO WEST. EUROPE WENT CRUSADING

WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES SAID THAT CITY AIR

IS FREE AIR

HOW THE PEOPLE OF THE CITIES ASSERTED THEIR RIGHT

TO BE HEARD IN THE ROYAL COUNCILS OF THEIR COUNTRY

WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES THOUGHT OF THE

WORLD IN WHICH THEY HAPPENED TO LIVE

HOW THE CRUSADES ONCE MORE MADE THE MEDITERRANEAN A

BUSY CENTRE OF TBADE AND HOW THE CITIES OF THE ITALIAN

PENINSULA BECAME THE GREAT DISTRIBUTING CENTRE FOR THE

COMMERCE WITH ASIA AND AFRICA

PEOPLE ONCE MORE DARED TO BE HAPPY JUST BECAUSE THEY

WERE ALIVE. THEY TRIED TO SAVE THE REMAINS OF THE

OLDER AND MORE AGREEABLE CIVILISATION OF ROME AND

GREECE AND THEY WERE 80 PROUD OF THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS

THAT THEY SPOKE OF A RENAISSANCE OR RE-BIRTH OF

CIVILISATION

THE PEOPLE BEGAN TO FEEL THE NEED OF GIVING EXPRESSION

TO THEIR NEWLY DISCOVERED JOY OF LIVING. THEY EXPRESSED

THEIR HAPPINES9 IN POETRY AND IN SCULPTURE AND

IN ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING, AND IN THE BOOKS THEY

PRINTED

BUT NOW THAT PEOPLE HAD BROKEN THROUGH THE BONDS OF

THEIR NARROW ~IEDIIEVAL LIMITATIONS, THEY HAD TO HAVE

MORE ROOM FOR THEIR WANDERINGS. THE EUROPEAN WORLD

HAD GROWN TOO SMALL FOR THEIR AMBITIONS. IT WAS THE

TIME OF THE GREAT VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY

CONCERNING BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS
THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST COMPARED TO A

GIGANTIC PENDULUM WHICH FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD AND

BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE AND THE ARTISTIC

AND LITERARY ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE WERE FOLLOWED

BY THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY INDIFFERENCE AND THE

RELIGIOITS ENTHUSIASM OF THE REFORMATION

THE AGE OF THE GREAT RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES
HOW THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS

AND THE LESS DIVINE BUT MORE REASONABLE RIGHT OF

PARLIAMENT ENDED DISASTROUSLY FOR KING CHARLES II

IN FRANCE, ON THE OTHER HAND, THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS

CONTINUED WITH GREATER POMP AND SPLENDOR THAN EVER

BEFORE AND THE AMBITION OF THE RULER WAS ONLY TEMPERED

BY THE NEWLY INVENTED LAW OF THE BALANCE OF POWER

THE STORY OF THE MYSTERIOUS MUSCOVITE EMPIRE WHICH SUDDENLY

BURST UPON THE GRAND POLITICAL STAGE OF EUROPE

RUSSIA AND SWEDEN FOUGHT MANY WARS TO DECIDE WHO

SHALL BE THE LEADING POWER OF NORTHEASTERN EUROPE

THE EXTRAORDINARY RISE OF A LITTLE STATE IN A DREARY PART

OF NORTHERN GERMANY, CALLED PRUSSIA

HOW THE NEWLY FOUNDED NATIONAL OR DYNASTIC STATES OF

EUROPE TRIED TO MAKE THEMSELVES RICH AND WHAT WAS

MEANT BY THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM

AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EUROPE HEARD

STRANGE REPORTS OF SOMETHING WHICH HAD HAPPENED IN

THE WILDERNESS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT. THE

DESCENDANTS OF THE MEN WHO HAD PUNISHED KING CHARLES

FOR HIS INSISTENCE UPON HIS DIVINE RIGHTS ADDED A

NEW CHAPTER TO THE OLD STORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-

GOVERNMENT

THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PROCLAIMS THE PRINCIPLES

OF LIBERTY, FRATERNITY AND EQUALITY UNTO All THE PEOPLE

OF THE EARTH

NAPOLEON
AS SOON AS NAPOLEON HAD BEEN SENT TO ST. HELENA, THE

RULERS WHO SO OFTEN HAD BEEN DEFEATED BY THE HATED

CORSICAN MET AT VIENNA AND TRIED TO UNDO THE MANY

CHANCES WHICH HAD BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE FRENCH

REVOLUTION

THEY TRIED TO ASSURE THE WORLD AN ERA OF UNDISTURBED

PEACE BY SUPPRESSING ALL NEW IDEAS. THEY MADE THE

POLICE-SPY THE HIGHEST FUNCTIONARY IN THE STATE AND

SOON THE PRISONS OF AIL COUNTRIES WERE FILLED WITH

THOSE WHO CLAIMED THAT PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO

GOVERN THEMSELVES AS THEY SEE FIT

THE LOVE OF NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, HOWEVER, WAS TOO

STRONG TO BE DESTROYED IN THIS WAY. THE SOUTH AMERICANS

WERE THE FIRST TO REBEL AGAINST THE REACTIONARY

MEASURES OF THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA. GREECE AND BELGIUM

AND SPAIN AND A LARGE NUMBER OF OTHER COUNTRIES

OF THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT FOLLOWED SUIT AND THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS FILLED WITH THE RUMOR OF MANY

WARS OF INDEPENDENCE

BUT WHITE THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE WERE FIGHTING FOR THEIR

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY LIVED

HAD BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED BY A SERIES OF INVENTIONS,

WHICH HAD MADE THE CLUMSY OLD STEAM-ENGINE OF THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE MOST FAITHFUL AND EFFICIENT

STAVE OF MAN

THE NEW ENGINES WERE VERY EXPENSIVE AND ONLY PEOPLE

OF WEALTH COULD AFFORD THEM. THE OLD CARPENTER OR

SHOEMAKER WHO HAD BEEN HIS OWN MASTER IN HIS LITTLE

WORKSHOP WAS OBLIGED TO HIRE HIMSELF OUT TO THE OWNERS

OF THE BIG MECHANICAL TOOLS, AND WHITE HE MADE

MORE MONEY THAN BEFORE, HE LOST HIS FORMER INDEPENDENCE

AND HE DID NOT LIKE THAT

THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF MACHINERY DID NOT BRING

ABOUT THE ERA OF HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY WHICH HAD

BEEN PREDICTED BY THE GENERATION WHICH SAW THE STAGE

COACH REPLACED BY THE RAILROAD. SEVERAL REMEDIES

WERE SUGGESTED, BUT NONE OF THESE QUITE SOLVED THE

PROBLEM

BUT THE WORLD HAD UNDERGONE ANOTHER CHANGE WHICH WAS

OF GREATER IMPORTANCE THAN EITHER THE POLITICAL OR THE

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS. AFTER GENERATIONS OF OPPRESSION

AND PERSECUTION, THE SCIENTIST HAD AT LAST GAINED

LIBERTY OF ACTION AND HE WAS NOW TRYING TO DISCOVER

THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS WHICH GOVERN THE UNIVERSE

A CHAPTER OF ART
THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, INCLUDING SEVERAL EXPLANATIONS

AND A FEW APOLOGIES

THE GREAT WAR, WHICH WAS REALLY THE STRUGGLE FOR A

NEW AND BETTER WORLD

64.ANIMATED CHRONOLOGY

65.CONCERNING THE PICTURES

66.AN HISTORICAL READING LIST FOR CHILDREN

67.INDEX

THE STORY OF MANKIND

HIGH Up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there

stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles

wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this

rock to sharpen its beak.

When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day

of eternity will have gone by.

THE SETTING OF THE STAGE

WE live under the shadow of a gigantic question mark.

Who are we?

Where do we come from?

Whither are we bound?

Slowly, but with persistent courage, we have been pushing

this question mark further and further towards that distant

line, beyond the horizon, where we hope to find our answer.

We have not gone very far.

We still know very little but we have reached the point

where (with a fair degree of accuracy) we can guess at many

things.

In this chapter I shall tell you how (according to our best

belief) the stage was set for the first appearance of man.

If we represent the time during which it has been possible for

animal life to exist upon our planet by a line of this length,

then the tiny line just below indicates the age during which

man (or a creature more or less resembling man) has lived

upon this earth.

Man was the last to come but the first to use his brain for

the purpose of conquering the forces of nature. That is the

reason why we are going to study him, rather than cats or

dogs or horses or any of the other animals, who, all in their

own way, have a very interesting historical development behind

them.

In the beginning, the planet upon which we live was (as far

as we now know) a large ball of flaming matter, a tiny cloud of

smoke in the endless ocean of space. Gradually, in the course

of millions of years, the surface burned itself out, and was covered

with a thin layer of rocks. Upon these lifeless rocks the

rain descended in endless torrents, wearing out the hard

granite and carrying the dust to the valleys that lay hidden between

the high cliffs of the steaming earth.

Finally the hour came when the sun broke through the

clouds and saw how this little planet was covered with a few

small puddles which were to develop into the mighty oceans of

the eastern and western hemispheres.

Then one day the great wonder happened. What had been

dead, gave birth to life.

The first living cell floated upon the waters of the sea.

For millions of years it drifted aimlessly with the currents.

But during all that time it was developing certain habits that

it might survive more easily upon the inhospitable earth. Some

of these cells were happiest in the dark depths of the lakes and

the pools. They took root in the slimy sediments which had

been carried down from the tops of the hills and they became

plants. Others preferred to move about and they grew

strange jointed legs, like scorpions and began to crawl along

the bottom of the sea amidst the plants and the pale green things

that looked like jelly-fishes. Still others (covered with scales)

depended upon a swimming motion to go from place to place

in their search for food, and gradually they populated the ocean

with myriads of fishes.

Meanwhile the plants had increased in number and they had

to search for new dwelling places. There was no more room

for them at the bottom of the sea. Reluctantly they left the

water and made a new home in the marshes and on the mud-

banks that lay at the foot of the mountains. Twice a day the

tides of the ocean covered them with their brine. For the rest

of the time, the plants made the best of their uncomfortable

situation and tried to survive in the thin air which surrounded

the surface of the planet. After centuries of training, they

learned how to live as comfortably in the air as they had done in

the water. They increased in size and became shrubs and trees

and at last they learned how to grow lovely flowers which

attracted the attention of the busy big bumble-bees and the

birds who carried the seeds far and wide until the whole earth

had become covered with green pastures, or lay dark under the

shadow of the big trees. But some of the fishes too

had begun to leave the sea, and they had learned how to breathe

with lungs as well as with gills. We call such creatures amphibious,

which means that they are able to live with equal ease on the land

and in the water. The first frog who crosses your path can tell you

all about the pleasures of the double existence of the amphibian.

Once outside of the water, these animals gradually adapted

themselves more and more to life on land. Some became reptiles

(creatures who crawl like lizards) and they shared the

silence of the forests with the insects. That they might move

faster through the soft soil, they improved upon their legs

and their size increased until the world was populated with

gigantic forms (which the hand-books of biology list under

the names of Ichthyosaurus and Megalosaurus and Brontosaurus)

who grew to be thirty to forty feet long and who could have

played with elephants as a full grown cat plays with her kittens.

Some of the members of this reptilian family began to live in

the tops of the trees, which were then often more than a hundred

feet high. They no longer needed their legs for the purpose

of walking, but it was necessary for them to move quickly from

branch to branch. And so they changed a part of their skin

into a sort of parachute, which stretched between the sides of

their bodies and the small toes of their fore-feet, and gradually

they covered this skinny parachute with feathers and made

their tails into a steering gear and flew from tree to tree and

developed into true birds.

Then a strange thing happened. All the gigantic reptiles

died within a short time. We do not know the reason. Perhaps

it was due to a sudden change in climate. Perhaps they

had grown so large that they could neither swim nor walk nor

crawl, and they starved to death within sight but not within

reach of the big ferns and trees. Whatever the cause, the

million year old world-empire of the big reptiles was over.

The world now began to be occupied by very different

creatures. They were the descendants of the reptiles but they

were quite unlike these because they fed their young from the

``mammae'' or the breasts of the mother. Wherefore modern

science calls these animals ``mammals.'' They had shed the

scales of the fish. They did not adopt the feathers of the bird,

but they covered their bodies with hair. The mammals however

developed other habits which gave their race a great advantage

over the other animals. The female of the species

carried the eggs of the young inside her body until they were

hatched and while all other living beings, up to that time, had

left their children exposed to the dangers of cold and heat,

and the attacks of wild beasts, the mammals kept their young

with them for a long time and sheltered them while they were

still too weak to fight their enemies. In this way the young

mammals were given a much better chance to survive, because

they learned many things from their mothers, as you will know

if you have ever watched a cat teaching her kittens to take

care of themselves and how to wash their faces and how to

catch mice.

But of these mammals I need not tell you much for you

know them well. They surround you on all sides. They are

your daily companions in the streets and in your home, and you

can see your less familiar cousins behind the bars of the zoological

garden.

And now we come to the parting of the ways when man

suddenly leaves the endless procession of dumbly living and

dying creatures and begins to use his reason to shape the

destiny of his race.

One mammal in particular seemed to surpass all others in

its ability to find food and shelter. It had learned to use its

fore-feet for the purpose of holding its prey, and by dint of

practice it had developed a hand-like claw. After innumerable

attempts it had learned how to balance the whole of the

body upon the hind legs. (This is a difficult act, which every

child has to learn anew although the human race has been

doing it for over a million years.)

This creature, half ape and half monkey but superior to

both, became the most successful hunter and could make a

living in every clime. For greater safety, it usually moved

about in groups. It learned how to make strange grunts to

warn its young of approaching danger and after many hundreds

of thousands of years it began to use these throaty noises

for the purpose of talking.

This creature, though you may hardly believe it, was your

first ``man-like'' ancestor.

OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS

WE know very little about the first ``true'' men. We have

never seen their pictures. In the deepest layer of clay of an

ancient soil we have sometimes found pieces of their bones.

These lay buried amidst the broken skeletons of other animals

that have long since disappeared from the face of the earth.

Anthropologists (learned scientists who devote their lives to

the study of man as a member of the animal kingdom) have

taken these bones and they have been able to reconstruct our

earliest ancestors with a fair degree of accuracy.

The great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very

ugly and unattractive mammal. He was quite small, much

smaller than the people of today. The heat of the sun and the

biting wind of the cold winter had coloured his skin a dark

brown. His head and most of his body, his arms and legs too,

were covered with long, coarse hair. He had very thin but

strong fingers which made his hands look like those of a monkey.

His forehead was low and his jaw was like the jaw of a

wild animal which uses its teeth both as fork and knife. He

wore no clothes. He had seen no fire except the flames of the

rumbling volcanoes which filled the earth with their smoke

and their lava.

He lived in the damp blackness of vast forests, as the

pygmies of Africa do to this very day. When he felt the

pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and the roots of plants or

he took the eggs away from an angry bird and fed them to his

own young. Once in a while, after a long and patient chase,

he would catch a sparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a

rabbit. These he would eat raw for he had never discovered

that food tasted better when it was cooked.

During the hours of day, this primitive human being

prowled about looking for things to eat.

When night descended upon the earth, he hid his wife and

his children in a hollow tree or behind some heavy boulders,

for he was surrounded on all sides by ferocious animals and

when it was dark these animals began to prowl about, looking

for something to eat for their mates and their own young, and

they liked the taste of human beings. It was a world where

you must either eat or be eaten, and life was very unhappy

because it was full of fear and misery.

In summer, man was exposed to the scorching rays of the

sun, and during the winter his children would freeze to death

in his arms. When such a creature hurt itself, (and hunting

animals are forever breaking their bones or spraining their

ankles) he had no one to take care of him and he must die a

horrible death.

Like many of the animals who fill the Zoo with their

strange noises, early man liked to jabber. That is to say, he

endlessly repeated the same unintelligible gibberish because it

pleased him to hear the sound of his voice. In due time he

learned that he could use this guttural noise to warn his fellow

beings whenever danger threatened and he gave certain little

shrieks which came to mean there is a tiger!'' or here come

five elephants.'' Then the others grunted something back at

him and their growl meant, I see them,'' or let us run away

and hide.'' And this was probably the origin of all language.

But, as I have said before, of these beginnings we know

so very little. Early man had no tools and he built himself

no houses. He lived and died and left no trace of his existence

except a few collar-bones and a few pieces of his skull.

These tell us that many thousands of years ago the world was

inhabited by certain mammals who were quite different from

all the other animals--who had probably developed from another

unknown ape-like animal which had learned to walk on

its hind-legs and use its fore-paws as hands--and who were

most probably connected with the creatures who happen to be

our own immediate ancestors.

It is little enough we know and the rest is darkness.

PREHISTORIC MAN

PREHISTORIC MAN BEGINS TO MAKE

THINGS FOR HIMSELF.

EARLY man did not know what time meant. He kept

no records of birthdays or wedding anniversaries or the hour

of death. He had no idea of days or weeks or even years.

But in a general way he kept track of the seasons for he had

noticed that the cold winter was invariably followed by the mild

spring--that spring grew into the hot summer when fruits

ripened and the wild ears of corn were ready to be eaten and

that summer ended when sudden gusts of wind swept the leaves

from the trees and a number of animals were getting ready

for the long hibernal sleep.

But now, something unusual and rather frightening had

happened. Something was the matter with the weather. The

warm days of summer had come very late. The fruits had

not ripened. The tops of the mountains which used to be covered

with grass now lay deeply hidden underneath a heavy

burden of snow.

Then, one morning, a number of wild people, different

from the other creatures who lived in that neighbourhood, came

wandering down from the region of the high peaks. They

looked lean and appeared to be starving. They uttered sounds

which no one could understand. They seemed to say that

they were hungry. There was not food enough for both the

old inhabitants and the newcomers. When they tried to stay

more than a few days there was a terrible battle with claw-like

hands and feet and whole families were killed. The others fled

back to their mountain slopes and died in the next blizzard.

But the people in the forest were greatly frightened. All

the time the days grew shorter and the nights grew colder than

they ought to have been.

Finally, in a gap between two high hills, there appeared a

tiny speck of greenish ice. Rapidly it increased in size. A

gigantic glacier came sliding downhill. Huge stones were

being pushed into the valley. With the noise of a dozen thunderstorms

torrents of ice and mud and blocks of granite suddenly

tumbled among the people of the forest and killed them

while they slept. Century old trees were crushed into kindling

wood. And then it began to snow.

It snowed for months and months. All the plants died and

the animals fled in search of the southern sun. Man hoisted

his young upon his back and followed them. But he could not

travel as fast as the wilder creatures and he was forced to

choose between quick thinking or quick dying. He seems to

have preferred the former for he has managed to survive the

terrible glacial periods which upon four different occasions

threatened to kill every human being on the face of the earth.

In the first place it was necessary that man clothe himself

lest he freeze to death. He learned how to dig holes and cover

them with branches and leaves and in these traps he caught

bears and hyenas, which he then killed with heavy stones and

whose skins he used as coats for himself and his family.

Next came the housing problem. This was simple. Many

animals were in the habit of sleeping in dark caves. Man now

followed their example, drove the animals out of their warm

homes and claimed them for his own.

Even so, the climate was too severe for most people and

the old and the young died at a terrible rate. Then a genius

bethought himself of the use of fire. Once, while out hunting,

he had been caught in a forest-fire. He remembered that he

had been almost roasted to death by the flames. Thus far fire

had been an enemy. Now it became a friend. A dead tree

was dragged into the cave and lighted by means of smouldering

branches from a burning wood. This turned the cave into

a cozy little room.

And then one evening a dead chicken fell into the fire. It

was not rescued until it had been well roasted. Man discovered

that meat tasted better when cooked and he then and there

discarded one of the old habits which he had shared with the

other animals and began to prepare his food.

In this way thousands of years passed. Only the people

with the cleverest brains survived. They had to struggle day

and night against cold and hunger. They were forced to invent

tools. They learned how to sharpen stones into axes and how

to make hammers. They were obliged to put up large stores

of food for the endless days of the winter and they found that

clay could be made into bowls and jars and hardened in the

rays of the sun. And so the glacial period, which had threatened

to destroy the human race, became its greatest teacher

because it forced man to use his brain.

HIEROGLYPHICS

THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF

WRITING AND THE RECORD OF

HISTORY BEGINS

THESE earliest ancestors of ours who lived in the great

European wilderness were rapidly learning many new things.

It is safe to say that in due course of time they would have

given up the ways of savages and would have developed a

civilisation of their own. But suddenly there came an end to

their isolation. They were discovered.

A traveller from an unknown southland who had dared to

cross the sea and the high mountain passes had found his way

to the wild people of the European continent. He came from

Africa. His home was in Egypt.

The valley of the Nile had developed a high stage of civilisation

thousands of years before the people of the west had

dreamed of the possibilities of a fork or a wheel or a house.

And we shall therefore leave our great-great-grandfathers in

their caves, while we visit the southern and eastern shores of

the Mediterranean, where stood the earliest school of the

human race.

The Egyptians have taught us many things. They were

excellent farmers. They knew all about irrigation. They built

temples which were afterwards copied by the Greeks and which

served as the earliest models for the churches in which we worship

nowadays. They had invented a calendar which proved

such a useful instrument for the purpose of measuring time

that it has survived with a few changes until today. But most

important of all, the Egyptians had learned how to preserve

speech for the benefit of future generations. They had invented

the art of writing.

We are so accustomed to newspapers and books and magazines

that we take it for granted that the world has always been

able to read and write. As a matter of fact, writing, the most

important of all inventions, is quite new. Without written

documents we would be like cats and dogs, who can only teach

their kittens and their puppies a few simple things and who,

because they cannot write, possess no way in which they can

make use of the experience of those generations of cats and

dogs that have gone before.

In the first century before our era, when the Romans came

to Egypt, they found the valley full of strange little pictures

which seemed to have something to do with the history

of the country. But the Romans were not interested in ``anything

foreign'' and did not inquire into the origin of these queer

figures which covered the walls of the temples and the walls of

the palaces and endless reams of flat sheets made out of the

papyrus reed. The last of the Egyptian priests who had

understood the holy art of making such pictures had died several

years before. Egypt deprived of its independence had

become a store-house filled with important historical documents

which no one could decipher and which were of no earthly use

to either man or beast.

Seventeen centuries went by and Egypt remained a land

of mystery. But in the year 1798 a French general by the

name of Bonaparte happened to visit eastern Africa to prepare

for an attack upon the British Indian Colonies. He did

not get beyond the Nile, and his campaign was a failure. But,

quite accidentally, the famous French expedition solved the

problem of the ancient Egyptian picture-language.

One day a young French officer, much bored by the dreary

life of his little fortress on the Rosetta river (a mouth of the

Nile) decided to spend a few idle hours rummaging among

the ruins of the Nile Delta. And behold! he found a stone

which greatly puzzled him. Like everything else in Egypt

it was covered with little figures. But this particular slab of

black basalt was different from anything that had ever been

discovered. It carried three inscriptions. One of these was

in Greek. The Greek language was known. ``All that is

necessary,'' so he reasoned, ``is to compare the Greek text with

the Egyptian figures, and they will at once tell their secrets.''

The plan sounded simple enough but it took more than

twenty years to solve the riddle. In the year 1802 a French

professor by the name of Champollion began to compare the

Greek and the Egyptian texts of the famous Rosetta stone. In

the year 1823 he announced that he had discovered the meaning

of fourteen little figures. A short time later he died from

overwork, but the main principles of Egyptian writing had

become known. Today the story of the valley of the Nile is

better known to us than the story of the Mississippi River.

We possess a written record which covers four thousand years

of chronicled history.

As the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (the word means

``sacred writing'') have played such a very great role in

history, (a few of them in modified form have even found their

way into our own alphabet,) you ought to know something

about the ingenious system which was used fifty centuries ago

to preserve the spoken word for the benefit of the coming

generations.

Of course, you know what a sign language is. Every

Indian story of our western plains has a chapter devoted to

strange messages writter{sic} in the form of little pictures which

tell how many buffaloes were killed and how many hunters

there were in a certain party. As a rule it is not difficult to

understand the meaning of such messages.

Ancient Egyptian, however, was not a sign language. The

clever people of the Nile had passed beyond that stage long

before. Their pictures meant a great deal more than the object

which they represented, as I shall try to explain to you now.

Suppose that you were Champollion, and that you were

examining a stack of papyrus sheets, all covered with hieroglyphics.

Suddenly you came across a picture of a man with

a saw. Very well,'' you would say, that means of course that

a farmer went out to cut down a tree.'' Then you take another

papyrus. It tells the story of a queen who had died at the age

of eighty-two. In the midst of a sentence appears the picture

of the man with the saw. Queens of eighty-two do not handle

saws. The picture therefore must mean something else. But

what?

That is the riddle which the Frenchman finally solved.

He discovered that the Egyptians were the first to use what

we now call ``phonetic writing''--a system of characters which

reproduce the ``sound'' (or phone) of the spoken word and

which make it possible for us to translate all our spoken words

into a written form, with the help of only a few dots and dashes

and pothooks.

Let us return for a moment to the little fellow with the saw.

The word ``saw'' either means a certain tool which you will find

in a carpenter's shop, or it means the past tense of the verb

``to see.''

This is what had happened to the word during the course

of centuries. First of all it had meant only the particular tool

which it represented. Then that meaning had been lost and it

had become the past participle of a verb. After several hundred

years, the Egyptians lost sight of both these meanings and

the picture {illust.} came to stand for a single letter, the

letter S. A short sentence will show you what I mean. Here

is a modern English sentence as it would have been written in

hieroglyphics. {illust.}

The {illust.} either means one of these two round objects

in your head, which allow you to see or it means ``I,'' the person

who is talking.

A {illust.} is either an insect which gathers honey, or it

represents the verb ``to be'' which means to exist. Again, it

may be the first part of a verb like be-come'' or be-have.''

In this particular instance it is followed by {illust.} which

means a leaf'' or leave'' or ``lieve'' (the sound of all three

words is the same).

The ``eye'' you know all about.

Finally you get the picture of a {illust.}. It is a giraffe

It is part of the old sign-language out of which the hieroglyphics

developed.

You can now read that sentence without much difficulty.

``I believe I saw a giraffe.''

Having invented this system the Egyptians developed it

during thousands of years until they could write anything they

wanted, and they used these ``canned words'' to send messages

to friends, to keep business accounts and to keep a record of the

history of their country, that future generations might benefit

by the mistakes of the past.

THE NILE VALLEY

THE BEGINNING OF CIVILISATION IN THE

VALLEY OF THE NILE

THE history of man is the record of a hungry creature in

search of food. Wherever food was plentiful, thither man has

travelled to make his home.

The fame of the Valley of the Nile must have spread at

an early date. From the interior of Africa and from the desert

of Arabia and from the western part of Asia people had

flocked to Egypt to claim their share of the rich farms.

Together these invaders had formed a new race which called

itself Remi'' or the Men'' just as we sometimes call America

``God's own country.'' They had good reason to be grateful

to a Fate which had carried them to this narrow strip of land.

In the summer of each year the Nile turned the valley into a

shallow lake and when the waters receded all the grainfields

and the pastures were covered with several inches of the most

fertile clay.

In Egypt a kindly river did the work of a million men and

made it possible to feed the teeming population of the first

large cities of which we have any record. It is true that all

the arable land was not in the valley. But a complicated

system of small canals and well-sweeps carried water from

the river-level to the top of the highest banks and an even

more intricate system of irrigation trenches spread it throughout

the land.

While man of the prehistoric age had been obliged to spend

sixteen hours out of every twenty-four gathering food for himself

and the members of his tribe, the Egyptian peasant or the

inhabitant of the Egyptian city found himself possessed of a

certain leisure. He used this spare time to make himself many

things that were merely ornamental and not in the least bit

useful.

More than that. One day he discovered that his brain was

capable of thinking all kinds of thoughts which had nothing

to do with the problems of eating and sleeping and finding a

home for the children. The Egyptian began to speculate upon

many strange problems that confronted him. Where did the

stars come from? Who made the noise of the thunder which

frightened him so terribly? Who made the River Nile rise

with such regularity that it was possible to base the calendar

upon the appearance and the disappearance of the annual

floods? Who was he, himself, a strange little creature surrounded

on all sides by death and sickness and yet happy and

full of laughter?

He asked these many questions and certain people obligingly

stepped forward to answer these inquiries to the best of

their ability. The Egyptians called them ``priests'' and they

became the guardians of his thoughts and gained great respect

in the community. They were highly learned men who were

entrusted with the sacred task of keeping the written records.

They understood that it is not good for man to think only of

his immediate advantage in this world and they drew his attention

to the days of the future when his soul would dwell

beyond the mountains of the west and must give an account

of his deeds to Osiris, the mighty God who was the Ruler of

the Living and the Dead and who judged the acts of men

according to their merits. Indeed, the priests made so much

of that future day in the realm of Isis and Osiris that the

Egyptians began to regard life merely as a short preparation

for the Hereafter and turned the teeming valley of the Nile

into a land devoted to the Dead.

In a strange way, the Egyptians had come to believe that

no soul could enter the realm of Osiris without the possession

of the body which had been its place of residence in this world.

Therefore as soon as a man was dead his relatives took his

corpse and had it embalmed. For weeks it was soaked in a

solution of natron and then it was filled with pitch. The

Persian word for pitch was ``Mumiai'' and the embalmed body

was called a ``Mummy.'' It was wrapped in yards and yards

of specially prepared linen and it was placed in a specially

prepared coffin ready to be removed to its final home. But

an Egyptian grave was a real home where the body was surrounded

by pieces of furniture and musical instruments (to

while away the dreary hours of waiting) and by little statues

of cooks and bakers and barbers (that the occupant of this

dark home might be decently provided with food and need not

go about unshaven).

Originally these graves had been dug into the rocks of the

western mountains but as the Egyptians moved northward

they were obliged to build their cemeteries in the desert. The

desert however is full of wild animals and equally wild robbers

and they broke into the graves and disturbed the mummy or

stole the jewelry that had been buried with the body. To prevent

such unholy desecration the Egyptians used to build small

mounds of stones on top of the graves. These little mounds

gradually grew in size, because the rich people built higher

mounds than the poor and there was a good deal of competition

to see who could make the highest hill of stones. The

record was made by King Khufu, whom the Greeks called

Cheops and who lived thirty centuries before our era. His

mound, which the Greeks called a pyramid (because the

Egyptian word for high was pir-em-us) was over five hundred

feet high.

It covered more than thirteen acres of desert which is three

times as much space as that occupied by the church of St.

Peter, the largest edifice of the Christian world.

During twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were

busy carrying the necessary stones from the other side of the

river--ferrying them across the Nile (how they ever managed

to do this, we do not understand), dragging them in many instances

a long distance across the desert and finally hoisting

them into their correct position. But so well did the King's

architects and engineers perform their task that the narrow

passage-way which leads to the royal tomb in the heart of the

stone monster has never yet been pushed out of shape by the

weight of those thousands of tons of stone which press upon

it from all sides.

THE STORY OF EGYPT

THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT

THE river Nile was a kind friend but occasionally it was

a hard taskmaster. It taught the people who lived along its

banks the noble art of ``team-work.'' They depended upon

each other to build their irrigation trenches and keep their

dikes in repair. In this way they learned how to get along

with their neighbours and their mutual-benefit-association quite

easily developed into an organised state.

Then one man grew more powerful than most of his neighbours

and he became the leader of the community and their

commander-in-chief when the envious neighbours of western

Asia invaded the prosperous valley. In due course of time

he became their King and ruled all the land from the Mediterranean

to the mountains of the west.

But these political adventures of the old Pharaohs (the

word meant ``the Man who lived in the Big House'') rarely

interested the patient and toiling peasant of the grain fields.

Provided he was not obliged to pay more taxes to his King

than he thought just, he accepted the rule of Pharaoh as he

accepted the rule of Mighty Osiris.

It was different however when a foreign invader came

and robbed him of his possessions. After twenty centuries of

independent life, a savage Arab tribe of shepherds, called the

Hyksos, attacked Egypt and for five hundred years they were

the masters of the valley of the Nile. They were highly un-

popular and great hate was also felt for the Hebrews who

came to the land of Goshen to find a shelter after their long

wandering through the desert and who helped the foreign

usurper by acting as his tax-gatherers and his civil servants.

But shortly after the year 1700 B.C. the people of Thebes

began a revolution and after a long struggle the Hyksos were

driven out of the country and Egypt was free once more.

A thousand years later, when Assyria conquered all of

western Asia, Egypt became part of the empire of Sardanapalus.

In the seventh century B.C. it became once more an

independent state which obeyed the rule of a king who lived in

the city of Sais in the Delta of the Nile. But in the year 525

B.C., Cambyses, the king of the Persians, took possession of

Egypt and in the fourth century B.C., when Persia was conquered

by Alexander the Great, Egypt too became a Macedonian

province. It regained a semblance of independence

when one of Alexander's generals set himself up as king of a

new Egyptian state and founded the dynasty of the Ptolemies,

who resided in the newly built city of Alexandria.

Finally, in the year 89 B.C., the Romans came. The last

Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, tried her best to save the country.

Her beauty and charm were more dangerous to the Roman

generals than half a dozen Egyptian army corps. Twice she

was successful in her attacks upon the hearts of her Roman

conquerors. But in the year 30 B.C., Augustus, the nephew

and heir of Caesar, landed in Alexandria. He did not share

his late uncle's admiration for the lovely princess. He destroyed

her armies, but spared her life that he might make her

march in his triumph as part of the spoils of war. When

Cleopatra heard of this plan, she killed herself by taking poison.

And Egypt became a Roman province.

MESOPOTAMIA

MESOPOTAMIA--THE SECOND CENTRE OF

EASTERN CIVILISATION

I AM going to take you to the top of the highest pyramid

and I am going to ask that you imagine yourself possessed

of the eyes of a hawk. Way, way off, in the distance, far

beyond the yellow sands of the desert, you will see something

green and shimmering. It is a valley situated between two

rivers. It is the Paradise of the Old Testament. It is the

land of mystery and wonder which the Greeks called Mesopotamia--

the ``country between the rivers.''

The names of the two rivers are the Euphrates (which the

Babylonians called the Purattu) and the Tigris (which was

known as the Diklat). They begin their course amidst the

snows of the mountains of Armenia where Noah's Ark found

a resting place and slowly they flow through the southern

plain until they reach the muddy banks of the Persian gulf.

They perform a very useful service. They turn the arid

regions of western Asia into a fertile garden.

The valley of the Nile had attracted people because it had

offered them food upon fairly easy terms. The ``land between

the rivers'' was popular for the same reason. It was a

country full of promise and both the inhabitants of the northern

mountains and the tribes which roamed through the

southern deserts tried to claim this territory as their own and

most exclusive possession. The constant rivalry between the

mountaineers and the desert-nomads led to endless warfare.

Only the strongest and the bravest could hope to survive and

that will explain why Mesopotamia became the home of a very

strong race of men who were capable of creating a civilisation

which was in every respect as important as that of Egypt.

THE SUMERIANS

THE SUMERIAN NAIL WRITERS, WHOSE CLAY

TABLETS TELL US THE STORY OF ASSYRIA

AND BABYLONIA, THE GREAT SEMITIC

MELTING-POT

THE fifteenth century was an age of great discoveries.

Columbus tried to find a way to the island of Kathay and

stumbled upon a new and unsuspected continent. An Austrian

bishop equipped an expedition which was to travel eastward

and find the home of the Grand Duke of Muscovy, a

voyage which led to complete failure, for Moscow was not

visited by western men until a generation later. Meanwhile

a certain Venetian by the name of Barbero had explored the

ruins of western Asia and had brought back reports of a most

curious language which he had found carved in the rocks of

the temples of Shiraz and engraved upon endless pieces of

baked clay.

But Europe was busy with many other things and it was

not until the end of the eighteenth century that the first

``cuneiform inscriptions'' (so-called because the letters were

wedge-shaped and wedge is called ``Cuneus'' in Latin) were

brought to Europe by a Danish surveyor, named Niebuhr.

Then it took thirty years before a patient German school-

master by the name of Grotefend had deciphered the first four

letters, the D, the A, the R and the SH, the name of the Persian

King Darius. And another twenty years had to go by

until a British officer, Henry Rawlinson, who found the famous

inscription of Behistun, gave us a workable key to the nail-

writing of western Asia.

Compared to the problem of deciphering these nail-writings,

the job of Champollion had been an easy one. The

Egyptians used pictures. But the Sumerians, the earliest

inhabitants of Mesopotamia, who had hit upon the idea of

scratching their words in tablets of clay, had discarded pictures

entirely and had evolved a system of V-shaped figures which

showed little connection with the pictures out of which they

had been developed. A few examples will show you what I

mean. In the beginning a star, when drawn with a nail into

a brick looked as follows: {illust.} This sign however was too

cumbersome and after a short while when the meaning of

``heaven'' was added to that of star the picture was simplified

in this way {illust.} which made it even more of a puzzle.

In the same way an ox changed from {illust} into {illust.}

and a fish changed from {illust.} into {illust.} The sun

was originally a plain circle {illust.} and became {illust.}

If we were using the Sumerian script today we would make an

{illust.} look like {illust.}. This system of writing down our

ideas looks rather complicated but for more than thirty centuries

it was used by the Sumerians and the Babylonians and

the Assyrians and the Persians and all the different races

which forced their way into the fertile valley.

The story of Mesopotamia is one of endless warfare and

conquest. First the Sumerians came from the North. They

were a white People who had lived in the mountains. They

had been accustomed to worship their Gods on the tops of

hills. After they had entered the plain they constructed artificial

little hills on top of which they built their altars. They

did not know how to build stairs and they therefore surrounded

their towers with sloping galleries. Our engineers

have borrowed this idea, as you may see in our big railroad

stations where ascending galleries lead from one floor to another.

We may have borrowed other ideas from the Sumerians

but we do not know it. The Sumerians were entirely ab-

sorbed by those races that entered the fertile valley at a later

date. Their towers however still stand amidst the ruins of

Mesopotamia. The Jews saw them when they went into exile

in the land of Babylon and they called them towers of BabIlli,

or towers of Babel.

In the fortieth century before our era, the Sumerians had

entered Mesopotamia. They were soon afterwards over-

desert of Arabia who speak a common dialect and who are

known as the ``Semites,'' because in the olden days people believed

them to be the direct descendants of Shem, one of the

three sons of Noah. A thousand years later, the Akkadians

were forced to submit to the rule of the Amorites, another

Semitic desert tribe whose great King Hammurabi built himself

a magnificent palace in the holy city of Babylon and who

gave his people a set of laws which made the Babylonian state

the best administered empire of the ancient world. Next the

Hittites, whom you will also meet in the Old Testament, over-

ran the Fertile Valley and destroyed whatever they could not

carry away. They in turn were vanquished by the followers

of the great desert God, Ashur, who called themselves Assyrians

and who made the city of Nineveh the center of a vast

and terrible empire which conquered all of western Asia and

Egypt and gathered taxes from countless subject races until

the end of the seventh century before the birth of Christ when

the Chaldeans, also a Semitic tribe, re-established Babylon and

made that city the most important capital of that day.

Nebuchadnezzar, the best known of their Kings, encouraged

the study of science, and our modern knowledge of astronomy

and mathematics is all based upon certain first principles which

were discovered by the Chaldeans. In the year 538 B.C. a

crude tribe of Persian shepherds invaded this old land and

overthrew the empire of the Chaldeans. Two hundred years

later, they in turn were overthrown by Alexander the Great,

who turned the Fertile Valley, the old melting-pot of so many

Semitic races, into a Greek province. Next came the Romans

and after the Romans, the Turks, and Mesopotamia, the second

centre of the world's civilisation, became a vast wilderness

where huge mounds of earth told a story of ancient glory.

MOSES

THE STORY OF MOSES, THE LEADER OF THE

JEWISH PEOPLE

SOME time during the twentieth century before our era,

a small and unimportant tribe of Semitic shepherds had left

its old home, which was situated in the land of Ur on the mouth

of the Euphrates, and had tried to find new pastures within

the domain of the Kings of Babylonia. They had been driven

away by the royal soldiers and they had moved westward

looking for a little piece of unoccupied territory where they

might set up their tents.

This tribe of shepherds was known as the Hebrews or, as

we call them, the Jews. They had wandered far and wide,

and after many years of dreary peregrinations they had been

given shelter in Egypt. For more than five centuries they

had dwelt among the Egyptians and when their adopted country

had been overrun by the Hyksos marauders (as I told

you in the story of Egypt) they had managed to make themselves

useful to the foreign invader and had been left in the

undisturbed possession of their grazing fields. But after a

long war of independence the Egyptians had driven the

Hyksos out of the valley of the Nile and then the Jews had

come upon evil times for they had been degraded to the rank

of common slaves and they had been forced to work on the

royal roads and on the Pyramids. And as the frontiers were

guarded by the Egyptian soldiers it had been impossible for

the Jews to escape.

After many years of suffering they were saved from their

miserable fate by a young Jew, called Moses, who for a long

time had dwelt in the desert and there had learned to appreciate

the simple virtues of his earliest ancestors, who had kept

away from cities and city-life and had refused to let themselves

be corrupted by the ease and the luxury of a foreign

civilisation.

Moses decided to bring his people back to a love of the ways

of the patriarchs. He succeeded in evading the Egyptian

troops that were sent after him and led his fellow tribesmen

into the heart of the plain at the foot of Mount Sinai. During

his long and lonely life in the desert, he had learned to

revere the strength of the great God of the Thunder and the

Storm, who ruled the high heavens and upon whom the shepherds

depended for life and light and breath. This God, one

of the many divinities who were widely worshipped in western

Asia, was called Jehovah, and through the teaching of Moses,

he became the sole Master of the Hebrew race.

One day, Moses disappeared from the camp of the Jews.

It was whispered that he had gone away carrying two tablets

of rough-hewn stone. That afternoon, the top of the mountain

was lost to sight. The darkness of a terrible storm hid it from

the eye of man. But when Moses returned, behold! there stood

engraved upon the tablets the words which Jehovah had spoken

unto the people of Israel amidst the crash of his thunder and

the blinding flashes of his lightning. And from that moment,

Jehovah was recognised by all the Jews as the Highest Master

of their Fate, the only True God, who had taught them how

to live holy lives when he bade them to follow the wise lessons

of his Ten Commandments.

They followed Moses when he bade them continue their

journey through the desert. They obeyed him when he told

them what to eat and drink and what to avoid that they might

keep well in the hot climate. And finally after many years of

wandering they came to a land which seemed pleasant and

prosperous. It was called Palestine, which means the country

of the ``Pilistu'' the Philistines, a small tribe of Cretans who

had settled along the coast after they had been driven away

from their own island. Unfortunately, the mainland, Palestine,

was already inhabited by another Semitic race, called the

Canaanites. But the Jews forced their way into the valleys

and built themselves cities and constructed a mighty temple

in a town which they named Jerusalem, the Home of Peace.

As for Moses, he was no longer the leader of his people. He

had been allowed to see the mountain ridges of Palestine from

afar. Then he had closed his tired eyes for all time. He had

worked faithfully and hard to please Jehovah. Not only had

he guided his brethren out of foreign slavery into the free and

independent life of a new home but he had also made the Jews

the first of all nations to worship a single God.

THE PHOENICIANS

THE PHOENICIANS WHO GAVE US OUR

ALPHABET

THE Phoenicians, who were the neighbours of the Jews,

were a Semitic tribe which at a very early age had settled along

the shores of the Mediterranean. They had built themselves

two well-fortified towns, Tyre and Sidon, and within a short

time they had gained a monopoly of the trade of the western

seas. Their ships went regularly to Greece and Italy and

Spain and they even ventured beyond the straits of Gibraltar

to visit the Scilly islands where they could buy tin. Wherever

they went, they built themselves small trading stations, which

they called colonies. Many of these were the origin of modern

cities, such as Cadiz and Marseilles.

They bought and sold whatever promised to bring them a

good profit. They were not troubled by a conscience. If we

are to believe all their neighbours they did not know what the

words honesty or integrity meant. They regarded a well-filled

treasure chest the highest ideal of all good citizens. Indeed

they were very unpleasant people and did not have a single

friend. Nevertheless they have rendered all coming generations

one service of the greatest possible value. They gave

us our alphabet.

The Phoenicians had been familiar with the art of writing,

invented by the Sumerians. But they regarded these pothooks

as a clumsy waste of time. They were practical business men

and could not spend hours engraving two or three letters.

They set to work and invented a new system of writing which

was greatly superior to the old one. They borrowed a few

pictures from the Egyptians and they simplified a number of

the wedge-shaped figures of the Sumerians. They sacrificed

the pretty looks of the older system for the advantage of speed

and they reduced the thousands of different images to a short

and handy alphabet of twenty-two letters.

In due course of time, this alphabet travelled across the

AEgean Sea and entered Greece. The Greeks added a few

letters of their own and carried the improved system to Italy.

The Romans modified the figures somewhat and in turn taught

them to the wild barbarians of western Europe. Those wild

barbarians were our own ancestors, and that is the reason why

this book is written in characters that are of Phoenician origin

and not in the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians or in the nail-

script of the Sumerians.

THE INDO-EUROPEANS

THE INDO-EUROPEAN PERSIANS CONQUER

THE SEMITIC AND THE EGYPTIAN

WORLD

THE world of Egypt and Babylon and Assyria and Phoenicia

had existed almost thirty centuries and the venerable

races of the Fertile Valley were getting old and tired. Their

doom was sealed when a new and more energetic race appeared

upon the horizon. We call this race the Indo-European race,

because it conquered not only Europe but also made itself the

ruling class in the country which is now known as British India.

These Indo-Europeans were white men like the Semites

but they spoke a different language which is regarded as the

common ancestor of all European tongues with the exception

of Hungarian and Finnish and the Basque dialects of Northern

Spain.

When we first hear of them, they had been living along the

shores of the Caspian Sea for many centuries. But one day

they had packed their tents and they had wandered forth in

search of a new home. Some of them had moved into the

mountains of Central Asia and for many centuries they had

lived among the peaks which surround the plateau of Iran and

that is why we call them Aryans. Others had followed the

setting sun and they had taken possession of the plains of

Europe as I shall tell you when I give you the story of Greece

and Rome.

For the moment we must follow the Aryans. Under the

leadership of Zarathustra (or Zoroaster) who was their great

teacher many of them had left their mountain homes to follow

the swiftly flowing Indus river on its way to the sea.

Others had preferred to stay among the hills of western

Asia and there they had founded the half-independent communities

of the Medes and the Persians, two peoples whose

names we have copied from the old Greek history-books. In

the seventh century before the birth of Christ, the Medes had

established a kingdom of their own called Media, but this

perished when Cyrus, the chief of a clan known as the Anshan,

made himself king of all the Persian tribes and started upon

a career of conquest which soon made him and his children the

undisputed masters of the whole of western Asia and of Egypt.

Indeed, with such energy did these Indo-European Persians

push their triumphant campaigns in the west that they soon

found themselves in serious difficulties with certain other Indo-

European tribes which centuries before had moved into Europe

and had taken possession of the Greek peninsula and the islands

of the AEgean Sea.

These difficulties led to the three famous wars between

Greece and Persia during which King Darius and King

Xerxes of Persia invaded the northern part of the peninsula.

They ravaged the lands of the Greeks and tried very hard to

get a foothold upon the European continent.

But in this they did not succeed. The navy of Athens

proved unconquerable. By cutting off the lines of supplies

of the Persian armies, the Greek sailors invariably forced the

Asiatic rulers to return to their base.

It was the first encounter between Asia, the ancient

teacher, and Europe, the young and eager pupil. A great

many of the other chapters of this book will tell you how the

struggle between east and west has continued until this very

day.

THE AEGEAN SEA

THE PEOPLE OF THE AEGEAN SEA CARRIED

THE CIVILISATION OF OLD ASIA INTO

THE WILDERNESS OF EUROPE

WHEN Heinrich Schliemann was a little boy his

father told him the story of Troy. He liked that story

better than anything else he had ever heard and he made

up his mind, that as soon as he was big enough to leave home,

he would travel to Greece and ``find Troy.'' That he was the

son of a poor country parson in a Mecklenburg village did

not bother him. He knew that he would need money but

he decided to gather a fortune first and do the digging afterwards.

As a matter of fact, he managed to get a large fortune

within a very short time, and as soon as he had enough money to

equip an expedition, he went to the northwest corner of Asia

Minor, where he supposed that Troy had been situated.

In that particular nook of old Asia Minor, stood a high

mound covered with grainfields. According to tradition it had

been the home of Priamus the king of Troy. Schliemann,

whose enthusiasm was somewhat greater than his knowledge,

wasted no time in preliminary explorations. At once he began

to dig. And he dug with such zeal and such speed that his

trench went straight through the heart of the city for which he

was looking and carried him to the ruins of another buried

town which was at least a thousand years older than the Troy

of which Homer had written. Then something very interesting

occurred. If Schliemann had found a few polished stone

hammers and perhaps a few pieces of crude pottery, no one

would have been surprised. Instead of discovering such objects,

which people had generally associated with the prehistoric

men who had lived in these regions before the coming of

the Greeks, Schliemann found beautiful statuettes and very

costly jewelry and ornamented vases of a pattern that was

unknown to the Greeks. He ventured the suggestion that

fully ten centuries before the great Trojan war, the coast of

the AEgean had been inhabited by a mysterious race of men

who in many ways had been the superiors of the wild Greek

tribes who had invaded their country and had destroyed their

civilisation or absorbed it until it had lost all trace of originality.

And this proved to be the case. In the late seventies of

the last century, Schliemann visited the ruins of Mycenae, ruins

which were so old that Roman guide-books marvelled at their

antiquity. There again, beneath the flat slabs of stone of a

small round enclosure, Schliemann stumbled upon a wonderful

treasure-trove, which had been left behind by those mysterious

people who had covered the Greek coast with their cities and

who had built walls, so big and so heavy and so strong, that

the Greeks called them the work of the Titans, those god-like

giants who in very olden days had used to play ball with

mountain peaks.

A very careful study of these many relics has done away

with some of the romantic features of the story. The makers

of these early works of art and the builders of these strong

fortresses were no sorcerers, but simple sailors and traders.

They had lived in Crete, and on the many small islands of the

AEgean Sea. They had been hardy mariners and they had

turned the AEgean into a center of commerce for the exchange

of goods between the highly civilised east and the slowly

developing wilderness of the European mainland.

For more than a thousand years they had maintained an

island empire which had developed a very high form of art.

Indeed their most important city, Cnossus, on the northern

coast of Crete, had been entirely modern in its insistence upon

hygiene and comfort. The palace had been properly drained

and the houses had been provided with stoves and the Cnossians

had been the first people to make a daily use of the hitherto

unknown bathtub. The palace of their King had been famous

for its winding staircases and its large banqueting hall. The

cellars underneath this palace, where the wine and the grain

and the olive-oil were stored, had been so vast and had so

greatly impressed the first Greek visitors, that they had given

rise to the story of the ``labyrinth,'' the name which we give

to a structure with so many complicated passages that it is

almost impossible to find our way out, once the front door has

closed upon our frightened selves.

But what finally became of this great AEgean Empire and

what caused its sudden downfall, that I can not tell.

The Cretans were familiar with the art of writing, but no

one has yet been able to decipher their inscriptions. Their

history therefore is unknown to us. We have to reconstruct

the record of their adventures from the ruins which the

AEgeans have left behind. These ruins make it clear that the

AEgean world was suddenly conquered by a less civilised race

which had recently come from the plains of northern Europe.

Unless we are very much mistaken, the savages who were

responsible for the destruction of the Cretan and the AEgean

civilisation were none other than certain tribes of wandering

shepherds who had just taken possession of the rocky peninsula

between the Adriatic and the AEgean seas and who are

known to us as Greeks.

THE GREEKS

MEANWHILE THE INDO-EUROPEAN TRIBE

OF THE HELLENES WAS TAKING

POSSESSION OF GREECE

THE Pyramids were a thousand years old and were beginning

to show the first signs of decay, and Hammurabi, the

wise king of Babylon, had been dead and buried several centuries,

when a small tribe of shepherds left their homes along

the banks of the River Danube and wandered southward in

search of fresh pastures. They called themselves Hellenes,

after Hellen, the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha. According

to the old myths these were the only two human beings who

had escaped the great flood, which countless years before had

destroyed all the people of the world, when they had grown

so wicked that they disgusted Zeus, the mighty God, who lived

on Mount Olympus.

Of these early Hellenes we know nothing. Thucydides,

the historian of the fall of Athens, describing his earliest

ancestors, said that they ``did not amount to very much,'' and

this was probably true. They were very ill-mannered. They

lived like pigs and threw the bodies of their enemies to the wild

dogs who guarded their sheep. They had very little respect

for other people's rights, and they killed the natives of the

Greek peninsula (who were called the Pelasgians) and stole

their farms and took their cattle and made their wives and

daughters slaves and wrote endless songs praising the courage

of the clan of the Achaeans, who had led the Hellenic advance-

guard into the mountains of Thessaly and the Peloponnesus.

But here and there, on the tops of high rocks, they saw

the castles of the AEgeans and those they did not attack for

they feared the metal swords and the spears of the AEgean

soldiers and knew that they could not hope to defeat them with

their clumsy stone axes.

For many centuries they continued to wander from valley

to valley and from mountain side to mountain side Then the

whole of the land had been occupied and the migration had

come to an end.

That moment was the beginning of Greek civilisation. The

Greek farmer, living within sight of the AEgean colonies,

was finally driven by curiosity to visit his haughty neighbours.

He discovered that he could learn many useful things from

the men who dwelt behind the high stone walls of Mycenae, and

Tiryns.

He was a clever pupil. Within a short time he mastered

the art of handling those strange iron weapons which the

AEgeans had brought from Babylon and from Thebes. He

came to understand the mysteries of navigation. He began

to build little boats for his own use.

And when he had learned everything the AEgeans could

teach him he turned upon his teachers and drove them back

to their islands. Soon afterwards he ventured forth upon the

sea and conquered all the cities of the AEgean. Finally in the

fifteenth century before our era he plundered and ravaged

Cnossus and ten centuries after their first appearance upon

the scene the Hellenes were the undisputed rulers of Greece,

of the AEgean and of the coastal regions of Asia Minor. Troy,

the last great commercial stronghold of the older civilisation,

was destroyed in the eleventh century B.C. European history

was to begin in all seriousness.

THE GREEK CITIES

THE GREEK CITIES THAT WERE REALLY

STATES

WE modern people love the sound of the word ``big.'' We

pride ourselves upon the fact that we belong to the ``biggest''

country in the world and possess the ``biggest'' navy and grow

the ``biggest'' oranges and potatoes, and we love to live in

cities of ``millions'' of inhabitants and when we are dead we

are buried in the ``biggest cemetery of the whole state.''

A citizen of ancient Greece, could he have heard us talk,

would not have known what we meant. ``Moderation in all

things'' was the ideal of his life and mere bulk did not impress

him at all. And this love of moderation was not merely a

hollow phrase used upon special occasions: it influenced the

life of the Greeks from the day of their birth to the hour of

their death. It was part of their literature and it made them

build small but perfect temples. It found expression in the

clothes which the men wore and in the rings and the bracelets

of their wives. It followed the crowds that went to the theatre

and made them hoot down any playwright who dared to

sin against the iron law of good taste or good sense.

The Greeks even insisted upon this quality in their politicians

and in their most popular athletes. When a powerful

runner came to Sparta and boasted that he could stand longer

on one foot than any other man in Hellas the people drove him

from the city because he prided himself upon an accomplish-

ment at which he could be beaten by any common goose.

That is all very well,'' you will say, and no doubt it is a

great virtue to care so much for moderation and perfection,

but why should the Greeks have been the only people to develop

this quality in olden times?'' For an answer I shall

point to the way in which the Greeks lived.

The people of Egypt or Mesopotamia had been the ``subjects''

of a mysterious Supreme Ruler who lived miles and

miles away in a dark palace and who was rarely seen by the

masses of the population. The Greeks on the other hand,

were free citizens'' of a hundred independent little cities''

the largest of which counted fewer inhabitants than a large

modern village. When a peasant who lived in Ur said that he

was a Babylonian he meant that he was one of millions of

other people who paid tribute to the king who at that particular

moment happened to be master of western Asia. But when

a Greek said proudly that he was an Athenian or a Theban

he spoke of a small town, which was both his home and his

country and which recognised no master but the will of the

people in the market-place.

To the Greek, his fatherland was the place where he was

born; where he had spent his earliest years playing hide and

seek amidst the forbidden rocks of the Acropolis; where he had

grown into manhood with a thousand other boys and girls,

whose nicknames were as familiar to him as those of your own

schoolmates. His Fatherland was the holy soil where his father

and mother lay buried. It was the small house within the high

city-walls where his wife and children lived in safety. It was

a complete world which covered no more than four or five

acres of rocky land. Don't you see how these surroundings

must have influenced a man in everything he did and said and

thought? The people of Babylon and Assyria and Egypt

had been part of a vast mob. They had been lost in the multitude.

The Greek on the other hand had never lost touch with

his immediate surroundings. He never ceased to be part of a

little town where everybody knew every one else. He felt

that his intelligent neighbours were watching him. Whatever

he did, whether he wrote plays or made statues out of marble

or composed songs, he remembered that his efforts were going

to be judged by all the free-born citizens of his home-town who

knew about such things. This knowledge forced him to strive

after perfection, and perfection, as he had been taught from

childhood, was not possible without moderation.

In this hard school, the Greeks learned to excel in many

things. They created new forms of government and new forms

of literature and new ideals in art which we have never been

able to surpass. They performed these miracles in little villages

that covered less ground than four or five modern city

blocks.

And look, what finally happened!

In the fourth century before our era, Alexander of Macedonia

conquered the world. As soon as he had done with

fighting, Alexander decided that he must bestow the benefits

of the true Greek genius upon all mankind. He took it away

from the little cities and the little villages and tried to make

it blossom and bear fruit amidst the vast royal residences of

his newly acquired Empire. But the Greeks, removed from

the familiar sight of their own temples, removed from the well-

known sounds and smells of their own crooked streets, at once

lost the cheerful joy and the marvellous sense of moderation

which had inspired the work of their hands and brains while

they laboured for the glory of their old city-states. They became

cheap artisans, content with second-rate work. The day

the little city-states of old Hellas lost their independence and

were forced to become part of a big nation, the old Greek spirit

died. And it has been dead ever since.

GREEK SELF-GOVERNMENT

THE GREEKS WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE TO

TRY THE DIFFICULT EXPERIMENT OF

SELF-GOVERNMENT

IN the beginning, all the Greeks had been equally rich and

equally poor. Every man had owned a certain number of

cows and sheep. His mud-hut had been his castle. He had

been free to come and go as he wished. Whenever it was necessary

to discuss matters of public importance, all the citizens

had gathered in the market-place. One of the older men of the

village was elected chairman and it was his duty to see that

everybody had a chance to express his views. In case of war,

a particularly energetic and self-confident villager was chosen

commander-in-chief, but the same people who had voluntarily

given this man the right to be their leader, claimed an equal

right to deprive him of his job, once the danger had been

averted.

But gradually the village had grown into a city. Some

people had worked hard and others had been lazy. A few

had been unlucky and still others had been just plain dishonest

in dealing with their neighbours and had gathered wealth.

As a result, the city no longer consisted of a number of men

who were equally well-off. On the contrary it was inhabited

by a small class of very rich people and a large class of very

poor ones.

There had been another change. The old commander-in-

chief who had been willingly recognised as ``headman'' or

``King'' because he knew how to lead his men to victory, had

disappeared from the scene. His place had been taken by the

nobles--a class of rich people who during the course of time

had got hold of an undue share of the farms and estates.

These nobles enjoyed many advantages over the common

crowd of freemen. They were able to buy the best weapons

which were to be found on the market of the eastern Mediterranean.

They had much spare time in which they could prac-

tise the art of fighting. They lived in strongly built houses

and they could hire soldiers to fight for them. They were

constantly quarrelling among each other to decide who should

rule the city. The victorious nobleman then assumed a sort of

Kingship over all his neighbours and governed the town until

he in turn was killed or driven away by still another ambitious

nobleman.

Such a King, by the grace of his soldiers, was called a

``Tyrant'' and during the seventh and sixth centuries before

our era every Greek city was for a time ruled by such Tyrants,

many of whom, by the way, happened to be exceedingly capa-

ble men. But in the long run, this state of affairs became

unbearable. Then attempts were made to bring about reforms

and out of these reforms grew the first democratic government

of which the world has a record.

It was early in the seventh century that the people of

Athens decided to do some housecleaning and give the large

number of freemen once more a voice in the government as

they were supposed to have had in the days of their Achaean

ancestors. They asked a man by the name of Draco to provide

them with a set of laws that would protect the poor against

the aggressions of the rich. Draco set to work. Unfortunately

he was a professional lawyer and very much out of touch

with ordinary life. In his eyes a crime was a crime and when

he had finished his code, the people of Athens discovered that

these Draconian laws were so severe that they could not

possibly be put into effect. There would not have been rope

enough to hang all the criminals under their new system of

jurisprudence which made the stealing of an apple a capital

offence.

The Athenians looked about for a more humane reformer.

At last they found some one who could do that sort of thing

better than anybody else. His name was Solon. He belonged

to a noble family and he had travelled all over the world and

had studied the forms of government of many other countries.

After a careful study of the subject, Solon gave Athens a set

of laws which bore testimony to that wonderful principle of

moderation which was part of the Greek character. He tried

to improve the condition of the peasant without however destroying

the prosperity of the nobles who were (or rather who

could be) of such great service to the state as soldiers. To protect

the poorer classes against abuse on the part of the judges

(who were always elected from the class of the nobles because

they received no salary) Solon made a provision whereby a

citizen with a grievance had the right to state his case before

a jury of thirty of his fellow Athenians.

Most important of all, Solon forced the average freeman

to take a direct and personal interest in the affairs of the city.

No longer could he stay at home and say ``oh, I am too busy

today'' or ``it is raining and I had better stay indoors.'' He

was expected to do his share; to be at the meeting of the town

council; and carry part of the responsibility for the safety and

the prosperity of the state.

This government by the ``demos,'' the people, was often far

from successful. There was too much idle talk. There were

too many hateful and spiteful scenes between rivals for official

honor. But it taught the Greek people to be independent and

to rely upon themselves for their salvation and that was a very

good thing.

GREEK LIFE

HOW THE GREEKS LIVED

BUT how, you will ask, did the ancient Greeks have time

to look after their families and their business if they were

forever running to the market-place to discuss affairs of state?

In this chapter I shall tell you.

In all matters of government, the Greek democracy recognised

only one class of citizens--the freemen. Every Greek

city was composed of a small number of free born citizens, a

large number of slaves and a sprinkling of foreigners.

At rare intervals (usually during a war, when men were

needed for the army) the Greeks showed themselves willing to

confer the rights of citizenship upon the ``barbarians'' as they

called the foreigners. But this was an exception. Citizenship

was a matter of birth. You were an Athenian because your

father and your grandfather had been Athenians before you.

But however great your merits as a trader or a soldier, if you

were born of non-Athenian parents, you remained a ``foreigner''

until the end of time.

The Greek city, therefore, whenever it was not ruled by a

king or a tyrant, was run by and for the freemen, and this

would not have been possible without a large army of slaves

who outnumbered the free citizens at the rate of six or five

to one and who performed those tasks to which we modern

people must devote most of our time and energy if we wish to

provide for our families and pay the rent of our apartments.

The slaves did all the cooking and baking and candlestick

making of the entire city. They were the tailors and the carpenters

and the jewelers and the school-teachers and the bookkeepers

and they tended the store and looked after the factory

while the master went to the public meeting to discuss questions

of war and peace or visited the theatre to see the latest

play of AEschylus or hear a discussion of the revolutionary ideas

of Euripides, who had dared to express certain doubts upon

the omnipotence of the great god Zeus.

Indeed, ancient Athens resembled a modem club. All the

freeborn citizens were hereditary members and all the slaves

were hereditary servants, and waited upon the needs of their

masters, and it was very pleasant to be a member of the

organisation.

But when we talk about slaves. we do not mean the sort of

people about whom you have read in the pages of ``Uncle

Tom's Cabin.'' It is true that the position of those slaves who

tilled the fields was a very unpleasant one, but the average

freeman who had come down in the world and who had been

obliged to hire himself out as a farm hand led just as miserable

a life. In the cities, furthermore, many of the slaves were

more prosperous than the poorer classes of the freemen. For

the Greeks, who loved moderation in all things, did not like to

treat their slaves after the fashion which afterward was so

common in Rome, where a slave had as few rights as an engine

in a modern factory and could be thrown to the wild animals

upon the smallest pretext.

The Greeks accepted slavery as a necessary institution,

without which no city could possibly become the home of a truly

civilised people.

The slaves also took care of those tasks which nowadays are

performed by the business men and the professional men. As

for those household duties which take up so much of the time

of your mother and which worry your father when he comes

home from his office, the Greeks, who understood the value of

leisure, had reduced such duties to the smallest possible minimum

by living amidst surroundings of extreme simplicity.

To begin with, their homes were very plain. Even the rich

nobles spent their lives in a sort of adobe barn, which lacked

all the comforts which a modern workman expects as his natural

right. A Greek home consisted of four walls and a roof.

There was a door which led into the street but there were no

windows. The kitchen, the living rooms and the sleeping quarters

were built around an open courtyard in which there was a

small fountain, or a statue and a few plants to make it look

bright. Within this courtyard the family lived when it did not

rain or when it was not too cold. In one corner of the yard the

cook (who was a slave) prepared the meal and in another

corner, the teacher (who was also a slave) taught the children

the alpha beta gamma and the tables of multiplication and in

still another corner the lady of the house, who rarely left her

domain (since it was not considered good form for a married

woman to be seen on the street too often) was repairing her

husband's coat with her seamstresses (who were slaves,) and

in the little office, right off the door, the master was inspecting

the accounts which the overseer of his farm (who was a slave)

had just brought to him.

When dinner was ready the family came together but the

meal was a very simple one and did not take much time. The

Greeks seem to have regarded eating as an unavoidable evil

and not a pastime, which kills many dreary hours and eventually

kills many dreary people. They lived on bread and on

wine, with a little meat and some green vegetables. They

drank water only when nothing else was available because

they did not think it very healthy. They loved to call on each

other for dinner, but our idea of a festive meal, where everybody

is supposed to eat much more than is good for him, would

have disgusted them. They came together at the table for

the purpose of a good talk and a good glass of wine and water,

but as they were moderate people they despised those who

drank too much.

The same simplicity which prevailed in the dining room

also dominated their choice of clothes. They liked to be clean

and well groomed, to have their hair and beards neatly cut,

to feel their bodies strong with the exercise and the swimming

of the gymnasium, but they never followed the Asiatic fashion

which prescribed loud colours and strange patterns. They

wore a long white coat and they managed to look as smart as

a modern Italian officer in his long blue cape.

They loved to see their wives wear ornaments but they

thought it very vulgar to display their wealth (or their wives)

in public and whenever the women left their home they were as

inconspicuous as possible.

In short, the story of Greek life is a story not only of moderation

but also of simplicity. ``Things,'' chairs and tables and

books and houses and carriages, are apt to take up a great

deal of their owner's time. In the end they invariably make

him their slave and his hours are spent looking after their

wants, keeping them polished and brushed and painted. The

Greeks, before everything else, wanted to be ``free,'' both in

mind and in body. That they might maintain their liberty, and

be truly free in spirit, they reduced their daily needs to the

lowest possible point.

THE GREEK THEATRE

THE ORIGINS OF THE THEATRE, THE FIRST

FORM OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENT

AT a very early stage of their history the Greeks had begun

to collect the poems, which had been written in honor of

their brave ancestors who had driven the Pelasgians out of

Hellas and had destroyed the power of Troy. These poems were

recited in public and everybody came to listen to them. But

the theatre, the form of entertainment which has become almost

a necessary part of our own lives, did not grow out of these

recited heroic tales. It had such a curious origin that I must

tell you something about it in a separate chapter

The Greeks had always been fond of parades. Every

year they held solemn processions in honor of Dionysos the

God of the wine. As everybody in Greece drank wine (the

Greeks thought water only useful for the purpose of swimming

and sailing) this particular Divinity was as popular as a God

of the Soda-Fountain would be in our own land.

And because the Wine-God was supposed to live in the

vineyards, amidst a merry mob of Satyrs (strange creatures

who were half man and half goat), the crowd that joined the

procession used to wear goat-skins and to hee-haw like real

billy-goats. The Greek word for goat is ``tragos'' and the

Greek word for singer is ``oidos.'' The singer who meh-mehed

like a goat therefore was called a ``tragos-oidos'' or goat singer,

and it is this strange name which developed into the modern

word ``Tragedy,'' which means in the theatrical sense a piece

with an unhappy ending, just as Comedy (which really means

the singing of something ``comos'' or gay) is the name given

to a play which ends happily.

But how, you will ask, did this noisy chorus of masqueraders,

stamping around like wild goats, ever develop into the

noble tragedies which have filled the theatres of the world for

almost two thousand years?

The connecting link between the goat-singer and Hamlet is

really very simple as I shall show you in a moment.

The singing chorus was very amusing in the beginning and

attracted large crowds of spectators who stood along the side

of the road and laughed. But soon this business of tree-hawing

grew tiresome and the Greeks thought dullness an evil only

comparable to ugliness or sickness. They asked for something

more entertaining. Then an inventive young poet from

the village of Icaria in Attica hit upon a new idea which proved

a tremendous success. He made one of the members of the

goat-chorus step forward and engage in conversation with the

leader of the musicians who marched at the head of the parade

playing upon their pipes of Pan. This individual was allowed

to step out of line. He waved his arms and gesticulated

while he spoke (that is to say he ``acted'' while the others merely

stood by and sang) and he asked a lot of questions, which the

bandmaster answered according to the roll of papyrus upon

which the poet had written down these answers before the

show began.

This rough and ready conversation--the dialogue--which

told the story of Dionysos or one of the other Gods, became

at once popular with the crowd. Henceforth every Dionysian

procession had an acted scene'' and very soon the acting''

was considered more important than the procession and the

meh-mehing.

AEschylus, the most successful of all ``tragedians'' who wrote

no less than eighty plays during his long life (from 526 to 455)

made a bold step forward when he introduced two ``actors''

instead of one. A generation later Sophocles increased the

number of actors to three. When Euripides began to write

his terrible tragedies in the middle of the fifth century, B.C.,

he was allowed as many actors as he liked and when Aristophanes

wrote those famous comedies in which he poked fun at

everybody and everything, including the Gods of Mount Olympus,

the chorus had been reduced to the role of mere bystanders

who were lined up behind the principal performers

and who sang ``this is a terrible world'' while the hero in the

foreground committed a crime against the will of the Gods.

This new form of dramatic entertainment demanded a

proper setting, and soon every Greek city owned a theatre, cut

out of the rock of a nearby hill. The spectators sat upon

wooden benches and faced a wide circle (our present orchestra

where you pay three dollars and thirty cents for a seat).

Upon this half-circle, which was the stage, the actors and the

chorus took their stand. Behind them there was a tent where

they made up with large clay masks which hid their faces and

which showed the spectators whether the actors were supposed

to be happy and smiling or unhappy and weeping. The Greek

word for tent is ``skene'' and that is the reason why we talk

of the ``scenery'' of the stage.

When once the tragedy had become part of Greek life, the

people took it very seriously and never went to the theatre to

give their minds a vacation. A new play became as important

an event as an election and a successful playwright was

received with greater honors than those bestowed upon a general

who had just returned from a famous victory.

THE PERSIAN WARS

HOW THE GREEKS DEFENDED EUROPE

AGAINST ASIATIC INVASION AND DROVE

THE PERSIANS BACK ACROSS THE AEGEAN

SEA

THE Greeks had learned the art of trading from the

AEgeans who had been the pupils of the Phoenicians. They

had founded colonies after the Phoenician pattern. They had

even improved upon the Phoenician methods by a more general

use of money in dealing with foreign customers. In the sixth

century before our era they had established themselves firmly

along the coast of Asia Minor and they were taking away

trade from the Phoenicians at a fast rate. This the Phoenicians

of course did not like but they were not strong enough to

risk a war with their Greek competitors. They sat and waited

nor did they wait in vain.

In a former chapter, I have told you how a humble tribe

of Persian shepherds had suddenly gone upon the warpath and

had conquered the greater part of western Asia. The Persians

were too civilised to plunder their new subjects. They

contented themselves with a yearly tribute. When they

reached the coast of Asia Minor they insisted that the Greek

colonies of Lydia recognize the Persian Kings as their over-

Lords and pay them a stipulated tax. The Greek colonies

objected. The Persians insisted. Then the Greek colonies

appealed to the home-country and the stage was set for a

quarrel.

For if the truth be told, the Persian Kings regarded the

Greek city-states as very dangerous political institutions and

bad examples for all other people who were supposed to be the

patient slaves of the mighty Persian Kings.

Of course, the Greeks enjoyed a certain degree of safety because

their country lay hidden beyond the deep waters of the

AEgean. But here their old enemies, the Phoenicians, stepped

forward with offers of help and advice to the Persians. If the

Persian King would provide the soldiers, the Phoenicians would

guarantee to deliver the necessary ships to carry them to

Europe. It was the year 492 before the birth of Christ, and

Asia made ready to destroy the rising power of Europe.

As a final warning the King of Persia sent messengers

to the Greeks asking for ``earth and water'' as a token of their

submission. The Greeks promptly threw the messengers into

the nearest well where they would find both ``earth and water''

in large abundance and thereafter of course peace was impossible.

But the Gods of High Olympus watched over their children

and when the Phoenician fleet carrying the Persian troops

was near Mount Athos, the Storm-God blew his cheeks until

he almost burst the veins of his brow, and the fleet was destroyed

by a terrible hurricane and the Persians were all

drowned.

Two years later they returned. This time they sailed

straight across the AEgean Sea and landed near the village of

Marathon. As soon as the Athenians heard this they sent

their army of ten thousand men to guard the hills that

surrounded the Marathonian plain. At the same time they

despatched a fast runner to Sparta to ask for help. But Sparta

was envious of the fame of Athens and refused to come to her

assistance. The other Greek cities followed her example with

the exception of tiny Plataea which sent a thousand men. On

the twelfth of September of the year 490, Miltiades, the Athenian

commander, threw this little army against the hordes of the

Persians. The Greeks broke through the Persian barrage of

arrows and their spears caused terrible havoc among the disorganised

Asiatic troops who had never been called upon to resist

such an enemy.

That night the people of Athens watched the sky grow

red with the flames of burning ships. Anxiously they waited

for news. At last a little cloud of dust appeared upon the

road that led to the North. It was Pheidippides, the runner.

He stumbled and gasped for his end was near. Only a few

days before had he returned from his errand to Sparta. He

had hastened to join Miltiades. That morning he had taken

part in the attack and later he had volunteered to carry the

news of victory to his beloved city. The people saw him fall

and they rushed forward to support him. ``We have won,''

he whispered and then he died, a glorious death which made him

envied of all men.

As for the Persians, they tried, after this defeat, to land

near Athens but they found the coast guarded and disappeared,

and once more the land of Hellas was at peace.

Eight years they waited and during this time the Greeks

were not idle. They knew that a final attack was to be expected

but they did not agree upon the best way to avert the danger.

Some people wanted to increase the army. Others said that

a strong fleet was necessary for success. The two parties led by

Aristides (for the army) and Themistocles (the leader of the

bigger-navy men) fought each other bitterly and nothing was

done until Aristides was exiled. Then Themistocles had his

chance and he built all the ships he could and turned the Piraeus

into a strong naval base.

In the year 481 B.C. a tremendous Persian army appeared

in Thessaly, a province of northern Greece. In this hour of

danger, Sparta, the great military city of Greece, was elected

commander-in-chief. But the Spartans cared little what happened

to northern Greece provided their own country was not

invaded, They neglected to fortify the passes that led into

Greece.

A small detachment of Spartans under Leonidas had been

told to guard the narrow road between the high mountains and

the sea which connected Thessaly with the southern provinces.

Leonidas obeyed his orders. He fought and held the pass with

unequalled bravery. But a traitor by the name of Ephialtes

who knew the little byways of Malis guided a regiment of Persians

through the hills and made it possible for them to attack

Leonidas in the rear. Near the Warm Wells--the Thermopylae

--a terrible battle was fought.

When night came Leonidas and his faithful soldiers lay dead

under the corpses of their enemies.

But the pass had been lost and the greater part of Greece

fell into the hands of the Persians. They marched upon

Athens, threw the garrison from the rocks of the Acropolis and

burned the city. The people fled to the Island of Salamis. All

seemed lost. But on the 20th of September of the year 480

Themistocles forced the Persian fleet to give battle within the

narrow straits which separated the Island of Salamis from the

mainland and within a few hours he destroyed three quarters

of the Persian ships.

In this way the victory of Thermopylae came to naught.

Xerxes was forced to retire. The next year, so he decreed,

would bring a final decision. He took his troops to Thessaly

and there he waited for spring.

But this time the Spartans understood the seriousness of

the hour. They left the safe shelter of the wall which they had

built across the isthmus of Corinth and under the leadership

of Pausanias they marched against Mardonius the Persian

general. The united Greeks (some one hundred thousand men

from a dozen different cities) attacked the three hundred thou-

sand men of the enemy near Plataea. Once more the heavy

Greek infantry broke through the Persian barrage of arrows.

The Persians were defeated, as they had been at Marathon, and

this time they left for good. By a strange coincidence, the

same day that the Greek armies won their victory near Plataea,

the Athenian ships destroyed the enemy's fleet near Cape Mycale

in Asia Minor.

Thus did the first encounter between Asia and Europe end.

Athens had covered herself with glory and Sparta had fought

bravely and well. If these two cities had been able to come to

an agreement, if they had been willing to forget their little

jealousies, they might have become the leaders of a strong and

united Hellas.

But alas, they allowed the hour of victory and enthusiasm

to slip by, and the same opportunity never returned.

ATHENS vs. SPARTA

HOW ATHENS AND SPARTA FOUGHT A LONG

AND DISASTROUS WAR FOR THE LEADERSHIP

OF GREECE

ATHENS and Sparta were both Greek cities and their people

spoke a common language. In every other respect they were

different. Athens rose high from the plain. It was a city

exposed to the fresh breezes from the sea, willing to look at

the world with the eyes of a happy child. Sparta, on the other

hand, was built at the bottom of a deep valley, and used the

surrounding mountains as a barrier against foreign thought.

Athens was a city of busy trade. Sparta was an armed camp

where people were soldiers for the sake of being soldiers. The

people of Athens loved to sit in the sun and discuss poetry or

listen to the wise words of a philosopher. The Spartans, on the

other hand, never wrote a single line that was considered literature,

but they knew how to fight, they liked to fight, and they

sacrificed all human emotions to their ideal of military preparedness.

No wonder that these sombre Spartans viewed the success

of Athens with malicious hate. The energy which the defence of

the common home had developed in Athens was now used for

purposes of a more peaceful nature. The Acropolis was rebuilt

and was made into a marble shrine to the Goddess Athena.

Pericles, the leader of the Athenian democracy, sent far and

wide to find famous sculptors and painters and scientists to

make the city more beautiful and the young Athenians more

worthy of their home. At the same time he kept a watchful

eye on Sparta and built high walls which connected Athens

with the sea and made her the strongest fortress of that day.

An insignificant quarrel between two little Greek cities led

to the final conflict. For thirty years the war between Athens

and Sparta continued. It ended in a terrible disaster for

Athens.

During the third year of the war the plague had entered

the city. More than half of the people and Pericles, the great

leader, had been killed. The plague was followed by a period

of bad and untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young fellow

by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor of the

popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan

colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and

everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street

brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him

was a bungler. First he lost his ships and then he lost his

army, and the few surviving Athenians were thrown into the

stone-quarries of Syracuse, where they died from hunger and

thirst.

The expedition had killed all the young men of Athens.

The city was doomed. After a long siege the town surrendered

in April of the year 404. The high walls were demolished.

The navy was taken away by the Spartans. Athens ceased to

exist as the center of the great colonial empire which it had

conquered during the days of its prosperity. But that wonderful

desire to learn and to know and to investigate which

had distinguished her free citizens during the days of greatness

and prosperity did not perish with the walls and the

ships. It continued to live. It became even more brilliant.

Athens no longer shaped the destinies of the land of Greece.

But now, as the home of the first great university the city began

to influence the minds of intelligent people far beyond

the narrow frontiers of Hellas.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

ALEXANDER THE MACEDONIAN ESTABLISHES

A GREEK WORLD-EMPIRE, AND

WHAT BECAME OF THIS HIGH AMBITION

WHEN the Achaeans had left their homes along the banks of

the Danube to look for pastures new, they had spent some

time among the mountains of Macedonia. Ever since, the

Greeks had maintained certain more or less formal relations

with the people of this northern country. The Macedonians

from their side had kept themselves well informed about conditions

in Greece.

Now it happened, just when Sparta and Athens had finished

their disastrous war for the leadership of Hellas, that

Macedonia was ruled by an extraordinarily clever man by

the name of Philip. He admired the Greek spirit in letters and

art but he despised the Greek lack of self-control in political

affairs. It irritated him to see a perfectly good people waste its

men and money upon fruitless quarrels. So he settled the

difficulty by making himself the master of all Greece and then

he asked his new subjects to join him on a voyage which he

meant to pay to Persia in return for the visit which Xerxes

had paid the Greeks one hundred and fifty years before.

Unfortunately Philip was murdered before he could start

upon this well-prepared expedition. The task of avenging the

destruction of Athens was left to Philip's son Alexander, the

beloved pupil of Aristotle, wisest of all Greek teachers.

Alexander bade farewell to Europe in the spring of the

year 334 B.C. Seven years later he reached India. In the

meantime he had destroyed Phoenicia, the old rival of the Greek

merchants. He had conquered Egypt and had been worshipped

by the people of the Nile valley as the son and heir of the

Pharaohs. He had defeated the last Persian king--he had

overthrown the Persian empire he had given orders to rebuild

Babylon--he had led his troops into the heart of the

Himalayan mountains and had made the entire world a Macedonian

province and dependency. Then he stopped and announced

even more ambitious plans.

The newly formed Empire must be brought under the influence

of the Greek mind. The people must be taught the Greek

language--they must live in cities built after a Greek model.

The Alexandrian soldier now turned school-master. The military

camps of yesterday became the peaceful centres of the

newly imported Greek civilisation. Higher and higher did the

flood of Greek manners and Greek customs rise, when suddenly

Alexander was stricken with a fever and died in the old

palace of King Hammurabi of Babylon in the year 323.

Then the waters receded. But they left behind the fertile clay

of a higher civilisation and Alexander, with all his childish

ambitions and his silly vanities, had performed a most valuable

service. His Empire did not long survive him. A number of

ambitious generals divided the territory among themselves.

But they too remained faithful to the dream of a great world

brotherhood of Greek and Asiatic ideas and knowledge.

They maintained their independence until the Romans

added western Asia and Egypt to their other domains. The

strange inheritance of this Hellenistic civilisation (part Greek,

part Persian, part Egyptian and Babylonian) fell to the

Roman conquerors. During the following centuries, it got

such a firm hold upon the Roman world, that we feel its influence

in our own lives this very day.

A SUMMARY

A SHORT SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1 to 20

THUS far, from the top of our high tower we have been

looking eastward. But from this time on, the history of Egypt

and Mesopotamia is going to grow less interesting and I must

take you to study the western landscape.

Before we do this, let us stop a moment and make clear to

ourselves what we have seen.

First of all I showed you prehistoric man--a creature very

simple in his habits and very unattractive in his manners. I

told you how he was the most defenceless of the many animals

that roamed through the early wilderness of the five continents,

but being possessed of a larger and better brain, he managed to

hold his own.

Then came the glaciers and the many centuries of cold

weather, and life on this planet became so difficult that man was

obliged to think three times as hard as ever before if he wished

to survive. Since, however, that ``wish to survive'' was (and is)

the mainspring which keeps every living being going full tilt to

the last gasp of its breath, the brain of glacial man was set to

work in all earnestness. Not only did these hardy people manage

to exist through the long cold spells which killed many

ferocious animals, but when the earth became warm and comfortable

once more, prehistoric man had learned a number of

things which gave him such great advantages over his less intelligent

neighbors that the danger of extinction (a very serious

one during the first half million years of man's residence upon

this planet) became a very remote one.

I told you how these earliest ancestors of ours were slowly

plodding along when suddenly (and for reasons that are not

well understood) the people who lived in the valley of the Nile

rushed ahead and almost over night, created the first centre of

civilisation.

Then I showed you Mesopotamia, ``the land between the

rivers,'' which was the second great school of the human race.

And I made you a map of the little island bridges of the AEgean

Sea, which carried the knowledge and the science of the old

east to the young west, where lived the Greeks.

Next I told you of an Indo-European tribe, called the Hellenes,

who thousands of years before had left the heart of

Asia and who had in the eleventh century before our era pushed

their way into the rocky peninsula of Greece and who, since

then, have been known to us as the Greeks. And I told

you the story of the little Greek cities that were really states,

where the civilisation of old Egypt and Asia was transfigured

(that is a big word, but you can ``figure out'' what it means)

into something quite new, something that was much nobler and

finer than anything that had gone before.

When you look at the map you will see how by this time

civilisation has described a semi-circle. It begins in Egypt,

and by way of Mesopotamia and the AEgean Islands it moves

westward until it reaches the European continent. The first

four thousand years, Egyptians and Babylonians and Phoenicians

and a large number of Semitic tribes (please remember

that the Jews were but one of a large number of Semitic peoples)

have carried the torch that was to illuminate the world.

They now hand it over to the Indo-European Greeks, who become

the teachers of another Indo-European tribe, called the

Romans. But meanwhile the Semites have pushed westward

along the northern coast of Africa and have made themselves

the rulers of the western half of the Mediterranean just when

the eastern half has become a Greek (or Indo-European) possession.

This, as you shall see in a moment, leads to a terrible conflict

between the two rival races, and out of their struggle arises

the victorious Roman Empire, which is to take this Egyptian-

Mesopotamian-Greek civilisation to the furthermost corners of

the European continent, where it serves as the foundation upon

which our modern society is based.

I know all this sounds very complicated, but if you get hold

of these few principles, the rest of our history will become a

great deal simpler. The maps will make clear what the words

fail to tell. And after this short intermission, we go back to

our story and give you an account of the famous war between

Carthage and Rome.

ROME AND CARTHAGE

THE SEMITIC COLONY OF CARTHAGE ON THE

NORTHERN COAST OF AFRICA AND THE

INDO-EUROPEAN CITY OF ROME ON THE

WEST COAST OF ITALY FOUGHT EACH

OTHER FOR THE POSSESSION OF THE

WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND CARTHAGE

WAS DESTROYED

THE little Phoenician trading post of Kart-hadshat stood

on a low hill which overlooked the African Sea, a stretch of

water ninety miles wide which separates Africa from Europe.

It was an ideal spot for a commercial centre. Almost too ideal.

It grew too fast and became too rich. When in the sixth century

before our era, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed

Tyre, Carthage broke off all further relations with the Mother

Country and became an independent state--the great western

advance-post of the Semitic races.

Unfortunately the city had inherited many of the traits

which for a thousand years had been characteristic of the

Phoenicians. It was a vast business-house, protected by a

strong navy, indifferent to most of the finer aspects of life.

The city and the surrounding country and the distant colonies

were all ruled by a small but exceedingly powerful group of

rich men, The Greek word for rich is ``ploutos'' and the Greeks

called such a government by rich men'' a Plutocracy.'' Carthage

was a plutocracy and the real power of the state lay in

the hands of a dozen big ship-owners and mine-owners and

merchants who met in the back room of an office and regarded

their common Fatherland as a business enterprise which ought

to yield them a decent profit. They were however wide awake

and full of energy and worked very hard.

As the years went by the influence of Carthage upon her

neighbours increased until the greater part of the African

coast, Spain and certain regions of France were Carthaginian

possessions, and paid tribute, taxes and dividends to the mighty

city on the African Sea.

Of course, such a ``plutocracy'' was forever at the mercy of

the crowd. As long as there was plenty of work and wages

were high, the majority of the citizens were quite contented,

allowed their ``betters'' to rule them and asked no embarrassing

questions. But when no ships left the harbor, when no ore

was brought to the smelting-ovens, when dockworkers and

stevedores were thrown out of employment, then there were

grumblings and there was a demand that the popular assembly

be called together as in the olden days when Carthage had

been a self-governing republic.

To prevent such an occurrence the plutocracy was obliged

to keep the business of the town going at full speed. They

had managed to do this very successfully for almost five hun-

dred years when they were greatly disturbed by certain rumors

which reached them from the western coast of Italy. It was

said that a little village on the banks of the Tiber had suddenly

risen to great power and was making itself the acknowledged

leader of all the Latin tribes who inhabited central Italy.

It was also said that this village, which by the way was called

Rome, intended to build ships and go after the commerce of

Sicily and the southern coast of France.

Carthage could not possibly tolerate such competition. The

young rival must be destroyed lest the Carthaginian rulers

lose their prestige as the absolute rulers of the western

Mediterranean. The rumors were duly investigated and in a

general way these were the facts that came to light.

The west coast of Italy had long been neglected by civilisation.

Whereas in Greece all the good harbours faced eastward

and enjoyed a full view of the busy islands of the AEgean,

the west coast of Italy contemplated nothing more exciting

than the desolate waves of the Mediterranean. The country

was poor. It was therefore rarely visited by foreign merchants

and the natives were allowed to live in undisturbed possession

of their hills and their marshy plains.

The first serious invasion of this land came from the north.

At an unknown date certain Indo-European tribes had managed

to find their way through the passes of the Alps and had

pushed southward until they had filled the heel and the toe of

the famous Italian boot with their villages and their flocks.

Of these early conquerors we know nothing. No Homer sang

their glory. Their own accounts of the foundation of Rome

(written eight hundred years later when the little city had become

the centre of an Empire) are fairy stories and do not belong

in a history. Romulus and Remus jumping across each

other's walls (I always forget who jumped across whose wall)

make entertaining reading, but the foundation of the City of

Rome was a much more prosaic affair. Rome began as a thousand

American cities have done, by being a convenient place

for barter and horse-trading. It lay in the heart of the plains

of central Italy The Tiber provided direct access to the sea.

The land-road from north to south found here a convenient

ford which could be used all the year around. And seven little

hills along the banks of the river offered the inhabitants a safe

shelter against their enemies who lived in the mountains and

those who lived beyond the horizon of the nearby sea.

The mountaineers were called the Sabines. They were a

rough crowd with an unholy desire for easy plunder. But they

were very backward. They used stone axes and wooden

shields and were no match for the Romans with their steel

swords. The sea-people on the other hand were dangerous

foes. They were called the Etruscans and they were (and

still are) one of the great mysteries of history. Nobody knew

(or knows) whence they came; who they were; what had driven

them away from their original homes. We have found the remains

of their cities and their cemeteries and their waterworks

all along the Italian coast. We are familiar with their inscriptions.

But as no one has ever been able to decipher the Etruscan

alphabet, these written messages are, so far, merely annoying

and not at all useful.

Our best guess is that the Etruscans came originally from

Asia Minor and that a great war or a pestilence in that country

had forced them to go away and seek a new home elsewhere.

Whatever the reason for their coming, the Etruscans played a

great role in history. They carried the pollen of the ancient

civilisation from the east to the west and they taught the

Romans who, as we know, came from the north, the first principles

of architecture and street-building and fighting and art

and cookery and medicine and astronomy.

But just as the Greeks had not loved their AEgean teachers,

in this same way did the Romans hate their Etruscan masters.

They got rid of them as soon as they could and the opportunity

offered itself when Greek merchants discovered the

commercial possibilities of Italy and when the first Greek

vessels reached Rome. The Greeks came to trade, but they

stayed to instruct. They found the tribes who inhabited the

Roman country-side (and who were called the Latins) quite

willing to learn such things as might be of practical use. At

once they understood the great benefit that could be derived

from a written alphabet and they copied that of the Greeks.

They also understood the commercial advantages of a well-

regulated system of coins and measures and weights. Eventually

the Romans swallowed Greek civilisation hook, line and

sinker.

They even welcomed the Gods of the Greeks to their

country. Zeus was taken to Rome where he became known as

Jupiter and the other divinities followed him. The Roman Gods

however never were quite like their cheerful cousins who had

accompanied the Greeks on their road through life and through

history. The Roman Gods were State Functionaries. Each

one managed his own department with great prudence and a

deep sense of justice, but in turn he was exact in demanding the

obedience of his worshippers. This obedience the Romans rendered

with scrupulous care. But they never established the

cordial personal relations and that charming friendship which

had existed between the old Hellenes and the mighty residents

of the high Olympian peak.

The Romans did not imitate the Greek form of government,

but being of the same Indo-European stock as the people

of Hellas, the early history of Rome resembles that of

Athens and the other Greek cities. They did not find it difficult

to get rid of their kings, the descendants of the ancient

tribal chieftains. But once the kings had been driven from

the city, the Romans were forced to bridle the power of the

nobles, and it took many centuries before they managed to

establish a system which gave every free citizen of Rome a

chance to take a personal interest in the affairs of his town.

Thereafter the Romans enjoyed one great advantage over

the Greeks. They managed the affairs of their country without

making too many speeches. They were less imaginative

than the Greeks and they preferred an ounce of action to a

pound of words. They understood the tendency of the multi-

tude (the ``plebe,'' as the assemblage of free citizens was called)

only too well to waste valuable time upon mere talk. They

therefore placed the actual business of running the city into

the hands of two ``consuls'' who were assisted by a council of

Elders, called the Senate (because the word ``senex'' means an

old man). As a matter of custom and practical advantage the

senators were elected from the nobility. But their power had

been strictly defined.

Rome at one time had passed through the same sort of

struggle between the poor and the rich which had forced

Athens to adopt the laws of Draco and Solon. In Rome this

conflict had occurred in the fifth century B. C. As a result the

freemen had obtained a written code of laws which protected

them against the despotism of the aristocratic judges by the

institution of the ``Tribune.'' These Tribunes were city-

magistrates, elected by the freemen. They had the right to protect

any citizen against those actions of the government officials

which were thought to be unjust. A consul had the right to

condemn a man to death, but if the case had not been absolutely

proved the Tribune could interfere and save the poor

fellow's life.

But when I use the word Rome, I seem to refer to a little

city of a few thousand inhabitants. And the real strength of

Rome lay in the country districts outside her walls. And it

was in the government of these outlying provinces that Rome

at an early age showed her wonderful gift as a colonising

power.

In very early times Rome had been the only strongly fortified

city in central Italy, but it had always offered a hospitable

refuge to other Latin tribes who happened to be in danger of

attack. The Latin neighbours had recognised the advantages

of a close union with such a powerful friend and they had tried

to find a basis for some sort of defensive and offensive alliance.

Other nations, Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians,

even Greeks, would have insisted upon a treaty of submission

on the part of the ``barbarians,'' The Romans did nothing of

the sort. They gave the ``outsider'' a chance to become partners

in a common ``res publica''--or common-wealth.

You want to join us,'' they said. Very well, go ahead

and join. We shall treat you as if you were full-fledged citizens

of Rome. In return for this privilege we expect you to

fight for our city, the mother of us all, whenever it shall be

necessary.''

The ``outsider'' appreciated this generosity and he showed

his gratitude by his unswerving loyalty.

Whenever a Greek city had been attacked, the foreign

residents had moved out as quickly as they could. Why defend

something which meant nothing to them but a temporary

boarding house in which they were tolerated as long as they

paid their bills? But when the enemy was before the gates

of Rome, all the Latins rushed to her defence. It was their

Mother who was in danger. It was their true ``home'' even if

they lived a hundred miles away and had never seen the walls

of the sacred Hills.

No defeat and no disaster could change this sentiment. In

the beginning of the fourth century B.C. the wild Gauls forced

their way into Italy. They had defeated the Roman army near

the River Allia and had marched upon the city. They had

taken Rome and then they expected that the people would

come and sue for peace. They waited, but nothing happened.

After a short time the Gauls found themselves surrounded by

a hostile population which made it impossible for them to obtain

supplies. After seven months, hunger forced them to withdraw.

The policy of Rome to treat the ``foreigner'' on equal

terms had proved a great success and Rome stood stronger than

ever before.

This short account of the early history of Rome shows you

the enormous difference between the Roman ideal of a healthy

state, and that of the ancient world which was embodied in the

town of Carthage. The Romans counted upon the cheerful

and hearty co-operation between a number of ``equal citizens.''

The Carthaginians, following the example of Egypt

and western Asia, insisted upon the unreasoning (and therefore

unwilling) obedience of ``Subjects'' and when these failed

they hired professional soldiers to do their fighting for them.

You will now understand why Carthage was bound to fear

such a clever and powerful enemy and why the plutocracy of

Carthage was only too willing to pick a quarrel that they might

destroy the dangerous rival before it was too late.

But the Carthaginians, being good business men, knew that

it never pays to rush matters. They proposed to the Romans

that their respective cities draw two circles on the map and

that each town claim one of these circles as her own ``sphere

of influence'' and promise to keep out of the other fellow's

circle. The agreement was promptly made and was broken just

as promptly when both sides thought it wise to send their

armies to Sicily where a rich soil and a bad government invited

foreign interference.

The war which followed (the so-called first Punic War)

lasted twenty-four years. It was fought out on the high seas

and in the beginning it seemed that the experienced Car-

thaginian navy would defeat the newly created Roman fleet.

Following their ancient tactics, the Carthaginian ships would

either ram the enemy vessels or by a bold attack from the side

they would break their oars and would then kill the sailors of

the helpless vessel with their arrows and with fire balls. But

Roman engineers invented a new craft which carried a boarding

bridge across which the Roman infantrymen stormed the

hostile ship. Then there was a sudden end to Carthaginian

victories. At the battle of Mylae their fleet was badly defeated.

Carthage was obliged to sue for peace, and Sicily became part

of the Roman domains.

Twenty-three years later new trouble arose. Rome (in

quest of copper) had taken the island of Sardinia. Carthage

(in quest of silver) thereupon occupied all of southern Spain.

This made Carthage a direct neighbour of the Romans. The

latter did not like this at all and they ordered their troops to

cross the Pyrenees and watch the Carthaginian army of occupation.

The stage was set for the second outbreak between the two

rivals. Once more a Greek colony was the pretext for a war.

The Carthaginians were besieging Saguntum on the east coast

of Spain. The Saguntians appealed to Rome and Rome, as

usual, was willing to help. The Senate promised the help of

the Latin armies, but the preparation for this expedition took

some time, and meanwhile Saguntum had been taken and had

been destroyed. This had been done in direct opposition to

the will of Rome. The Senate decided upon war. One Roman

army was to cross the African sea and make a landing on Carthaginian

soil. A second division was to keep the Carthaginian

armies occupied in Spain to prevent them from rushing to the

aid of the home town. It was an excellent plan and everybody

expected a great victory. But the Gods had decided

otherwise.

It was the fall of the year 218 before the birth of Christ

and the Roman army which was to attack the Carthaginians in

Spain had left Italy. People were eagerly waiting for news of

an easy and complete victory when a terrible rumour began to

spread through the plain of the Po. Wild mountaineers, their

lips trembling with fear, told of hundreds of thousands of

brown men accompanied by strange beasts ``each one as big as

a house,'' who had suddenly emerged from the clouds of snow

which surrounded the old Graian pass through which Hercules,

thousands of years before, had driven the oxen of Geryon on

his way from Spain to Greece. Soon an endless stream of

bedraggled refugees appeared before the gates of Rome, with

more complete details. Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar, with

fifty thousand soldiers, nine thousand horsemen and thirty-

seven fighting elephants, had crossed the Pyrenees. He had

defeated the Roman army of Scipio on the banks of the Rhone

and he had guided his army safely across the mountain passes

of the Alps although it was October and the roads were thickly

covered with snow and ice. Then he had joined forces with

the Gauls and together they had defeated a second Roman

army just before they crossed the Trebia and laid siege to

Placentia, the northern terminus of the road which connected

Rome with the province of the Alpine districts.

The Senate, surprised but calm and energetic as usual,

hushed up the news of these many defeats and sent two fresh

armies to stop the invader. Hannibal managed to surprise

these troops on a narrow road along the shores of the Trasimene

Lake and there he killed all the Roman officers and most

of their men. This time there was a panic among the people

of Rome, but the Senate kept its nerve. A third army was

organised and the command was given to Quintus Fabius Maximus

with full power to act ``as was necessary to save the state.''

Fabius knew that he must be very careful lest all be lost.

His raw and untrained men, the last available soldiers, were

no match for Hannibal's veterans. He refused to accept battle

but forever he followed Hannibal, destroyed everything eatable,

destroyed the roads, attacked small detachments and generally

weakened the morale of the Carthaginian troops by a

most distressing and annoying form of guerilla warfare.

Such methods however did not satisfy the fearsome crowds

who had found safety behind the walls of Rome. They wanted

``action.'' Something must be done and must be done quickly.

A popular hero by the name of Varro, the sort of man who

went about the city telling everybody how much better he could

do things than slow old Fabius, the ``Delayer,'' was made

commander-in-chief by popular acclamation. At the battle of

Cannae (216) he suffered the most terrible defeat of Roman

history. More than seventy thousand men were killed. Hannibal

was master of all Italy.

He marched from one end of the peninsula to the other,

proclaiming himself the ``deliverer from the yoke of Rome''

and asking the different provinces to join him in warfare upon

the mother city. Then once more the wisdom of Rome bore

noble fruit. With the exceptions of Capua and Syracuse, all

Roman cities remained loyal. Hannibal, the deliverer,

found himself opposed by the people whose friend he pretended

to be. He was far away from home and did not like

the situation. He sent messengers to Carthage to ask for fresh

supplies and new men. Alas, Carthage could not send him

either.

The Romans with their boarding-bridges, were the masters

of the sea. Hannibal must help himself as best he could.

He continued to defeat the Roman armies that were sent out

against him, but his own numbers were decreasing rapidly and

the Italian peasants held aloof from this self-appointed

``deliverer.''

After many years of uninterrupted victories, Hannibal

found himself besieged in the country which he had just

conquered. For a moment, the luck seemed to turn. Hasdrubal,

his brother, had defeated the Roman armies in Spain. He had

crossed the Alps to come to Hannibal's assistance. He sent

messengers to the south to tell of his arrival and ask the other

army to meet him in the plain of the Tiber. Unfortunately the

messengers fell into the hands of the Romans and Hannibal

waited in vain for further news until his brother's head, neatly

packed in a basket, came rolling into his camp and told him

of the fate of the last of the Carthaginian troops.

With Hasdrubal out of the way, young Publius Scipio

easily reconquered Spain and four years later the Romans

were ready for a final attack upon Carthage. Hannibal was

called back. He crossed the African Sea and tried to organise

the defences of his home-city. In the year 202 at the battle

of Zama, the Carthaginians were defeated. Hannibal fled to

Tyre. From there he went to Asia Minor to stir up the Syrians

and the Macedonians against Rome. He accomplished very

little but his activities among these Asiatic powers gave the

Romans an excuse to carry their warfare into the territory of

the east and annex the greater part of the AEgean world.

Driven from one city to another, a fugitive without a home,

Hannibal at last knew that the end of his ambitious dream had

come. His beloved city of Carthage had been ruined by the

war. She had been forced to sign a terrible peace. Her navy

had been sunk. She had been forbidden to make war without

Roman permission. She had been condemned to pay the Romans

millions of dollars for endless years to come. Life offered

no hope of a better future. In the year 190 B.C. Hannibal took

poison and killed himself.

Forty years later, the Romans forced their last war upon

Carthage. Three long years the inhabitants of the old Phoenician

colony held out against the power of the new republic.

Hunger forced them to surrender. The few men and women

who had survived the siege were sold as slaves. The city was

set on fire. For two whole weeks the store-houses and the pal-

aces and the great arsenal burned. Then a terrible curse was

pronounced upon the blackened ruins and the Roman legions

returned to Italy to enjoy their victory.

For the next thousand years, the Mediterranean remained

a European sea. But as soon as the Roman Empire had been

destroyed, Asia made another attempt to dominate this great

inland sea, as you will learn when I tell you about Mohammed.

THE RISE OF ROME

HOW ROME HAPPENED

THE Roman Empire was an accident. No one planned it.

It ``happened.'' No famous general or statesman or cut-

throat ever got up and said ``Friends, Romans, Citizens, we

must found an Empire. Follow me and together we shall conquer

all the land from the Gates of Hercules to Mount Taurus.''

Rome produced famous generals and equally distinguished

statesmen and cut-throats, and Roman armies fought all over

the world. But the Roman empire-making was done without

a preconceived plan. The average Roman was a very matter-

of-fact citizen. He disliked theories about government. When

someone began to recite ``eastward the course of Roman Empire,

etc., etc.,'' he hastily left the forum. He just continued

to take more and more land because circumstances forced him

to do so. He was not driven by ambition or by greed. Both

by nature and inclination he was a farmer and wanted to stay

at home. But when he was attacked he was obliged to defend

himself and when the enemy happened to cross the sea to ask

for aid in a distant country then the patient Roman marched

many dreary miles to defeat this dangerous foe and when this

had been accomplished, he stayed behind to adminster{sic} his

newly conquered provinces lest they fall into the hands of

wandering Barbarians and become themselves a menace to

Roman safety. It sounds rather complicated and yet to the

contemporaries it was so very simple, as you shall see in a moment.

In the year 203 B.C. Scipio had crossed the African Sea

and had carried the war into Africa. Carthage had called Hannibal

back. Badly supported by his mercenaries, Hannibal

had been defeated near Zama. The Romans had asked for his

surrender and Hannibal had fled to get aid from the kings of

Macedonia and Syria, as I told you in my last chapter.

The rulers of these two countries (remnants of the Empire

of Alexander the Great) just then were contemplating an

expedition against Egypt. They hoped to divide the rich Nile

valley between themselves. The king of Egypt had heard of

this and he had asked Rome to come to his support. The stage

was set for a number of highly interesting plots and counter-

plots. But the Romans, with their lack of imagination, rang

the curtain down before the play had been fairly started.

Their legions completely defeated the heavy Greek phalanx

which was still used by the Macedonians as their battle formation.

That happened in the year 197 B.C. at the battle in the

plains of Cynoscephalae, or ``Dogs' Heads,'' in central Thessaly.

The Romans then marched southward to Attica and informed

the Greeks that they had come to ``deliver the Hellenes

from the Macedonian yoke.'' The Greeks, having learned

nothing in their years of semi-slavery, used their new freedom

in a most unfortunate way. All the little city-states once more

began to quarrel with each other as they had done in the good

old days. The Romans, who had little understanding and less

love for these silly bickerings of a race which they rather despised,

showed great forebearance. But tiring of these endless

dissensions they lost patience, invaded Greece, burned down

Corinth (to ``encourage the other Greeks'') and sent a Roman

governor to Athens to rule this turbulent province. In this

way, Macedonia and Greece became buffer states which protected

Rome's eastern frontier.

Meanwhile right across the Hellespont lay the Kingdom of

Syria, and Antiochus III, who ruled that vast land, had shown

great eagerness when his distinguished guest, General Han-

nibal, explained to him how easy it would be to invade Italy

and sack the city of Rome.

Lucius Scipio, a brother of Scipio the African fighter who

had defeated Hannibal and his Carthaginians at Zama, was

sent to Asia Minor. He destroyed the armies of the Syrian

king near Magnesia (in the year 190 B.C.) Shortly afterwards,

Antiochus was lynched by his own people. Asia Minor

became a Roman protectorate and the small City-Republic of

Rome was mistress of most of the lands which bordered upon

the Mediterranean.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE

HOW THE REPUBLIC OF ROME AFTER CENTURIES

OF UNREST AND REVOLUTION BECAME

AN EMPIRE

WHEN the Roman armies returned from these many victorious

campaigns, they were received with great jubilation.

Alas and alack! this sudden glory did not make the country any

happier. On the contrary. The endless campaigns had ruined

the farmers who had been obliged to do the hard work of Empire

making. It had placed too much power in the hands of the

successful generals (and their private friends) who had used

the war as an excuse for wholesale robbery.

The old Roman Republic had been proud of the simplicity

which had characterised the lives of her famous men. The

new Republic felt ashamed of the shabby coats and the high

principles which had been fashionable in the days of its grandfathers.

It became a land of rich people ruled by rich people

for the benefit of rich people. As such it was doomed to

disastrous failure, as I shall now tell you.

Within less than a century and a half. Rome had become

the mistress of practically all the land around the Mediterranean.

In those early days of history a prisoner of war lost

his freedom and became a slave. The Roman regarded war as

a very serious business and he showed no mercy to a conquered

foe. After the fall of Carthage, the Carthaginian women and

children were sold into bondage together with their own slaves.

And a like fate awaited the obstinate inhabitants of Greece and

Macedonia and Spain and Syria when they dared to revolt

against the Roman power.

Two thousand years ago a slave was merely a piece of

machinery. Nowadays a rich man invests his money in factories.

The rich people of Rome (senators, generals and war-

profiteers) invested theirs in land and in slaves. The land

they bought or took in the newly-acquired provinces. The

slaves they bought in open market wherever they happened to

be cheapest. During most of the third and second centuries

before Christ there was a plentiful supply, and as a result the

landowners worked their slaves until they dropped dead in their

tracks, when they bought new ones at the nearest bargain-counter

of Corinthian or Carthaginian captives.

And now behold the fate of the freeborn farmer!

He had done his duty toward Rome and he had fought her

battles without complaint. But when he came home after ten,

fifteen or twenty years, his lands were covered with weeds and

his family had been ruined. But he was a strong man and

willing to begin life anew. He sowed and planted and waited

for the harvest. He carried his grain to the market together

with his cattle and his poultry, to find that the large landowners

who worked their estates with slaves could underbid him all

along the line. For a couple of years he tried to hold his own.

Then he gave up in despair. He left the country and he went

to the nearest city. In the city he was as hungry as he had been

before on the land. But he shared his misery with thousands

of other disinherited beings. They crouched together in filthy

hovels in the suburbs of the large cities. They were apt

to get sick and die from terrible epidemics. They were all

profoundly discontented. They had fought for their country and

this was their reward. They were always willing to listen to

those plausible spell-binders who gather around a public

grievance like so many hungry vultures, and soon they became a

grave menace to the safety of the state.

But the class of the newly-rich shrugged its shoulders.

We have our army and our policemen,'' they argued, they

will keep the mob in order.'' And they hid themselves behind

the high walls of their pleasant villas and cultivated their

gardens and read the poems of a certain Homer which a Greek

slave had just translated into very pleasing Latin hexameters.

In a few families however the old tradition of unselfish

service to the Commonwealth continued. Cornelia, the daughter

of Scipio Africanus, had been married to a Roman by the

name of Gracchus. She had two sons, Tiberius and Gaius.

When the boys grew up they entered politics and tried to bring

about certain much-needed reforms. A census had shown

that most of the land of the Italian peninsula was owned by

two thousand noble families. Tiberius Gracchus, having been

elected a Tribune, tried to help the freemen. He revived two

ancient laws which restricted the number of acres which a single

owner might possess. In this way he hoped to revive the

valuable old class of small and independent freeholders. The

newly-rich called him a robber and an enemy of the state.

There were street riots. A party of thugs was hired to kill the

popular Tribune. Tiberius Gracchus was attacked when he

entered the assembly and was beaten to death. Ten years later

his brother Gaius tried the experiment of reforming a nation

against the expressed wishes of a strong privileged class. He

passed a ``poor law'' which was meant to help the destitute

farmers. Eventually it made the greater part of the Roman

citizens into professional beggars.

He established colonies of destitute people in distant parts

of the empire, but these settlements failed to attract the right

sort of people. Before Gaius Gracchus could do more harm he

too was murdered and his followers were either killed or exiled.

The first two reformers had been gentlemen. The two who

came after were of a very different stamp. They were

professional soldiers. One was called Marius. The name of the

other was Sulla. Both enjoyed a large personal following.

Sulla was the leader of the landowners. Marius, the victor

in a great battle at the foot of the Alps when the Teutons

and the Cimbri had been annihilated, was the popular hero

of the disinherited freemen.

Now it happened in the year 88 B.C. that the Senate of

Rome was greatly disturbed by rumours that came from Asia.

Mithridates, king of a country along the shores of the Black

Sea, and a Greek on his mother's side, had seen the possibility

of establishing a second Alexandrian Empire. He began his

campaign for world-domination with the murder of all Roman

citizens who happened to be in Asia Minor, men, women and

children. Such an act, of course, meant war. The Senate

equipped an army to march against the King of Pontus and

punish him for his crime. But who was to be commander-in-

chief? Sulla,'' said the Senate, because he is Consul.''

Marius,'' said the mob, because he has been Consul five times

and because he is the champion of our rights.''

Possession is nine points of the law. Sulla happened to be

in actual command of the army. He went west to defeat

Mithridates and Marius fled to Africa. There he waited

until he heard that Sulla had crossed into Asia. He then

returned to Italy, gathered a motley crew of malcontents,

marched on Rome and entered the city with his professional

highwaymen, spent five days and five nights, slaughtering the

enemies of the Senatorial party, got himself elected Consul and

promptly died from the excitement of the last fortnight.

There followed four years of disorder. Then Sulla, having

defeated Mithridates, announced that he was ready to return

to Rome and settle a few old scores of his own. He was as

good as his word. For weeks his soldiers were busy executing

those of their fellow citizens who were suspected of democratic

sympathies. One day they got hold of a young fellow who

had been often seen in the company of Marius. They were

going to hang him when some one interfered. ``The boy is too

young,'' he said, and they let him go. His name was Julius

Caesar. You shall meet him again on the next page.

As for Sulla, he became ``Dictator,'' which meant sole and

supreme ruler of all the Roman possessions. He ruled Rome

for four years, and he died quietly in his bed, having spent the

last year of his life tenderly raising his cabbages, as was the

custom of so many Romans who had spent a lifetime killing

their fellow-men.

But conditions did not grow better. On the contrary, they

grew worse. Another general, Gnaeus Pompeius, or Pompey,

a close friend of Sulla, went east to renew the war against the

ever troublesome Mithridates. He drove that energetic potentate

into the mountains where Mithridates took poison and

killed himself, well knowing what fate awaited him as a Roman

captive. Next he re-established the authority of Rome over

Syria, destroyed Jerusalem, roamed through western Asia,

trying to revive the myth of Alexander the Great, and at last

(in the year 62) returned to Rome with a dozen ship-loads of

defeated Kings and Princes and Generals, all of whom were

forced to march in the triumphal procession of this enormously

popular Roman who presented his city with the sum of forty

million dollars in plunder.

It was necessary that the government of Rome be placed

in the hands of a strong man. Only a few months before, the

town had almost fallen into the hands of a good-for-nothing

young aristocrat by the name of Catiline, who had gambled

away his money and hoped to reimburse himself for his losses by

a little plundering. Cicero, a public-spirited lawyer, had discovered

the plot, had warned the Senate, and had forced Catiline

to flee. But there were other young men with similar ambitions

and it was no time for idle talk.

Pompey organised a triumvirate which was to take charge

of affairs. He became the leader of this Vigilante Committee.

Gaius Julius Caesar, who had made a reputation for himself

as governor of Spain, was the second in command. The

third was an indifferent sort of person by the name of Crassus.

He had been elected because he was incredibly rich, having been

a successful contractor of war supplies. He soon went upon

an expedition against the Parthians and was killed.

As for Caesar, who was by far the ablest of the three, he

decided that he needed a little more military glory to become

a popular hero. He crossed the Alps and conquered that part

of the world which is now called France. Then he hammered

a solid wooden bridge across the Rhine and invaded the land

of the wild Teutons. Finally he took ship and visited England.

Heaven knows where he might have ended if he had not been

forced to return to Italy. Pompey, so he was informed, had

been appointed dictator for life. This of course meant that

Caesar was to be placed on the list of the ``retired officers,'' and

the idea did not appeal to him. He remembered that he had

begun life as a follower of Marius. He decided to teach the

Senators and their ``dictator'' another lesson. He crossed the

Rubicon River which separated the province of Cis-alpine Gaul

from Italy. Everywhere he was received as the ``friend of the

people.'' Without difficulty Caesar entered Rome and Pompey

fled to Greece Caesar followed him and defeated his followers

near Pharsalus. Pompey sailed across the Mediterranean and

escaped to Egypt. When he landed he was murdered by order

of young king Ptolemy. A few days later Caesar arrived.

He found himself caught in a trap. Both the Egyptians and

the Roman garrison which had remained faithful to Pompey,

attacked his camp.

Fortune was with Caesar. He succeeded in setting fire to

the Egyptian fleet. Incidentally the sparks of the burning

vessels fell on the roof of the famous library of Alexandria

(which was just off the water front,) and destroyed it. Next

he attacked the Egyptian army, drove the soldiers into the

Nile, drowned Ptolemy, and established a new government

under Cleopatra, the sister of the late king. Just then word

reached him that Pharnaces, the son and heir of Mithridates,

had gone on the war-path. Caesar marched northward, defeated

Pharnaces in a war which lasted five days, sent word of

his victory to Rome in the famous sentence ``veni, vidi, vici,''

which is Latin for ``I came, I saw, I conquered,'' and returned

to Egypt where he fell desperately in love with Cleopatra, who

followed him to Rome when he returned to take charge of the

government, in the year 46. He marched at the head of not

less than four different victory-parades, having won four

different campaigns.

Then Caesar appeared in the Senate to report upon his

adventures, and the grateful Senate made him ``dictator'' for

ten years. It was a fatal step.

The new dictator made serious attempts to reform the

Roman state. He made it possible for freemen to become

members of the Senate. He conferred the rights of citizenship

upon distant communities as had been done in the early days

of Roman history. He permitted ``foreigners'' to exercise

influence upon the government. He reformed the administration

of the distant provinces which certain aristocratic families

had come to regard as their private possessions. In short he

did many things for the good of the majority of the people but

which made him thoroughly unpopular with the most powerful

men in the state. Half a hundred young aristocrats formed a

plot ``to save the Republic.'' On the Ides of March (the fifteenth

of March according to that new calendar which Caesar

had brought with him from Egypt) Caesar was murdered when

he entered the Senate. Once more Rome was without a master.

There were two men who tried to continue the tradition of

Caesar's glory. One was Antony, his former secretary. The

other was Octavian, Caesar's grand-nephew and heir to his

estate. Octavian remained in Rome, but Antony went to Egypt

to be near Cleopatra with whom he too had fallen in love, as

seems to have been the habit of Roman generals.

A war broke out between the two. In the battle of Actium,

Octavian defeated Antony. Antony killed himself and

Cleopatra was left alone to face the enemy. She tried very

hard to make Octavian her third Roman conquest. When she

saw that she could make no impression upon this very proud

aristocrat, she killed herself, and Egypt became a Roman province.

As for Octavian, he was a very wise young man and he did

not repeat the mistake of his famous uncle. He knew how

people will shy at words. He was very modest in his demands

when he returned to Rome. He did not want to be a ``dictator.''

He would be entirely satisfied with the title of ``the Honourable.''

But when the Senate, a few years later, addressed

him as Augustus--the Illustrious--he did not object and a few

years later the man in the street called him Caesar, or Kaiser,

while the soldiers, accustomed to regard Octavian as their

Commander-in-chief referred to him as the Chief, the Imperator or

Emperor. The Republic had become an Empire, but the average

Roman was hardly aware of the fact.

In 14 A.D. his position as the Absolute Ruler of the

Roman people had become so well established that he was made

an object of that divine worship which hitherto had been reserved

for the Gods. And his successors were true ``Emperors''--the

absolute rulers of the greatest empire the world had

ever seen.

If the truth be told, the average citizen was sick and tired

of anarchy and disorder. He did not care who ruled him provided

the new master gave him a chance to live quietly and

without the noise of eternal street riots. Octavian assured his

subjects forty years of peace. He had no desire to extend the

frontiers of his domains, In the year 9 A.D. he had contem-

plated an invasion of the northwestern wilderness which was

inhabited by the Teutons. But Varrus, his general, had been

killed with all his men in the Teutoburg Woods, and after that

the Romans made no further attempts to civilise these wild

people.

They concentrated their efforts upon the gigantic problem

of internal reform. But it was too late to do much good. Two

centuries of revolution and foreign war had repeatedly killed

the best men among the younger generations. It had ruined

the class of the free farmers. It had introduced slave labor,

against which no freeman could hope to compete. It had

turned the cities into beehives inhabited by pauperized and

unhealthy mobs of runaway peasants. It had created a large

bureaucracy--petty officials who were underpaid and who were

forced to take graft in order to buy bread and clothing for

their families. Worst of all, it had accustomed people to violence,

to blood-shed, to a barbarous pleasure in the pain and

suffering of others.

Outwardly, the Roman state during the first century of our

era was a magnificent political structure, so large that Alexander's

empire became one of its minor provinces. Underneath

this glory there lived millions upon millions of poor and tired

human beings, toiling like ants who have built a nest underneath

a heavy stone. They worked for the benefit of some one

else. They shared their food with the animals of the fields.

They lived in stables. They died without hope.

It was the seven hundred and fifty-third year since the

founding of Rome. Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus

was living in the palace of the Palatine Hill, busily engaged

upon the task of ruling his empire.

In a little village of distant Syria, Mary, the wife of Joseph

the Carpenter, was tending her little boy, born in a stable of

Bethlehem.

This is a strange world.

Before long, the palace and the stable were to meet in open

combat.

And the stable was to emerge victorious.

JOSHUA OF NAZARETH

THE STORY OF JOSHUA OF NAZARETH, WHOM

THE GREEKS CALLED JESUS

IN the autumn of the year of the city 783 (which would be

62 A.D., in our way of counting time) AEsculapius Cultellus, a

Roman physician, wrote to his nephew who was with the army

in Syria as follows:

My dear Nephew,

A few days ago I was called in to prescribe for a sick man

named Paul. He appeared to be a Roman citizen of Jewish

parentage, well educated and of agreeable manners. I had

been told that he was here in connection with a law-suit, an appeal

from one of our provincial courts, Caesarea or some such

place in the eastern Mediterranean. He had been described to

me as a ``wild and violent'' fellow who had been making

speeches against the People and against the Law. I found him

very intelligent and of great honesty.

A friend of mine who used to be with the army in Asia

Minor tells me that he heard something about him in Ephesus

where he was preaching sermons about a strange new God. I

asked my patient if this were true and whether he had told the

people to rebel against the will of our beloved Emperor. Paul

answered me that the Kingdom of which he had spoken was

not of this world and he added many strange utterances which

I did not understand, but which were probably due to his

fever.

His personality made a great impression upon me and I

was sorry to hear that he was killed on the Ostian Road a few

days ago. Therefore I am writing this letter to you. When

next you visit Jerusalem, I want you to find out something

about my friend Paul and the strange Jewish prophet, who

seems to have been his teacher. Our slaves are getting much

excited about this so-called Messiah, and a few of them, who

openly talked of the new kingdom (whatever that means) have

been crucified. I would like to know the truth about all these

rumours and I am

                          Your devoted Uncle,

                               AESCULAPIUS CULTELLUS.

Six weeks later, Gladius Ensa, the nephew, a captain of the

VII Gallic Infantry, answered as follows:

My dear Uncle,

I received your letter and I have obeyed your instructions.

Two weeks ago our brigade was sent to Jerusalem. There

have been several revolutions during the last century and there

is not much left of the old city. We have been here now for a

month and to-morrow we shall continue our march to Petra,

where there has been trouble with some of the Arab tribes. I

shall use this evening to answer your questions, but pray do

not expect a detailed report.

I have talked with most of the older men in this city but

few have been able to give me any definite information. A

few days ago a pedler came to the camp. I bought some of

his olives and I asked him whether he had ever heard of the

famous Messiah who was killed when he was young. He said

that he remembered it very clearly, because his father had

taken him to Golgotha (a hill just outside the city) to see

the execution, and to show him what became of the enemies of

the laws of the people of Judaea. He gave me the address of

one Joseph, who had been a personal friend of the Messiah

and told me that I had better go and see him if I wanted to

know more.

This morning I went to call on Joseph. He was quite an

old man. He had been a fisherman on one of the fresh-water

lakes. His memory was clear, and from him at last I got a

fairly definite account of what had happened during the

troublesome days before I was born.

Tiberius, our great and glorious emperor, was on the throne,

and an officer of the name of Pontius Pilatus was governor of

Judaea and Samaria. Joseph knew little about this Pilatus.

He seemed to have been an honest enough official who left a

decent reputation as procurator of the province. In the year

755 or 756 (Joseph had forgotten when) Pilatus was called to

Jerusalem on account of a riot. A certain young man (the

son of a carpenter of Nazareth) was said to be planning a

revolution against the Roman government. Strangely enough

our own intelligence officers, who are usually well informed,

appear to have heard nothing about it, and when they investigated

the matter they reported that the carpenter was an

excellent citizen and that there was no reason to proceed against

him. But the old-fashioned leaders of the Jewish faith, according

to Joseph, were much upset. They greatly disliked his

popularity with the masses of the poorer Hebrews. The

``Nazarene'' (so they told Pilatus) had publicly claimed that a

Greek or a Roman or even a Philistine, who tried to live a decent

and honourable life, was quite as good as a Jew who spent

his days studying the ancient laws of Moses. Pilatus does not

seem to have been impressed by this argument, but when the

crowds around the temple threatened to lynch Jesus, and kill

all his followers, he decided to take the carpenter into custody

to save his life.

He does not appear to have understood the real nature of

the quarrel. Whenever he asked the Jewish priests to explain

their grievances, they shouted heresy'' and treason'' and got

terribly excited. Finally, so Joseph told me, Pilatus sent for

Joshua (that was the name of the Nazarene, but the Greeks

who live in this part of the world always refer to him as Jesus)

to examine him personally. He talked to him for several

hours. He asked him about the ``dangerous doctrines'' which

he was said to have preached on the shores of the sea of Galilee.

But Jesus answered that he never referred to politics. He was

not so much interested in the bodies of men as in Man's soul.

He wanted all people to regard their neighbours as their

brothers and to love one single God, who was the father of all

living beings.

Pilatus, who seems to have been well versed in the doctrines

of the Stoics and the other Greek philosophers, does not appear

to have discovered anything seditious in the talk of Jesus.

According to my informant he made another attempt to save

the life of the kindly prophet. He kept putting the execution

off. Meanwhile the Jewish people, lashed into fury by their

priests, got frantic with rage. There had been many riots in

Jerusalem before this and there were only a few Roman soldiers

within calling distance. Reports were being sent to the

Roman authorities in Caesarea that Pilatus had ``fallen a victim

to the teachings of the Nazarene.'' Petitions were being

circulated all through the city to have Pilatus recalled, because

he was an enemy of the Emperor. You know that our governors

have strict instructions to avoid an open break with

their foreign subjects. To save the country from civil war,

Pilatus finally sacrificed his prisoner, Joshua, who behaved

with great dignity and who forgave all those who hated him.

He was crucified amidst the howls and the laughter of the

Jerusalem mob.

That is what Joseph told me, with tears running down his

old cheeks. I gave him a gold piece when I left him, but he

refused it and asked me to hand it to one poorer than himself.

I also asked him a few questions about your friend Paul. He

had known him slightly. He seems to have been a tent maker

who gave up his profession that he might preach the words of

a loving and forgiving God, who was so very different from

that Jehovah of whom the Jewish priests are telling us all

the time. Afterwards, Paul appears to have travelled much

in Asia Minor and in Greece, telling the slaves that they were

all children of one loving Father and that happiness awaits all,

both rich and poor, who have tried to live honest lives and have

done good to those who were suffering and miserable.

I hope that I have answered your questions to your satisfaction.

The whole story seems very harmless to me as far as

the safety of the state is concerned. But then, we Romans

never have been able to understand the people of this province.

I am sorry that they have killed your friend Paul. I wish that

I were at home again, and I am, as ever,

                     Your dutiful nephew,

                               GLADIUS ENSA.

THE FALL OF ROME

THE TWILIGHT OF ROME

THE text-books of ancient History give the date 476 as the

year in which Rome fell, because in that year the last emperor

was driven off his throne. But Rome, which was not built in

a day, took a long time falling. The process was so slow and

so gradual that most Romans did not realise how their old

world was coming to an end. They complained about the unrest

of the times--they grumbled about the high prices of food

and about the low wages of the workmen--they cursed the

profiteers who had a monopoly of the grain and the wool and

the gold coin. Occasionally they rebelled against an unusually

rapacious governor. But the majority of the people during the

first four centuries of our era ate and drank (whatever their

purse allowed them to buy) and hated or loved (according to

their nature) and went to the theatre (whenever there was a

free show of fighting gladiators) or starved in the slums of the

big cities, utterly ignorant of the fact that their empire had

outlived its usefulness and was doomed to perish.

How could they realise the threatened danger? Rome

made a fine showing of outward glory. Well-paved roads connected

the different provinces, the imperial police were active

and showed little tenderness for highwaymen. The frontier

was closely guarded against the savage tribes who seemed to

be occupying the waste lands of northern Europe. The whole

world was paying tribute to the mighty city of Rome, and a

score of able men were working day and night to undo the

mistakes of the past and bring about a return to the happier

conditions of the early Republic.

But the underlying causes of the decay of the State, of

which I have told you in a former chapter, had not been

removed and reform therefore was impossible.

Rome was, first and last and all the time, a city-state as

Athens and Corinth had been city-states in ancient Hellas. It

had been able to dominate the Italian peninsula. But Rome

as the ruler of the entire civilised world was a political

impossibility and could not endure. Her young men were killed in

her endless wars. Her farmers were ruined by long military

service and by taxation. They either became professional

beggars or hired themselves out to rich landowners who gave

them board and lodging in exchange for their services and

made them ``serfs,'' those unfortunate human beings who are

neither slaves nor freemen, but who have become part of the

soil upon which they work, like so many cows, and the trees.

The Empire, the State, had become everything. The common

citizen had dwindled down to less than nothing. As for

the slaves, they had heard the words that were spoken by Paul.

They had accepted the message of the humble carpenter of

Nazareth. They did not rebel against their masters. On the

contrary, they had been taught to be meek and they obeyed

their superiors. But they had lost all interest in the affairs

of this world which had proved such a miserable place of abode.

They were willing to fight the good fight that they might enter

into the Kingdom of Heaven. But they were not willing to

engage in warfare for the benefit of an ambitious emperor who

aspired to glory by way of a foreign campaign in the land of

the Parthians or the Numidians or the Scots.

And so conditions grew worse as the centuries went by.

The first Emperors had continued the tradition of ``leadership''

which had given the old tribal chieftains such a hold upon

their subjects. But the Emperors of the second and third

centuries were Barrack-Emperors, professional soldiers, who

existed by the grace of their body-guards, the so-called Prae-

torians. They succeeded each other with terrifying rapidity,

murdering their way into the palace and being murdered out

of it as soon as their successors had become rich enough to bribe

the guards into a new rebellion.

Meanwhile the barbarians were hammering at the gates of

the northern frontier. As there were no longer any native

Roman armies to stop their progress, foreign mercenaries had

to be hired to fight the invader. As the foreign soldier happened

to be of the same blood as his supposed enemy, he was

apt to be quite lenient when he engaged in battle. Finally,

by way of experiment, a few tribes were allowed to settle

within the confines of the Empire. Others followed. Soon

these tribes complained bitterly of the greedy Roman tax-

gatherers, who took away their last penny. When they got

no redress they marched to Rome and loudly demanded that

they be heard.

This made Rome very uncomfortable as an Imperial residence.

Constantine (who ruled from 323 to 337) looked for

a new capital. He chose Byzantium, the gate-way for the

commerce between Europe and Asia. The city was renamed

Constantinople, and the court moved eastward. When Constantine

died, his two sons, for the sake of a more efficient

administration, divided the Empire between them. The elder

lived in Rome and ruled in the west. The younger stayed in

Constantinople and was master of the east.

Then came the fourth century and the terrible visitation

of the Huns, those mysterious Asiatic horsemen who for more

than two centuries maintained themselves in Northern Europe

and continued their career of bloodshed until they were defeated

near Chalons-sur-Marne in France in the year 451.

As soon as the Huns had reached the Danube they had begun

to press hard upon the Goths. The Goths, in order to save

themselves, were thereupon obliged to invade Rome. The

Emperor Valens tried to stop them, but was killed near

Adrianople in the year 378. Twenty-two years later, under

their king, Alaric, these same West Goths marched westward

and attacked Rome. They did not plunder, and destroyed

only a few palaces. Next came the Vandals, and showed less

respect for the venerable traditions of the city. Then the

Burgundians. Then the East Goths. Then the Alemanni.

Then the Franks. There was no end to the invasions. Rome

at last was at the mercy of every ambitious highway robber

who could gather a few followers.

In the year 402 the Emperor fled to Ravenna, which was

a sea-port and strongly fortified, and there, in the year 475,

Odoacer, commander of a regiment of the German mercenaries,

who wanted the farms of Italy to be divided among themselves,

gently but effectively pushed Romulus Augustulus, the

last of the emperors who ruled the western division, from his

throne, and proclaimed himself Patriarch or ruler of Rome.

The eastern Emperor, who was very busy with his own affairs,

recognised him, and for ten years Odoacer ruled what was

left of the western provinces.

A few years later, Theodoric, King of the East Goths,

invaded the newly formed Patriciat, took Ravenna, murdered

Odoacer at his own dinner table, and established a Gothic

Kingdom amidst the ruins of the western part of the Empire.

This Patriciate state did not last long. In the sixth century a

motley crowd of Longobards and Saxons and Slavs and Avars

invaded Italy, destroyed the Gothic kingdom, and established

a new state of which Pavia became the capital.

Then at last the imperial city sank into a state of utter

neglect and despair. The ancient palaces had been plundered

time and again. The schools had been burned down. The

teachers had been starved to death. The rich people had been

thrown out of their villas which were now inhabited by evil-

smelling and hairy barbarians. The roads had fallen into

decay. The old bridges were gone and commerce had come

to a standstill. Civilisation--the product of thousands of years

of patient labor on the part of Egyptians and Babylonians and

Greeks and Romans, which had lifted man high above the

most daring dreams of his earliest ancestors, threatened to

perish from the western continent.

It is true that in the far east, Constantinople continued to

be the centre of an Empire for another thousand years. But

it hardly counted as a part of the European continent. Its

interests lay in the east. It began to forget its western origin.

Gradually the Roman language was given up for the Greek.

The Roman alphabet was discarded and Roman law was written

in Greek characters and explained by Greek judges. The

Emperor became an Asiatic despot, worshipped as the god-like

kings of Thebes had been worshipped in the valley of the

Nile, three thousand years before. When missionaries of the

Byzantine church looked for fresh fields of activity, they went

eastward and carried the civilisation of Byzantium into the

vast wilderness of Russia.

As for the west, it was left to the mercies of the Barbarians.

For twelve generations, murder, war, arson, plundering were

the order of the day. One thing--and one thing alone--saved

Europe from complete destruction, from a return to the days

of cave-men and the hyena.

This was the church--the flock of humble men and women

who for many centuries had confessed themselves the followers

of Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, who had been

killed that the mighty Roman Empire might be saved the

trouble of a street-riot in a little city somewhere along the

Syrian frontier.

RISE OF THE CHURCH

HOW ROME BECAME THE CENTRE OF THE

CHRISTIAN WORLD

THE average intelligent Roman who lived under the Empire

had taken very little interest in the gods of his fathers.

A few times a year he went to the temple, but merely as a

matter of custom. He looked on patiently when the people

celebrated a religious festival with a solemn procession. But he

regarded the worship of Jupiter and Minerva and Neptune as

something rather childish, a survival from the crude days of

the early republic and not a fit subject of study for a man

who had mastered the works of the Stoics and the Epicureans

and the other great philosophers of Athens.

This attitude made the Roman a very tolerant man. The

government insisted that all people, Romans, foreigners,

Greeks, Babylonians, Jews, should pay a certain outward respect

to the image of the Emperor which was supposed to stand

in every temple, just as a picture of the President of the

United States is apt to hang in an American Post Office. But

this was a formality without any deeper meaning. Generally

speaking everybody could honour, revere and adore whatever

gods he pleased, and as a result, Rome was filled with all

sorts of queer little temples and synagogues, dedicated to the

worship of Egyptian and African and Asiatic divinities.

When the first disciples of Jesus reached Rome and began

to preach their new doctrine of a universal brotherhood of man,

nobody objected. The man in the street stopped and listened

Rome, the capital of the world, had always been full of wandering

preachers, each proclaiming his own ``mystery.'' Most of

the self-appointed priests appealed to the senses--promised

golden rewards and endless pleasure to the followers of their

own particular god. Soon the crowd in the street noticed

that the so-called Christians (the followers of the Christ or

``anointed'') spoke a very different language. They did not

appear to be impressed by great riches or a noble position.

They extolled the beauties of poverty and humility and meekness.

These were not exactly the virtues which had made

Rome the mistress of the world. It was rather interesting to

listen to a ``mystery'' which told people in the hey-day of their

glory that their worldly success could not possibly bring them

lasting happiness.

Besides, the preachers of the Christian mystery told dreadful

stories of the fate that awaited those who refused to listen to

the words of the true God. It was never wise to take chances.

Of course the old Roman gods still existed, but were they

strong enough to protect their friends against the powers of

this new deity who had been brought to Europe from distant

Asia? People began to have doubts. They returned to listen

to further explanations of the new creed. After a while they

began to meet the men and women who preached the words of

Jesus. They found them very different from the average

Roman priests. They were all dreadfully poor. They were

kind to slaves and to animals. They did not try to gain riches,

but gave away whatever they had. The example of their unselfish

lives forced many Romans to forsake the old religion.

They joined the small communities of Christians who met in

the back rooms of private houses or somewhere in an open field,

and the temples were deserted.

This went on year after year and the number of Christians

continued to increase. Presbyters or priests (the original

Greek meant ``elder'') were elected to guard the interests of

the small churches. A bishop was made the head of all the

communities within a single province. Peter, who had fol-

lowed Paul to Rome, was the first Bishop of Rome. In due

time his successors (who were addressed as Father or Papa)

came to be known as Popes.

The church became a powerful institution within the Empire.

The Christian doctrines appealed to those who despaired

of this world. They also attracted many strong men who

found it impossible to make a career under the Imperial gov-

ernment, but who could exercise their gifts of leadership among

the humble followers of the Nazarene teacher. At last the

state was obliged to take notice. The Roman Empire (I have

said this before) was tolerant through indifference. It allowed

everybody to seek salvation after his or her own fashion. But

it insisted that the different sects keep the peace among themselves

and obey the wise rule of ``live and let live.''

The Christian communities however, refused to practice any

sort of tolerance. They publicly declared that their God, and

their God alone, was the true ruler of Heaven and Earth,

and that all other gods were imposters. This seemed unfair

to the other sects and the police discouraged such utterances.

The Christians persisted.

Soon there were further difficulties. The Christians refused

to go through the formalities of paying homage to the emperor.

They refused to appear when they were called upon

to join the army. The Roman magistrates threatened to

punish them. The Christians answered that this miserable

world was only the ante-room to a very pleasant Heaven and

that they were more than willing to suffer death for their

principles. The Romans, puzzled by such conduct, sometimes

killed the offenders, but more often they did not. There was

a certain amount of lynching during the earliest years of the

church, but this was the work of that part of the mob which

accused their meek Christian neighbours of every conceivable

crime, (such as slaughtering and eating babies, bringing about

sickness and pestilence, betraying the country in times of danger)

because it was a harmless sport and devoid of danger, as

the Christians refused to fight back.

Meanwhile, Rome continued to be invaded by the Barbarians

and when her armies failed, Christian missionaries went

forth to preach their gospel of peace to the wild Teutons.

They were strong men without fear of death. They spoke a

language which left no doubt as to the future of unrepentant

sinners. The Teutons were deeply impressed. They still

had a deep respect for the wisdom of the ancient city of Rome.

Those men were Romans. They probably spoke the truth.

Soon the Christian missionary became a power in the savage

regions of the Teutons and the Franks. Half a dozen missionaries

were as valuable as a whole regiment of soldiers.

The Emperors began to understand that the Christian might

be of great use to them. In some of the provinces they were

given equal rights with those who remained faithful to the old

gods. The great change however came during the last half

of the fourth century.

Constantine, sometimes (Heaven knows why) called Constantine

the Great, was emperor. He was a terrible ruffian,

but people of tender qualities could hardly hope to survive

in that hard-fighting age. During a long and checkered career,

Constantine had experienced many ups and downs. Once,

when almost defeated by his enemies, he thought that he would

try the power of this new Asiatic deity of whom everybody was

talking. He promised that he too would become a Christian

if he were successful in the coming battle. He won the victory

and thereafter he was convinced of the power of the Christian

God and allowed himself to be baptised.

From that moment on, the Christian church was officially

recognised and this greatly strengthened the position of the

new faith.

But the Christians still formed a very small minority of

all the people, (not more than five or six percent,) and in order

to win, they were forced to refuse all compromise. The old

gods must be destroyed. For a short spell the emperor Julian,

a lover of Greek wisdom, managed to save the pagan Gods

from further destruction. But Julian died of his wounds during

a campaign in Persia and his successor Jovian re-established

the church in all its glory. One after the other the doors of the

ancient temples were then closed. Then came the emperor

Justinian (who built the church of Saint Sophia in Constantinople),

who discontinued the school of philosophy at Athens

which had been founded by Plato.

That was the end of the old Greek world, in which man

had been allowed to think his own thoughts and dream his own

dreams according to his desires. The somewhat vague rules

of conduct of the philosophers had proved a poor compass

by which to steer the ship of life after a deluge of savagery

and ignorance had swept away the established order of things.

There was need of something more positive and more definite.

This the Church provided.

During an age when nothing was certain, the church stood

like a rock and never receded from those principles which it

held to be true and sacred. This steadfast courage gained the

admiration of the multitudes and carried the church of Rome

safely through the difficulties which destroyed the Roman state.

There was however, a certain element of luck in the final

success of the Christian faith. After the disappearance of

Theodoric's Roman-Gothic kingdom, in the fifth century,

Italy was comparatively free from foreign invasion. The

Lombards and Saxons and Slavs who succeeded the Goths were

weak and backward tribes. Under those circumstances it was

possible for the bishops of Rome to maintain the independence

of their city. Soon the remnants of the empire, scattered

throughout the peninsula, recognised the Dukes of Rome (or

bishops) as their political and spiritual rulers.

The stage was set for the appearance of a strong man.

He came in the year 590 and his name was Gregory. He belonged

to the ruling classes of ancient Rome, and he had

been ``prefect'' or mayor of the city. Then he had become

a monk and a bishop and finally, and much against his will,

(for he wanted to be a missionary and preach Christianity to

the heathen of England,) he had been dragged to the Church

of Saint Peter to be made Pope. He ruled only fourteen

years but when he died the Christian world of western Europe

had officially recognised the bishops of Rome, the Popes, as

the head of the entire church.

This power, however, did not extend to the east. In

Constantinople the Emperors continued the old custom which had

recognised the successors of Augustus and Tiberius both as

head of the government and as High Priest of the Established

Religion. In the year 1453 the eastern Roman Empire was

conquered by the Turks. Constantinople was taken, and Constantine

Paleologue, the last Roman Emperor, was killed on

the steps of the Church of the Holy Sophia.

A few years before, Zoe, the daughter of his brother

Thomas, had married Ivan III of Russia. In this way did the

grand-dukes of Moscow fall heir to the traditions of Constantinople.

The double-eagle of old Byzantium (reminiscent of

the days when Rome had been divided into an eastern and a

western part) became the coat of arms of modern Russia.

The Tsar who had been merely the first of the Russian nobles,

assumed the aloofness and the dignity of a Roman emperor

before whom all subjects, both high and low, were inconsiderable

slaves.

The court was refashioned after the oriental pattern which

the eastern Emperors had imported from Asia and from Egypt

and which (so they flattered themselves) resembled the court

of Alexander the Great. This strange inheritance which the

dying Byzantine Empire bequeathed to an unsuspecting world

continued to live with great vigour for six more centuries,

amidst the vast plains of Russia. The last man to wear the

crown with the double eagle of Constantinople, Tsar Nicholas,

was murdered only the other day, so to speak. His body was

thrown into a well. His son and his daughters were all killed.

All his ancient rights and prerogatives were abolished, and the

church was reduced to the position which it had held in Rome

before the days of Constantine.

The eastern church however fared very differently, as we

shall see in the next chapter when the whole Christian world is

going to be threatened with destruction by the rival creed of

an Arab camel-driver.

MOHAMMED

AHMED, THE CAMEL-DRIVER, WHO BECAME

THE PROPHET OF THE ARABIAN DESERT

AND WHOSE FOLLOWERS ALMOST

CONQUERED THE ENTIRE KNOWN WORLD

FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF ALLAH, THE

ONLY TRUE GOD

SINCE the days of Carthage and Hannibal we have said

nothing of the Semitic people. You will remember how they

filled all the chapters devoted to the story of the Ancient World.

The Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Jews,

the Arameans, the Chaldeans, all of them Semites, had been

the rulers of western Asia for thirty or forty centuries. They

had been conquered by the Indo-European Persians who had

come from the east and by the Indo-European Greeks who

had come from the west. A hundred years after the death of

Alexander the Great, Carthage, a colony of Semitic Phoenicians,

had fought the Indo-European Romans for the mastery

of the Mediterranean. Carthage had been defeated and destroyed

and for eight hundred years the Romans had been masters

of the world. In the seventh century, however, another

Semitic tribe appeared upon the scene and challenged the

power of the west. They were the Arabs, peaceful shepherds

who had roamed through the desert since the beginning of time

without showing any signs of imperial ambitions.

Then they listened to Mohammed, mounted their horses and

in less than a century they had pushed to the heart of Europe

and proclaimed the glories of Allah, ``the only God,'' and

Mohammed, ``the prophet of the only God,'' to the frightened

peasants of France.

The story of Ahmed, the son of Abdallah and Aminah

(usually known as Mohammed, or ``he who will be praised,'';

reads like a chapter in the ``Thousand and One Nights.'' He

was a camel-driver, born in Mecca. He seems to have been an

epileptic and he suffered from spells of unconsciousness when

he dreamed strange dreams and heard the voice of the angel

Gabriel, whose words were afterwards written down in a book

called the Koran. His work as a caravan leader carried him

all over Arabia and he was constantly falling in with Jewish

merchants and with Christian traders, and he came to see that

the worship of a single God was a very excellent thing. His

own people, the Arabs, still revered queer stones and trunks

of trees as their ancestors had done, tens of thousands of

years before. In Mecca, their holy city, stood a little square

building, the Kaaba, full of idols and strange odds and ends

of Hoo-doo worship.

Mohammed decided to be the Moses of the Arab people. He

could not well be a prophet and a camel-driver at the same time.

So he made himself independent by marrying his employer, the

rich widow Chadija. Then he told his neighbours in Mecca

that he was the long-expected prophet sent by Allah to save the

world. The neighbours laughed most heartily and when Mohammed

continued to annoy them with his speeches they decided to kill him.

They regarded him as a lunatic and a public bore who deserved no mercy.

Mohammed heard of the plot and in the dark of night he fled to Medina

together with Abu Bekr, his trusted pupil. This happened

in the year 622. It is the most important date in Mohammedan

history and is known as the Hegira--the year of the Great Flight.

In Medina, Mohammed, who was a stranger, found it easier

to proclaim himself a prophet than in his home city, where

every one had known him as a simple camel-driver. Soon he

was surrounded by an increasing number of followers, or

Moslems, who accepted the Islam, ``the submission to the will

of God,'' which Mohammed praised as the highest of all virtues.

For seven years he preached to the people of Medina. Then

he believed himself strong enough to begin a campaign against

his former neighbours who had dared to sneer at him and his

Holy Mission in his old camel-driving days. At the head of

an army of Medinese he marched across the desert. His followers

took Mecca without great difficulty, and having slaughtered

a number of the inhabitants, they found it quite easy to

convince the others that Mohammed was really a great prophet.

From that time on until the year of his death, Mohammed

was fortunate in everything he undertook.

There are two reasons for the success of Islam. In the

first place, the creed which Mohammed taught to his followers

was very simple. The disciples were told that they must love

Allah, the Ruler of the World, the Merciful and Compassionate.

They must honour and obey their parents. They

were warned against dishonesty in dealing with their neighbours

and were admonished to be humble and charitable, to the

poor and to the sick. Finally they were ordered to abstain

from strong drink and to be very frugal in what they ate. That

was all. There were no priests, who acted as shepherds of

their flocks and asked that they be supported at the common

expense. The Mohammedan churches or mosques were merely

large stone halls without benches or pictures, where the faithful

could gather (if they felt so inclined) to read and discuss

chapters from the Koran, the Holy Book. But the average

Mohammedan carried his religion with him and never felt

himself hemmed in by the restrictions and regulations of an

established church. Five times a day he turned his face towards

Mecca, the Holy City, and said a simple prayer. For the

rest of the time he let Allah rule the world as he saw fit and

accepted whatever fate brought him with patient resignation.

Of course such an attitude towards life did not encourage

the Faithful to go forth and invent electrical machinery or

bother about railroads and steamship lines. But it gave every

Mohammedan a certain amount of contentment. It bade

him be at peace with himself and with the world in which he

lived and that was a very good thing.

The second reason which explains the success of the Moslems

in their warfare upon the Christians, had to do with the

conduct of those Mohammedan soldiers who went forth to do

battle for the true faith. The Prophet promised that those

who fell, facing the enemy, would go directly to Heaven.

This made sudden death in the field preferable to a long but

dreary existence upon this earth. It gave the Mohammedans

an enormous advantage over the Crusaders who were in constant

dread of a dark hereafter, and who stuck to the good

things of this world as long as they possibly could. Incidentally

it explains why even to-day Moslem soldiers will charge

into the fire of European machine guns quite indifferent to

the fate that awaits them and why they are such dangerous

and persistent enemies.

Having put his religious house in order, Mohammed now

began to enjoy his power as the undisputed ruler of a large

number of Arab tribes. But success has been the undoing of

a large number of men who were great in the days of adversity.

He tried to gain the good will of the rich people by a number

of regulations which could appeal to those of wealth.

He allowed the Faithful to have four wives. As one wife

was a costly investment in those olden days when brides were

bought directly from the parents, four wives became a positive

luxury except to those who possessed camels and dromedaries

and date orchards beyond the dreams of avarice. A religion

which at first had been meant for the hardy hunters of the

high skied desert was gradually transformed to suit the needs

of the smug merchants who lived in the bazaars of the cities.

It was a regrettable change from the original program and it

did very little good to the cause of Mohammedanism. As for

the prophet himself, he went on preaching the truth of Allah

and proclaiming new rules of conduct until he died, quite

suddenly, of a fever on June the seventh of the year 632.

His successor as Caliph (or leader) of the Moslems was

his father-in-law, Abu-Bekr, who had shared the early dangers

of the prophet's life. Two years later, Abu-Bekr died and

Omar ibn Al-Khattab followed him. In less than ten years

he conquered Egypt, Persia, Phoenicia, Syria and Palestine

and made Damascus the capital of the first Mohammedan world

empire.

Omar was succeeded by Ali, the husband of Mohammed's

daughter, Fatima, but a quarrel broke out upon a point of

Moslem doctrine and Ali was murdered. After his death,

the caliphate was made hereditary and the leaders of the faithful

who had begun their career as the spiritual head of a religious

sect became the rulers of a vast empire. They built

a new city on the shores of the Euphrates, near the ruins of

Babylon and called it Bagdad, and organising the Arab horsemen

into regiments of cavalry, they set forth to bring the

happiness of their Moslem faith to all unbelievers. In the

year 700 A.D. a Mohammedan general by the name of Tarik

crossed the old gates of Hercules and reached the high rock

on the European side which he called the Gibel-al-tarik, the

Hill of Tarik or Gibraltar.

Eleven years later in the battle of Xeres de la Frontera,

he defeated the king of the Visigoths and then the Moslem

army moved northward and following the route of Hannibal,

they crossed the passes of the Pyrenees. They defeated the

Duke of Aquitania, who tried to halt them near Bordeaux,

and marched upon Paris. But in the year 732 (one

hundred years after the death of the prophet,) they were

beaten in a battle between Tours and Poitiers. On that

day, Charles Martel (Charles with the Hammer) the Frankish

chieftain, saved Europe from a Mohammedan con-

quest. He drove the Moslems out of France, but they maintained

themselves in Spain where Abd-ar-Rahman founded the

Caliphate of Cordova, which became the greatest centre of

science and art of mediaeval Europe.

This Moorish kingdom, so-called because the people came

from Mauretania in Morocco, lasted seven centuries. It was

only after the capture of Granada, the last Moslem stronghold,

in the year 1492, that Columbus received the royal grant which

allowed him to go upon a voyage of discovery. The Mohammedans

soon regained their strength in the new conquests

which they made in Asia and Africa and to-day there are as

many followers of Mohammed as there are of Christ.

CHARLEMAGNE

HOW CHARLEMAGNE, THE KING OF THE

FRANKS, CAME TO BEAR THE TITLE OF

EMPEROR AND TRIED TO REVIVE THE OLD

IDEAL OF WORLD-EMPIRE

THE battle of Poitiers had saved Europe from the

Mohammedans. But the enemy within--the hopeless disorder

which had followed the disappearance of the Roman police

officer--that enemy remained. It is true that the new converts

of the Christian faith in Northern Europe felt a deep respect

for the mighty Bishop of Rome. But that poor bishop did

not feel any too safe when he looked toward the distant

mountains. Heaven knew what fresh hordes of barbarians were

ready to cross the Alps and begin a new attack on Rome. It

was necessary--very necessary--for the spiritual head of the

world to find an ally with a strong sword and a powerful

fist who was willing to defend His Holiness in case of danger.

And so the Popes, who were not only very holy but

also very practical, cast about for a friend, and presently

they made overtures to the most promising of the Germanic

tribes who had occupied north-western Europe after the fall

of Rome. They were called the Franks. One of their earliest

kings, called Merovech, had helped the Romans in the battle of

the Catalaunian fields in the year 451 when they defeated the

Huns. His descendants, the Merovingians, had continued to

take little bits of imperial territory until the year 486 when

king Clovis (the old French word for ``Louis'') felt himself

strong enough to beat the Romans in the open. But his

descendants were weak men who left the affairs of state to

their Prime minister, the ``Major Domus'' or Master of the

Palace.

Pepin the Short, the son of the famous Charles Martel,

who succeeded his father as Master of the Palace, hardly

knew how to handle the situation. His royal master was a

devout theologian, without any interest in politics. Pepin

asked the Pope for advice. The Pope who was a practical

person answered that the ``power in the state belonged to him

who was actually possessed of it.'' Pepin took the hint. He

persuaded Childeric, the last of the Merovingians to become

a monk and then made himself king with the approval of the

other Germanic chieftains. But this did not satisfy the shrewd

Pepin. He wanted to be something more than a barbarian

chieftain. He staged an elaborate ceremony at which Boniface,

the great missionary of the European northwest, anointed

him and made him a ``King by the grace of God.'' It was

easy to slip those words, ``Del gratia,'' into the coronation

service. It took almost fifteen hundred years to get them out

again.

Pepin was sincerely grateful for this kindness on the part

of the church. He made two expeditions to Italy to defend

the Pope against his enemies. He took Ravenna and several

other cities away from the Longobards and presented them

to His Holiness, who incorporated these new domains into

the so-called Papal State, which remained an independent

country until half a century ago.

After Pepin's death, the relations between Rome and Aix-

la-Chapelle or Nymwegen or Ingelheim, (the Frankish Kings

did not have one official residence, but travelled from place to

place with all their ministers and court officers,) became more

and more cordial. Finally the Pope and the King took a step

which was to influence the history of Europe in a most profound

way.

Charles, commonly known as Carolus Magnus or Char-

lemagne, succeeded Pepin in the year 768. He had conquered

the land of the Saxons in eastern Germany and had

built towns and monasteries all over the greater part of northern

Europe. At the request of certain enemies of Abd-ar-

Rahman, he had invaded Spain to fight the Moors. But in

the Pyrenees he had been attacked by the wild Basques and

had been forced to retire. It was upon this occasion that Roland,

the great Margrave of Breton, showed what a Frankish

chieftain of those early days meant when he promised to be

faithful to his King, and gave his life and that of his trusted

followers to safeguard the retreat of the royal army.

During the last ten years of the eighth century, however,

Charles was obliged to devote himself exclusively to affairs of

the South. The Pope, Leo III, had been attacked by a band

of Roman rowdies and had been left for dead in the street.

Some kind people had bandaged his wounds and had helped

him to escape to the camp of Charles, where he asked for

help. An army of Franks soon restored quiet and carried Leo

back to the Lateran Palace which ever since the days of Constantine,

had been the home of the Pope. That was in December

of the year 799. On Christmas day of the next year,

Charlemagne, who was staying in Rome, attended the service

in the ancient church of St. Peter. When he arose from prayer,

the Pope placed a crown upon his head, called him Emperor of

the Romans and hailed him once more with the title of ``Augustus''

which had not been heard for hundreds of years.

Once more Northern Europe was part of a Roman Empire,

but the dignity was held by a German chieftain who could

read just a little and never learned to write. But he could

fight and for a short while there was order and even the rival

emperor in Constantinople sent a letter of approval to his

``dear Brother.''

Unfortunately this splendid old man died in the year 814.

His sons and his grandsons at once began to fight for the

largest share of the imperial inheritance. Twice the Carolingian

lands were divided, by the treaties of Verdun in the

year 843 and by the treaty of Mersen-on-the-Meuse in the

year 870. The latter treaty divided the entire Frankish Kingdom

into two parts. Charles the Bold received the western

half. It contained the old Roman province called Gaul where

the language of the people had become thoroughly romanized.

The Franks soon learned to speak this language and this

accounts for the strange fact that a purely Germanic land

like France should speak a Latin tongue.

The other grandson got the eastern part, the land which

the Romans had called Germania. Those inhospitable regions

had never been part of the old Empire. Augustus had

tried to conquer this ``far east,'' but his legions had been

annihilated in the Teutoburg Wood in the year 9 and the people had

never been influenced by the higher Roman civilisation. They

spoke the popular Germanic tongue. The Teuton word for

people'' was thiot.'' The Christian missionaries therefore

called the German language the ``lingua theotisca'' or the

lingua teutisca,'' the popular dialect'' and this word

teutisca'' was changed into Deutsch'' which accounts for the name

``Deutschland.''

As for the famous Imperial Crown, it very soon slipped

off the heads of the Carolingian successors and rolled back onto

the Italian plain, where it became a sort of plaything of a

number of little potentates who stole the crown from each other

amidst much bloodshed and wore it (with or without the permission

of the Pope) until it was the turn of some more ambitious

neighbour. The Pope, once more sorely beset by his

enemies, sent north for help. He did not appeal to the ruler

of the west-Frankish kingdom, this time. His messengers

crossed the Alps and addressed themselves to Otto, a Saxon

Prince who was recognised as the greatest chieftain of the

different Germanic tribes.

Otto, who shared his people's affection for the blue skies

and the gay and beautiful people of the Italian peninsula,

hastened to the rescue. In return for his services, the Pope,

Leo VIII, made Otto ``Emperor,'' and the eastern half of

Charles' old kingdom was henceforth known as the ``Holy

Roman Empire of the German Nation.''

This strange political creation managed to live to the ripe

old age of eight hundred and thirty-nine years. In the year

1801, (during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson,) it was

most unceremoniously relegated to the historical scrapheap.

The brutal fellow who destroyed the old Germanic Empire was

the son of a Corsican notary-public who had made a brilliant

career in the service of the French Republic. He was ruler

of Europe by the grace of his famous Guard Regiments, but

he desired to be something more. He sent to Rome for the

Pope and the Pope came and stood by while General Napoleon

placed the imperial crown upon his own head and proclaimed

himself heir to the tradition of Charlemagne. For history is

like life. The more things change, the more they remain

the same.

THE NORSEMEN

WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE TENTH CENTURY

PRAYED THE LORD TO PROTECT THEM

FROM THE FURY OF THE NORSEMEN

IN the third and fourth centuries, the Germanic tribes of

central Europe had broken through the defences of the Empire

that they might plunder Rome and live on the fat of the

land. In the eighth century it became the turn of the Germans

to be the ``plundered-ones.'' They did not like this at all, even

if their enemies were their first cousins, the Norsemen, who

lived in Denmark and Sweden and Norway.

What forced these hardy sailors to turn pirate we do not

know, but once they had discovered the advantages and pleasures

of a buccaneering career there was no one who could stop

them. They would suddenly descend upon a peaceful Frankish

or Frisian village, situated on the mouth of a river. They

would kill all the men and steal all the women. Then they

would sail away in their fast-sailing ships and when the soldiers

of the king or emperor arrived upon the scene, the robbers

were gone and nothing remained but a few smouldering

ruins.

During the days of disorder which followed the death of

Charlemagne, the Northmen developed great activity. Their

fleets made raids upon every country and their sailors established

small independent kingdoms along the coast of Holland

and France and England and Germany, and they even found

their way into Italy. The Northmen were very intelligent

They soon learned to speak the language of their subjects and

gave up the uncivilised ways of the early Vikings (or Sea-

Kings who had been very picturesque but also very unwashed

and terribly cruel.

Early in the tenth century a Viking by the name of Rollo

had repeatedly attacked the coast of France. The king of

France, too weak to resist these northern robbers, tried to

bribe them into ``being good.'' He offered them the province

of Normandy, if they would promise to stop bothering the rest

of his domains. Rollo accepted this bargain and became ``Duke

of Normandy.''

But the passion of conquest was strong in the blood of his

children. Across the channel, only a few hours away from the

European mainland, they could see the white cliffs and the

green fields of England. Poor England had passed through

difficult days. For two hundred years it had been a Roman

colony. After the Romans left, it had been conquered by the

Angles and the Saxons, two German tribes from Schleswig.

Next the Danes had taken the greater part of the country

and had established the kingdom of Cnut. The Danes had

been driven away and now (it was early in the eleventh century)

another Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, was on the

throne. But Edward was not expected to live long and he

had no children. The circumstances favoured the ambitious

dukes of Normandy.

In 1066 Edward died. Immediately William of Normandy

crossed the channel, defeated and killed Harold of

Wessex (who had taken the crown) at the battle of Hastings,

and proclaimed himself king of England.

In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a

German chieftain had become a Roman Emperor. Now in

the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognised

as King of England.

Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth

of history is so much more interesting and entertaining?

FEUDALISM

HOW CENTRAL EUROPE, ATTACKED FROM

THREE SIDES, BECAME AN ARMED CAMP

AND WHY EUROPE WOULD HAVE PERISHED

WITHOUT THOSE PROFESSIONAL

SOLDIERS AND ADMINISTRATORS WHO

WERE PART OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM

THE following, then, is the state of Europe in the year one

thousand, when most people were so unhappy that they welcomed

the prophecy foretelling the approaching end of the

world and rushed to the monasteries, that the Day of Judgement

might find them engaged upon devout duties.

At an unknown date, the Germanic tribes had left their old

home in Asia and had moved westward into Europe. By

sheer pressure of numbers they had forced their way into the

Roman Empire. They had destroyed the great western empire,

but the eastern part, being off the main route of the

great migrations, had managed to survive and feebly continued

the traditions of Rome's ancient glory.

During the days of disorder which had followed, (the true

``dark ages'' of history, the sixth and seventh centuries of our

era,) the German tribes had been persuaded to accept the

Christian religion and had recognised the Bishop of Rome

as the Pope or spiritual head of the world. In the ninth century,

the organising genius of Charlemagne had revived the

Roman Empire and had united the greater part of western

Europe into a single state. During the tenth century this

empire had gone to pieces. The western part had become a

separate kingdom, France. The eastern half was known as the

Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, and the rulers of

this federation of states then pretended that they were the

direct heirs of Caesar and Augustus.

Unfortunately the power of the kings of France did not

stretch beyond the moat of their royal residence, while the

Holy Roman Emperor was openly defied by his powerful

subjects whenever it suited their fancy or their profit.

To increase the misery of the masses of the people, the

triangle of western Europe (look at page 128, please) was for ever

exposed to attacks from three sides. On the south lived the

ever dangerous Mohammedans. The western coast was ravaged

by the Northmen. The eastern frontier (defenceless except

for the short stretch of the Carpathian mountains) was at

the mercy of hordes of Huns, Hungarians, Slavs and Tartars.

The peace of Rome was a thing of the remote past, a dream

of the ``Good Old Days'' that were gone for ever. It was a

question of ``fight or die,'' and quite naturally people preferred

to fight. Forced by circumstances, Europe became an armed

camp and there was a demand for strong leadership. Both

King and Emperor were far away. The frontiersmen (and

most of Europe in the year 1000 was ``frontier'') must help

themselves. They willingly submitted to the representatives

of the king who were sent to administer the outlying districts,

PROVIDED THEY COULD PROTECT THEM AGAINST THEIR ENEMIES.

Soon central Europe was dotted with small principalities,

each one ruled by a duke or a count or a baron or a bishop, as

the case might be, and organised as a fighting unit. These

dukes and counts and barons had sworn to be faithful to the

king who had given them their ``feudum'' (hence our word

``feudal,'') in return for their loyal services and a certain

amount of taxes. But travel in those days was slow and the

means of communication were exceedingly poor. The royal

or imperial administrators therefore enjoyed great independence,

and within the boundaries of their own province they

assumed most of the rights which in truth belonged to the king.

But you would make a mistake if you supposed that the

people of the eleventh century objected to this form of

government. They supported Feudalism because it was a very

practical and necessary institution. Their Lord and Master

usually lived in a big stone house erected on the top of a steep

rock or built between deep moats, but within sight of his

subjects. In case of danger the subjects found shelter behind

the walls of the baronial stronghold. That is why they tried

to live as near the castle as possible and it accounts for the

many European cities which began their career around a feudal

fortress.

But the knight of the early middle ages was much more

than a professional soldier. He was the civil servant of that

day. He was the judge of his community and he was the

chief of police. He caught the highwaymen and protected

the wandering pedlars who were the merchants of the eleventh

century. He looked after the dikes so that the countryside

should not be flooded (just as the first noblemen had done

in the valley of the Nile four thousand years before). He

encouraged the Troubadours who wandered from place to place

telling the stories of the ancient heroes who had fought in the

great wars of the migrations. Besides, he protected the churches

and the monasteries within his territory, and although he could

neither read nor write, (it was considered unmanly to know

such things,) he employed a number of priests who kept his

accounts and who registered the marriages and the births and

the deaths which occurred within the baronial or ducal domains.

In the fifteenth century the kings once more became strong

enough to exercise those powers which belonged to them because

they were ``anointed of God.'' Then the feudal knights lost

their former independence. Reduced to the rank of country

squires, they no longer filled a need and soon they became a

nuisance. But Europe would have perished without the ``feudal

system'' of the dark ages. There were many bad knights

as there are many bad people to-day. But generally speaking,

the rough-fisted barons of the twelfth and thirteenth century

were hard-working administrators who rendered a most useful

service to the cause of progress. During that era the noble

torch of learning and art which had illuminated the world of

the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans was burning

very low. Without the knights and their good friends, the

monks, civilisation would have been extinguished entirely, and

the human race would have been forced to begin once more

where the cave-man had left off.

CHIVALRY

IT was quite natural that the professional fighting-men of

the Middle Ages should try to establish some sort of organisation

for their mutual benefit and protection. Out of this need

for close organisation, Knighthood or Chivalry was born.

We know very little about the origins of Knighthood. But

as the system developed, it gave the world something which it

needed very badly--a definite rule of conduct which softened

the barbarous customs of that day and made life more livable

than it had been during the five hundred years of the Dark

Ages. It was not an easy task to civilise the rough frontiersmen

who had spent most of their time fighting Mohammedans

and Huns and Norsemen. Often they were guilty of backsliding,

and having vowed all sorts of oaths about mercy and

charity in the morning, they would murder all their prisoners

before evening. But progress is ever the result of slow and

ceaseless labour, and finally the most unscrupulous of knights

was forced to obey the rules of his ``class'' or suffer the consequences.

These rules were different in the various parts of Europe,

but they all made much of service'' and loyalty to duty.'' The

Middle Ages regarded service as something very noble and

beautiful. It was no disgrace to be a servant, provided you

were a good servant and did not slacken on the job. As for

loyalty, at a time when life depended upon the faithful per-

formance of many unpleasant duties, it was the chief virtue

of the fighting man.

A young knight therefore was asked to swear that he would

be faithful as a servant to God and as a servant to his King.

Furthermore, he promised to be generous to those whose need

was greater than his own. He pledged his word that he would

be humble in his personal behaviour and would never boast of

his own accomplishments and that he would be a friend of all

those who suffered, (with the exception of the Mohammedans,

whom he was expected to kill on sight).

Around these vows, which were merely the Ten Commandments

expressed in terms which the people of the Middle Ages

could understand, there developed a complicated system of

manners and outward behaviour. The knights tried to model

their own lives after the example of those heroes of Arthur's

Round Table and Charlemagne's court of whom the Troubadours

had told them and of whom you may read in many delightful

books which are enumerated at the end of this volume.

They hoped that they might prove as brave as Lancelot and

as faithful as Roland. They carried themselves with dignity

and they spoke careful and gracious words that they might be

known as True Knights, however humble the cut of their coat

or the size of their purse.

In this way the order of Knighthood became a school of those

good manners which are the oil of the social machinery. Chivalry

came to mean courtesy and the feudal castle showed the

rest of the world what clothes to wear, how to eat, how to ask

a lady for a dance and the thousand and one little things of

every-day behaviour which help to make life interesting and

agreeable.

Like all human institutions, Knighthood was doomed to

perish as soon as it had outlived its usefulness.

The crusades, about which one of the next chapters tells,

were followed by a great revival of trade. Cities grew overnight.

The townspeople became rich, hired good school teachers

and soon were the equals of the knights. The invention

of gun-powder deprived the heavily armed ``Chevalier'' of his

former advantage and the use of mercenaries made it impossible

to conduct a battle with the delicate niceties of a chess

tournament. The knight became superfluous. Soon he became

a ridiculous figure, with his devotion to ideals that had no

longer any practical value. It was said that the noble Don

Quixote de la Mancha had been the last of the true knights.

After his death, his trusted sword and his armour were sold

to pay his debts.

But somehow or other that sword seems to have fallen into

the hands of a number of men. Washington carried it during

the hopeless days of Valley Forge. It was the only defence

of Gordon, when he had refused to desert the people who had

been entrusted to his care, and stayed to meet his death in the

besieged fortress of Khartoum.

And I am not quite sure but that it proved of invaluable

strength in winning the Great War.

POPE vs. EMPEROR

THE STRANGE DOUBLE LOYALTY OF THE

PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES AND HOW

IT LED TO ENDLESS QUARRELS BETWEEN

THE POPES AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPERORS

IT is very difficult to understand the people of by-gone

ages. Your own grandfather, whom you see every day, is a

mysterious being who lives in a different world of ideas and

clothes and manners. I am now telling you the story of some

of your grandfathers who are twenty-five generations removed,

and I do not expect you to catch the meaning of what I write

without re-reading this chapter a number of times.

The average man of the Middle Ages lived a very simple

and uneventful life. Even if he was a free citizen, able to

come and go at will, he rarely left his own neighbourhood.

There were no printed books and only a few manuscripts.

Here and there, a small band of industrious monks taught

reading and writing and some arithmetic. But science and history

and geography lay buried beneath the ruins of Greece and

Rome.

Whatever people knew about the past they had learned by

listening to stories and legends. Such information, which goes

from father to son, is often slightly incorrect in details, but

it will preserve the main facts of history with astonishing

accuracy. After more than two thousand years, the mothers of

India still frighten their naughty children by telling them that

``Iskander will get them,'' and Iskander is none other than

Alexander the Great, who visited India in the year 330 before

the birth of Christ, but whose story has lived through all these

ages.

The people of the early Middle Ages never saw a textbook

of Roman history. They were ignorant of many things

which every school-boy to-day knows before he has entered

the third grade. But the Roman Empire, which is merely a

name to you, was to them something very much alive. They

felt it. They willingly recognised the Pope as their spiritual

leader because he lived in Rome and represented the idea of

the Roman super-power. And they were profoundly grateful

when Charlemagne, and afterwards Otto the Great, revived

the idea of a world-empire and created the Holy Roman

Empire, that the world might again be as it always had been.

But the fact that there were two different heirs to the

Roman tradition placed the faithful burghers of the Middle

Ages in a difficult position. The theory behind the mediaeval

political system was both sound and simple. While the worldly

master (the emperor) looked after the physical well-being of

his subjects, the spiritual master (the Pope) guarded their

souls.

In practice, however, the system worked very badly. The

Emperor invariably tried to interfere with the affairs of the

church and the Pope retaliated and told the Emperor how

he should rule his domains. Then they told each other to mind

their own business in very unceremonious language and the

inevitable end was war.

Under those circumstances, what were the people to do,

A good Christian obeyed both the Pope and his King. But

the Pope and the Emperor were enemies. Which side should

a dutiful subject and an equally dutiful Christian take?

It was never easy to give the correct answer. When the

Emperor happened to be a man of energy and was sufficiently

well provided with money to organise an army, he was very

apt to cross the Alps and march on Rome, besiege the Pope

in his own palace if need be, and force His Holiness to obey

the imperial instructions or suffer the consequences.

But more frequently the Pope was the stronger. Then the

Emperor or the King together with all his subjects was

excommunicated. This meant that all churches were closed, that no

one could be baptised, that no dying man could be given absolution--

in short, that half of the functions of mediaeval government

came to an end.

More than that, the people were absolved from their oath of

loyalty to their sovereign and were urged to rebel against their

master. But if they followed this advice of the distant Pope

and were caught, they were hanged by their near-by Lege

Lord and that too was very unpleasant.

Indeed, the poor fellows were in a difficult position and

none fared worse than those who lived during the latter half of

the eleventh century, when the Emperor Henry IV of Germany

and Pope Gregory VII fought a two-round battle which

decided nothing and upset the peace of Europe for almost fifty

years.

In the middle of the eleventh century there had been a

strong movement for reform in the church. The election of the

Popes, thus far, had been a most irregular affair. It was to the

advantage of the Holy Roman Emperors to have a well-disposed

priest elected to the Holy See. They frequently came

to Rome at the time of election and used their influence for

the benefit of one of their friends.

In the year 1059 this had been changed. By a decree of

Pope Nicholas II the principal priests and deacons of the

churches in and around Rome were organised into the so-

called College of Cardinals, and this gathering of prominent

churchmen (the word ``Cardinal'' meant principal) was given

the exclusive power of electing the future Popes.

In the year 1073 the College of Cardinals elected a priest

by the name of Hildebrand, the son of very simple parents in

Tuscany, as Pope, and he took the name of Gregory VII.

His energy was unbounded. His belief in the supreme powers

of his Holy Office was built upon a granite rock of conviction

and courage. In the mind of Gregory, the Pope was not only

the absolute head of the Christian church, but also the highest

Court of Appeal in all worldly matters. The Pope who had

elevated simple German princes to the dignity of Emperor

could depose them at will. He could veto any law passed by

duke or king or emperor, but whosoever should question a

papal decree, let him beware, for the punishment would be

swift and merciless.

Gregory sent ambassadors to all the European courts to

inform the potentates of Europe of his new laws and asked

them to take due notice of their contents. William the Conqueror

promised to be good, but Henry IV, who since the age

of six had been fighting with his subjects, had no intention of

submitting to the Papal will. He called together a college of

German bishops, accused Gregory of every crime under the

sun and then had him deposed by the council of Worms.

The Pope answered with excommunication and a demand

that the German princes rid themselves of their unworthy ruler.

The German princes, only too happy to be rid of Henry, asked

the Pope to come to Augsburg and help them elect a new Emperor.

Gregory left Rome and travelled northward. Henry,

who was no fool, appreciated the danger of his position. At

all costs he must make peace with the Pope, and he must do

it at once. In the midst of winter he crossed the Alps and

hastened to Canossa where the Pope had stopped for a short

rest. Three long days, from the 25th to the 28th of January

of the year 1077, Henry, dressed as a penitent pilgrim

(but with a warm sweater underneath his monkish garb),

waited outside the gates of the castle of Canossa.

Then he was allowed to enter and was pardoned for

his sins. But the repentance did not last long.

As soon as Henry had returned to Germany, he behaved

exactly as before. Again he was excommunicated. For the

second time a council of German bishops deposed Gregory,

but this time, when Henry crossed the Alps he was at

the head of a large army, besieged Rome and forced Gregory

to retire to Salerno, where he died in exile. This first violent

outbreak decided nothing. As soon as Henry was back in

Germany, the struggle between Pope and Emperor was continued.

The Hohenstaufen family which got hold of the Imperial

German Throne shortly afterwards, were even more independent

than their predecessors. Gregory had claimed that the

Popes were superior to all kings because they (the Popes) at

the Day of Judgement would be responsible for the behaviour

of all the sheep of their flock, and in the eyes of God, a king

was one of that faithful herd.

Frederick of Hohenstaufen, commonly known as Barbarossa

or Red Beard, set up the counter-claim that the Empire

had been bestowed upon his predecessor ``by God himself''

and as the Empire included Italy and Rome, he began a campaign

which was to add these ``lost provinces'' to the northern

country. Barbarossa was accidentally drowned in Asia Minor

during the second Crusade, but his son Frederick II, a brilliant

young man who in his youth had been exposed to the civilisation

of the Mohammedans of Sicily, continued the war. The

Popes accused him of heresy. It is true that Frederick seems

to have felt a deep and serious contempt for the rough Christian

world of the North, for the boorish German Knights and

the intriguing Italian priests. But he held his tongue, went

on a Crusade and took Jerusalem from the infidel and was

duly crowned as King of the Holy City. Even this act did not

placate the Popes. They deposed Frederick and gave his

Italian possessions to Charles of Anjou, the brother of that

King Louis of France who became famous as Saint Louis.

This led to more warfare. Conrad V, the son of Conrad IV,

and the last of the Hohenstaufens, tried to regain the kingdom,

and was defeated and decapitated at Naples. But twenty years

later, the French who had made themselves thoroughly unpopular

in Sicily were all murdered during the so-called Sicilian

Vespers, and so it went.

The quarrel between the Popes and the Emperors was

never settled, but after a while the two enemies learned to

leave each other alone.

In the year 1278, Rudolph of Hapsburg was elected Emperor.

He did not take the trouble to go to Rome to be

crowned. The Popes did not object and in turn they kept

away from Germany. This meant peace but two entire centuries

which might have been used for the purpose of internal

organisation had been wasted in useless warfare.

It is an ill wind however that bloweth no good to some one.

The little cities of Italy, by a process of careful balancing,

had managed to increase their power and their independence

at the expense of both Emperors and Popes. When the rush

for the Holy Land began, they were able to handle the transportation

problem of the thousands of eager pilgrims who were

clamoring for passage, and at the end of the Crusades they

had built themselves such strong defences of brick and of gold

that they could defy Pope and Emperor with equal indifference.

Church and State fought each other and a third party--the

mediaeval city--ran away with the spoils.

THE CRUSADES

BUT ALL THESE DIFFERENT QUARRELS

WERE FORGOTTEN WHEN THE TURKS

TOOK THE HOLY LAND, DESECRATED THE

HOLY PLACES AND INTERFERED SERIOUSLY

WITH THE TRADE FROM EAST TO

WEST. EUROPE WENT CRUSADING

DURING three centuries there had been peace between Christians

and Moslems except in Spain and in the eastern Roman

Empire, the two states defending the gateways of Europe.

The Mohammedans having conquered Syria in the seventh

century were in possession of the Holy Land. But they regarded

Jesus as a great prophet (though not quite as great

as Mohammed), and they did not interfere with the pilgrims

who wished to pray in the church which Saint Helena, the

mother of the Emperor Constantine, had built on the spot of

the Holy Grave. But early in the eleventh century, a Tartar

tribe from the wilds of Asia, called the Seljuks or Turks,

became masters of the Mohammedan state in western Asia and

then the period of tolerance came to an end. The Turks took

all of Asia Minor away from the eastern Roman Emperors

and they made an end to the trade between east and west.

Alexis, the Emperor, who rarely saw anything of his Christian

neighbours of the west, appealed for help and pointed to

the danger which threatened Europe should the Turks take

Constantinople.

The Italian cities which had established colonies along the

coast of Asia Minor and Palestine, in fear for their possessions,

reported terrible stories of Turkish atrocities and Christian

suffering. All Europe got excited.

Pope Urban II, a Frenchman from Reims, who had been

educated at the same famous cloister of Cluny which had

trained Gregory VII, thought that the time had come for

action. The general state of Europe was far from satisfactory.

The primitive agricultural methods of that day (unchanged

since Roman times) caused a constant scarcity of food. There

was unemployment and hunger and these are apt to lead to

discontent and riots. Western Asia in older days had fed millions.

It was an excellent field for the purpose of immigration.

Therefore at the council of Clermont in France in the year

1095 the Pope arose, described the terrible horrors which the

infidels had inflicted upon the Holy Land, gave a glowing

description of this country which ever since the days of Moses

had been overflowing with milk and honey, and exhorted the

knights of France and the people of Europe in general to

leave wife and child and deliver Palestine from the Turks.

A wave of religious hysteria swept across the continent.

All reason stopped. Men would drop their hammer and saw,

walk out of their shop and take the nearest road to the east

to go and kill Turks. Children would leave their homes to ``go

to Palestine'' and bring the terrible Turks to their knees by

the mere appeal of their youthful zeal and Christian piety.

Fully ninety percent of those enthusiasts never got within

sight of the Holy Land. They had no money. They were

forced to beg or steal to keep alive. They became a danger

to the safety of the highroads and they were killed by the

angry country people.

The first Crusade, a wild mob of honest Christians, defaulting

bankrupts, penniless noblemen and fugitives from justice,

following the lead of half-crazy Peter the Hermit and Walter-

without-a-Cent, began their campaign against the Infidels by

murdering all the Jews whom they met by the way. They

got as far as Hungary and then they were all killed.

This experience taught the Church a lesson. Enthusiasm

alone would not set the Holy Land free. Organisation was

as necessary as good-will and courage. A year was spent in

training and equipping an army of 200,000 men. They were

placed under command of Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert, duke

of Normandy, Robert, count of Flanders, and a number of

other noblemen, all experienced in the art of war.

In the year 1096 this second crusade started upon its long

voyage. At Constantinople the knights did homage to the

Emperor. (For as I have told you, traditions die hard, and

a Roman Emperor, however poor and powerless, was still held

in great respect). Then they crossed into Asia, killed all the

Moslems who fell into their hands, stormed Jerusalem, massacred

the Mohammedan population, and marched to the Holy

Sepulchre to give praise and thanks amidst tears of piety and

gratitude. But soon the Turks were strengthened by the arrival

of fresh troops. Then they retook Jerusalem and in turn

killed the faithful followers of the Cross.

During the next two centuries, seven other crusades took

place. Gradually the Crusaders learned the technique of the

trip. The land voyage was too tedious and too dangerous.

They preferred to cross the Alps and go to Genoa or Venice

where they took ship for the east. The Genoese and the Venetians

made this trans-Mediterranean passenger service a very

profitable business. They charged exorbitant rates, and when

the Crusaders (most of whom had very little money) could not

pay the price, these Italian ``profiteers'' kindly allowed them

to ``work their way across.'' In return for a fare from Venice

to Acre, the Crusader undertook to do a stated amount of

fighting for the owners of his vessel. In this way Venice greatly

increased her territory along the coast of the Adriatic and in

Greece, where Athens became a Venetian colony, and in the

islands of Cyprus and Crete and Rhodes.

All this, however, helped little in settling the question

of the Holy Land. After the first enthusiasm had

worn off, a short crusading trip became part of the liberal

education of every well-bred young man, and there

never was any lack of candidates for service in Palestine.

But the old zeal was gone. The Crusaders, who

had begun their warfare with deep hatred for the

Mohammedans and great love for the Christian people

of the eastern Roman Empire and Armenia, suffered

a complete change of heart. They came to despise the

Greeks of Byzantium, who cheated them and frequently betrayed

the cause of the Cross, and the Armenians and all the

other Levantine races, and they began to appreciate the vir-

tues of their enemies who proved to be generous and fair

opponents.

Of course, it would never do to say this openly. But when

the Crusader returned home, he was likely to imitate the manners

which he had learned from his heathenish foe, compared

to whom the average western knight was still a good deal of a

country bumpkin. He also brought with him several new

food-stuffs, such as peaches and spinach which he planted in his

garden and grew for his own benefit. He gave up the barbarous

custom of wearing a load of heavy armour and appeared

in the flowing robes of silk or cotton which were the traditional

habit of the followers of the Prophet and were originally worn

by the Turks. Indeed the Crusades, which had begun as a

punitive expedition against the Heathen, became a course of

general instruction in civilisation for millions of young Europeans.

From a military and political point of view the Crusades

were a failure. Jerusalem and a number of cities were taken

and lost. A dozen little kingdoms were established in Syria

and Palestine and Asia Minor, but they were re-conquered by

the Turks and after the year 1244 (when Jerusalem became

definitely Turkish) the status of the Holy Land was the same

as it had been before 1095.

But Europe had undergone a great change. The people of

the west had been allowed a glimpse of the light and the sunshine

and the beauty of the east. Their dreary castles no

longer satisfied them. They wanted a broader life. Neither

Church nor State could give this to them.

They found it in the cities.

THE MEDIAEVAL CITY

WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES

SAID THAT ``CITY AIR IS FREE AIR''

THE early part of the Middle Ages had been an era of

pioneering and of settlement. A new people, who thus far

had lived outside the wild range of forest, mountains and

marshes which protected the north-eastern frontier of the Roman

Empire, had forced its way into the plains of western

Europe and had taken possession of most of the land. They

were restless, as all pioneers have been since the beginning of

time. They liked to be ``on the go.'' They cut down the

forests and they cut each other's throats with equal energy.

Few of them wanted to live in cities. They insisted upon being

``free,'' they loved to feel the fresh air of the hillsides fill their

lungs while they drove their herds across the wind-swept pastures.

When they no longer liked their old homes, they pulled

up stakes and went away in search of fresh adventures.

The weaker ones died. The hardy fighters and the courageous

women who had followed their men into the wilderness

survived. In this way they developed a strong race of

men. They cared little for the graces of life. They were too

busy to play the fiddle or write pieces of poetry. They had

little love for discussions. The priest, ``the learned man'' of the

village (and before the middle of the thirteenth century, a layman

who could read and write was regarded as a ``sissy'') was

supposed to settle all questions which had no direct practical

value. Meanwhile the German chieftain, the Frankish Baron,

the Northman Duke (or whatever their names and titles) occupied

their share of the territory which once had been part of

the great Roman Empire and among the ruins of past glory,

they built a world of their own which pleased them mightily

and which they considered quite perfect.

They managed the affairs of their castle and the surrounding

country to the best of their ability. They were as faithful

to the commandments of the Church as any weak mortal could

hope to be. They were sufficiently loyal to their king or emperor

to keep on good terms with those distant but always dangerous

potentates. In short, they tried to do right and to be

fair to their neighbours without being exactly unfair to their

own interests.

It was not an ideal world in which they found themselves.

The greater part of the people were serfs or ``villains,'' farm-

hands who were as much a part of the soil upon which they

lived as the cows and sheep whose stables they shared. Their

fate was not particularly happy nor was it particularly

unhappy. But what was one to do? The good Lord who ruled

the world of the Middle Ages had undoubtedly ordered everything

for the best. If He, in his wisdom, had decided that

there must be both knights and serfs, it was not the duty of

these faithful sons of the church to question the arrangement.

The serfs therefore did not complain but when they were too

hard driven, they would die off like cattle which are not fed

and stabled in the right way, and then something would be hastily

done to better their condition. But if the progress of the

world had been left to the serf and his feudal master, we would

still be living after the fashion of the twelfth century, saying

``abracadabra'' when we tried to stop a tooth-ache, and feeling

a deep contempt and hatred for the dentist who offered to help

us with his ``science,'' which most likely was of Mohammedan

or heathenish origin and therefore both wicked and useless.

When you grow up you will discover that many people do

not believe in ``progress'' and they will prove to you by the

terrible deeds of some of our own contemporaries that ``the

world does not change.'' But I hope that you will not pay

much attention to such talk. You see, it took our ancestors

almost a million years to learn how to walk on their hind legs.

Other centuries had to go by before their animal-like grunts

developed into an understandable language. Writing--the art

of preserving our ideas for the benefit of future generations,

without which no progress is possible was invented only four

thousand years ago. The idea of turning the forces of nature

into the obedient servants of man was quite new in the days of

your own grandfather. It seems to me, therefore, that we are

making progress at an unheard-of rate of speed. Perhaps we

have paid a little too much attention to the mere physical comforts

of life. That will change in due course of time and we

shall then attack the problems which are not related to health

and to wages and plumbing and machinery in general.

But please do not be too sentimental about the ``good old

days.'' Many people who only see the beautiful churches and

the great works of art which the Middle Ages have left behind

grow quite eloquent when they compare our own ugly civilisation

with its hurry and its noise and the evil smells of backfiring

motor trucks with the cities of a thousand years ago.

But these mediaeval churches were invariably surrounded by

miserable hovels compared to which a modern tenement house

stands forth as a luxurious palace. It is true that the noble

Lancelot and the equally noble Parsifal, the pure young hero

who went in search of the Holy Grail, were not bothered by

the odor of gasoline. But there were other smells of the barnyard

variety--odors of decaying refuse which had been thrown

into the street--of pig-sties surrounding the Bishop's palace--

of unwashed people who had inherited their coats and hats

from their grandfathers and who had never learned the blessing

of soap. I do not want to paint too unpleasant a picture.

But when you read in the ancient chronicles that the King of

France, looking out of the windows of his palace, fainted at

the stench caused by the pigs rooting in the streets of Paris,

when an ancient manuscript recounts a few details of an epidemic

of the plague or of small-pox, then you begin to under-

stand that ``progress'' is something more than a catchword used

by modern advertising men.

No, the progress of the last six hundred years would not

have been possible without the existence of cities. I shall,

therefore, have to make this chapter a little longer than many

of the others. It is too important to be reduced to three or

four pages, devoted to mere political events.

The ancient world of Egypt and Babylonia and Assyria

had been a world of cities. Greece had been a country of City-

States. The history of Phoenicia was the history of two cities

called Sidon and Tyre. The Roman Empire was the ``hinterland''

of a single town. Writing, art, science, astronomy, architecture,

literature, the theatre--the list is endless--have all

been products of the city.

For almost four thousand years the wooden bee-hive which

we call a town had been the workshop of the world. Then came

the great migrations. The Roman Empire was destroyed.

The cities were burned down and Europe once more became a

land of pastures and little agricultural villages. During the

Dark Ages the fields of civilisation had lain fallow.

The Crusades had prepared the soil for a new crop. It

was time for the harvest, but the fruit was plucked by the

burghers of the free cities.

I have told you the story of the castles and the monasteries,

with their heavy stone enclosures--the homes of the knights

and the monks, who guarded men's bodies and their souls.

You have seen how a few artisans (butchers and bakers and an

occasional candle-stick maker) came to live near the castle

to tend to the wants of their masters and to find protection

in case of danger. Sometimes the feudal lord allowed these

people to surround their houses with a stockade. But they

were dependent for their living upon the good-will of the

mighty Seigneur of the castle. When he went about they knelt

before him and kissed his hand.

Then came the Crusades and many things changed. The

migrations had driven people from the north-east to the west.

The Crusades made millions of people travel from the west to

the highly civilised regions of the south-east. They discovered

that the world was not bounded by the four walls of their little

settlement. They came to appreciate better clothes, more

comfortable houses, new dishes, products of the mysterious Orient.

After their return to their old homes, they insisted that they

be supplied with those articles. The peddler with his pack

upon his back--the only merchant of the Dark Ages--added

these goods to his old merchandise, bought a cart, hired a few

ex-crusaders to protect him against the crime wave which

followed this great international war, and went forth to do

business upon a more modern and larger scale. His career was

not an easy one. Every time he entered the domains of another

Lord he had to pay tolls and taxes. But the business

was profitable all the same and the peddler continued to make

his rounds.

Soon certain energetic merchants discovered that the goods

which they had always imported from afar could be made at

home. They turned part of their homes into a workgshop.{sic}

They ceased to be merchants and became manufacturers. They

sold their products not only to the lord of the castle and to the

abbot in his monastery, but they exported them to nearby towns.

The lord and the abbot paid them with products of their farms,

eggs and wines, and with honey, which in those early days was

used as sugar. But the citizens of distant towns were obliged

to pay in cash and the manufacturer and the merchant began to

own little pieces of gold, which entirely changed their position

in the society of the early Middle Ages.

It is difficult for you to imagine a world without money.

In a modern city one cannot possible live without money. All

day long you carry a pocket full of small discs of metal to

``pay your way.'' You need a nickel for the street-car, a dollar

for a dinner, three cents for an evening paper. But many

people of the early Middle Ages never saw a piece of coined

money from the time they were born to the day of their death.

The gold and silver of Greece and Rome lay buried beneath

the ruins of their cities. The world of the migrations, which

had succeeded the Empire, was an agricultural world. Every

farmer raised enough grain and enough sheep and enough

cows for his own use.

The mediaeval knight was a country squire and was rarely

forced to pay for materials in money. His estates produced

everything that he and his family ate and drank and wore on

their backs. The bricks for his house were made along the

banks of the nearest river. Wood for the rafters of the hall

was cut from the baronial forest. The few articles that had to

come from abroad were paid for in goods--in honey--in eggs

--in fagots.

But the Crusades upset the routine of the old agricultural

life in a very drastic fashion. Suppose that the Duke of Hildesheim

was going to the Holy Land. He must travel thousands

of miles and he must pay his passage and his hotel-bills.

At home he could pay with products of his farm. But he

could not well take a hundred dozen eggs and a cart-load of

hams with him to satisfy the greed of the shipping agent of

Venice or the inn-keeper of the Brenner Pass. These gentlemen

insisted upon cash. His Lordship therefore was obliged

to take a small quantity of gold with him upon his voyage.

Where could he find this gold? He could borrow it from the

Lombards, the descendants of the old Longobards, who had

turned professional money-lenders, who seated behind their

exchange-table (commonly known as ``banco'' or bank) were

glad to let his Grace have a few hundred gold pieces in exchange

for a mortgage upon his estates, that they might be repaid

in case His Lordship should die at the hands of the Turks.

That was dangerous business for the borrower. In the end,

the Lombards invariably owned the estates and the Knight

became a bankrupt, who hired himself out as a fighting man to

a more powerful and more careful neighbour.

His Grace could also go to that part of the town where the

Jews were forced to live. There he could borrow money at a

rate of fifty or sixty percent. interest. That, too, was bad

business. But was there a way out? Some of the people of the

little city which surrounded the castle were said to have money.

They had known the young lord all his life. His father and

their fathers had been good friends. They would not be

unreasonable in their demands. Very well. His Lordship's

clerk, a monk who could write and keep accounts, sent a note

to the best known merchants and asked for a small loan. The

townspeople met in the work-room of the jeweller who made

chalices for the nearby churches and discussed this demand.

They could not well refuse. It would serve no purpose to

ask for ``interest.'' In the first place, it was against the

religious principles of most people to take interest and in the

second place, it would never be paid except in agricultural

products and of these the people had enough and to spare.

``But,'' suggested the tailor who spent his days quietly sitting

upon his table and who was somewhat of a philosopher,

``suppose that we ask some favour in return for our money.

We are all fond of fishing. But his Lordship won't let us

fish in his brook. Suppose that we let him have a hundred

ducats and that he give us in return a written guarantee allowing

us to fish all we want in all of his rivers. Then he gets

the hundred which he needs, but we get the fish and it will be

good business all around.''

The day his Lordship accepted this proposition (it seemed

such an easy way of getting a hundred gold pieces) he signed

the death-warrant of his own power. His clerk drew up the

agreement. His Lordship made his mark (for he could not

sign his name) and departed for the East. Two years later

he came back, dead broke. The townspeople were fishing in

the castle pond. The sight of this silent row of anglers annoyed

his Lordship. He told his equerry to go and chase the crowd

away. They went, but that night a delegation of merchants

visited the castle. They were very polite. They congratulated

his Lordship upon his safe return. They were sorry his

Lordship had been annoyed by the fishermen, but as his Lordship

might perhaps remember he had given them permission

to do so himself, and the tailor produced the Charter which

had been kept in the safe of the jeweller ever since the master

had gone to the Holy Land.

His Lordship was much annoyed. But once more he was

in dire need of some money. In Italy he had signed his name

to certain documents which were now in the possession of Salvestro

dei Medici, the well-known banker. These documents

were ``promissory notes'' and they were due two months from

date. Their total amount came to three hundred and forty

pounds, Flemish gold. Under these circumstances, the noble

knight could not well show the rage which filled his heart and

his proud soul. Instead, he suggested another little loan. The

merchants retired to discuss the matter.

After three days they came back and said ``yes.'' They

were only too happy to be able to help their master in his

difficulties, but in return for the 345 golden pounds would he give

them another written promise (another charter) that they,

the townspeople, might establish a council of their own to be

elected by all the merchants and free citizens of the city, said

council to manage civic affairs without interference from the

side of the castle?

His Lordship was confoundedly angry. But again,

he needed the money. He said yes, and signed the charter.

Next week, he repented. He called his soldiers and went to

the house of the jeweller and asked for the documents which

his crafty subjects had cajoled out of him under the pressure

of circumstances. He took them away and burned them.

The townspeople stood by and said nothing. But when next

his Lordship needed money to pay for the dowry of his daughter.

he was unable to get a single penny. After that little

affair at the jeweller's his credit was not considered good.

He was forced to eat humble-pie and offer to make certain reparations.

Before his Lordship got the first installment of the stipulated sum,

the townspeople were once more in possession of all their old charters

and a brand new one which permitted them to build a ``city-hall''

and a strong tower where all the charters might be kept protected

against fire and theft, which really meant protected against

future violence on the part of the Lord and his armed followers.

This, in a very general way, is what happened during the

centuries which followed the Crusades. It was a slow process,

this gradual shifting of power from the castle to the city. There

was some fighting. A few tailors and jewellers were killed and

a few castles went up in smoke. But such occurrences were

not common. Almost imperceptibly the towns grew richer

and the feudal lords grew poorer. To maintain themselves

they were for ever forced to exchange charters of civic liberty

in return for ready cash. The cities grew. They offered an

asylum to run-away serfs who gained their liberty after they

had lived a number of years behind the city walls. They came

to be the home of the more energetic elements of the

surrounding country districts. They were proud of

their new importance and expressed their power in the

churches and public buildings which they erected

around the old market place, where centuries before

the barter of eggs and sheep and honey and salt

had taken place. They wanted their children to

have a better chance in life than they had enjoyed

themselves. They hired monks to come to their city and

be school teachers. When they heard of a man who could

paint pictures upon boards of wood, they offered him a pension

if he would come and cover the walls of their chapels and their

town hall with scenes from the Holy Scriptures.

Meanwhile his Lordship, in the dreary and drafty halls of

his castle, saw all this up-start splendour and regretted the

day when first he had signed away a single one of his sovereign

rights and prerogatives. But he was helpless. The townspeople

with their well-filled strong-boxes snapped their fingers

at him. They were free men, fully prepared to hold what they

had gained by the sweat of their brow and after a struggle

which had lasted for more than ten generations.

MEDIAEVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT

HOW THE PEOPLE OF THE CITIES ASSERTED

THEIR RIGHT TO BE HEARD IN THE

ROYAL COUNCILS OF THEIR COUNTRY

As long as people were ``nomads,'' wandering tribes of shepherds,

all men had been equal and had been responsible for the

welfare and safety of the entire community.

But after they had settled down and some had become rich

and others had grown poor, the government was apt to fall into

the hands of those who were not obliged to work for their living

and who could devote themselves to politics.

I have told you how this had happened in Egypt and in

Mesopotamia and in Greece and in Rome. It occurred among

the Germanic population of western Europe as soon as order

had been restored. The western European world was ruled

in the first place by an emperor who was elected by the seven

or eight most important kings of the vast Roman Empire of

the German nation and who enjoyed a great deal of imaginary

and very little actual power. It was ruled by a number of

kings who sat upon shaky thrones. The every-day government

was in the hands of thousands of feudal princelets. Their

subjects were peasants or serfs. There were few cities. There

was hardly any middle class. But during the thirteenth century

(after an absence of almost a thousand years) the middle

class--the merchant class--once more appeared upon the his-

torical stage and its rise in power, as we saw in the last chapter,

had meant a decrease in the influence of the castle folk.

Thus far, the king, in ruling his domains, had only paid

attention to the wishes of his noblemen and his bishops. But the

new world of trade and commerce which grew out of the

Crusades forced him to recognise the middle class or suffer

from an ever-increasing emptiness of his exchequer. Their

majesties (if they had followed their hidden wishes) would

have as lief consulted their cows and their pigs as the good

burghers of their cities. But they could not help themselves.

They swallowed the bitter pill because it was gilded, but not

without a struggle.

In England, during the absence of Richard the Lion

Hearted (who had gone to the Holy Land, but who was spending

the greater part of his crusading voyage in an Austrian

jail) the government of the country had been placed in the

hands of John, a brother of Richard, who was his inferior in

the art of war, but his equal as a bad administrator. John had

begun his career as a regent by losing Normandy and the

greater part of the French possessions. Next, he had managed

to get into a quarrel with Pope Innocent III, the famous

enemy of the Hohenstaufens. The Pope had excommunicated

John (as Gregory VII had excommunicated the Emperor

Henry IV two centuries before). In the year 1213 John had

been obliged to make an ignominious peace just as Henry IV

had been obliged to do in the year 1077.

Undismayed by his lack of success, John continued to abuse

his royal power until his disgruntled vassals made a prisoner

of their anointed ruler and forced him to promise that he

would be good and would never again interfere with the ancient

rights of his subjects. All this happened on a little island in

the Thames, near the village of Runnymede, on the 15th of

June of the year 1215. The document to which John signed

his name was called the Big Charter--the Magna Carta. It

contained very little that was new. It re-stated in short and

direct sentences the ancient duties of the king and enumerated

the privileges of his vassals. It paid little attention to the

rights (if any) of the vast majority of the people, the peasants,

but it offered certain securities to the rising class of the

merchants. It was a charter of great importance because it defined

the powers of the king with more precision than had ever been

done before. But it was still a purely mediaeval document. It

did not refer to common human beings, unless they happened to

be the property of the vassal, which must be safe-guarded

against royal tyranny just as the Baronial woods and cows

were protected against an excess of zeal on the part of the

royal foresters.

A few years later, however, we begin to hear a very different

note in the councils of His Majesty.

John, who was bad, both by birth and inclination, solemnly

had promised to obey the great charter and then had broken

every one of its many stipulations. Fortunately, he soon died

and was succeeded by his son Henry III, who was forced to

recognise the charter anew. Meanwhile, Uncle Richard, the

Crusader, had cost the country a great deal of money and the

king was obliged to ask for a few loans that he might pay his

obligations to the Jewish money-lenders. The large land-owners

and the bishops who acted as councillors to the king could

not provide him with the necessary gold and silver. The king

then gave orders that a few representatives of the cities be

called upon to attend the sessions of his Great Council. They

made their first appearance in the year 1265. They were supposed

to act only as financial experts who were not supposed

to take a part in the general discussion of matters of state, but

to give advice exclusively upon the question of taxation.

Gradually, however, these representatives of the ``commons''

were consulted upon many of the problems and the meeting

of noblemen, bishops and city delegates developed into a regular

Parliament, a place ``ou l'on parfait,'' which means in English

where people talked, before important affairs of state were

decided upon.

But the institution of such a general advisory-board with

certain executive powers was not an English invention, as

seems to ke the general belief, and government by a ``king and

his parliament'' was by no means restricted to the British Isles.

You will find it in every part of Europe. In some countries,

like France, the rapid increase of the Royal power after the

Middle Ages reduced the influence of the ``parliament'' to nothing.

In the year 1302 representatives of the cities had been

admitted to the meeting of the French Parliament, but five

centuries had to pass before this ``Parliament'' was strong

enough to assert the rights of the middle class, the so-called

Third Estate, and break the power of the king. Then they

made up for lost time and during the French Revolution, abolished

the king, the clergy and the nobles and made the representatives

of the common people the rulers of the land. In

Spain the ``cortex'' (the king's council) had been opened to the

commoners as early as the first half of the twelfth century.

In the Germain Empire, a number of important cities had obtained

the rank of ``imperial cities'' whose representatives must

be heard in the imperial diet.

In Sweden, representatives of the people attended the sessions

of the Riksdag at the first meeting of the year 1359. In

Denmark the Daneholf, the ancient national assembly, was re-

established in 1314, and, although the nobles often regained control

of the country at the expense of the king and the people,

the representatives of the cities were never completely deprived

of their power.

In the Scandinavian country, the story of representative

government is particularly interesting. In Iceland, the ``Althing,''

the assembly of all free landowners, who managed the

affairs of the island, began to hold regular meetings in the ninth

century and continued to do so for more than a thousand

years.

In Switzerland, the freemen of the different cantons defended

their assemblies against the attempts of a number of

feudal neighbours with great success.

Finally, in the Low Countries, in Holland, the councils of

the different duchies and counties were attended by representatives

of the third estate as early as the thirteenth century.

In the sixteenth century a number of these small provinces

rebelled against their king, abjured his majesty in a solemn

meeting of the ``Estates General,'' removed the clergy from

the discussions, broke the power of the nobles and assumed full

executive authority over the newly-established Republic of the

United Seven Netherlands. For two centuries, the representatives

of the town-councils ruled the country without a king,

without bishops and without noblemen. The city had become

supreme and the good burghers had become the rulers of the

land.

THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD

WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES

THOUGHT OF THE WORLD IN WHICH

THEY HAPPENED TO LIVE

DATES are a very useful invention. We could not do without

them but unless we are very careful, they will play tricks

with us. They are apt to make history too precise. For example,

when I talk of the point-of-view of mediaeval man, I

do not mean that on the 31st of December of the year 476,

suddenly all the people of Europe said, ``Ah, now the Roman

Empire has come to an end and we are living in the Middle

Ages. How interesting!''

You could have found men at the Frankish court of Charlemagne

who were Romans in their habits, in their manners, in

their out-look upon life. On the other hand, when you grow

up you will discover that some of the people in this world have

never passed beyond the stage of the cave-man. All times

and all ages overlap, and the ideas of succeeding generations

play tag with each other. But it is possible to study the minds

of a good many true representatives of the Middle Ages and

then give you an idea of the average man's attitude toward

life and the many difficult problems of living.

First of all, remember that the people of the Middle Ages

never thought of themselves as free-born citizens, who could

come and go at will and shape their fate according to their

ability or energy or luck. On the contrary, they all considered

themselves part of the general scheme of things, which included

emperors and serfs, popes and heretics, heroes and swashbucklers,

rich men, poor men, beggar men and thieves. They accepted

this divine ordinance and asked no questions. In this,

of course, they differed radically from modern people who accept

nothing and who are forever trying to improve their own

financial and political situation.

To the man and woman of the thirteenth century, the world

hereafter--a Heaven of wonderful delights and a Hell of brimstone

and suffering--meant something more than empty words

or vague theological phrases. It was an actual fact and the

mediaeval burghers and knights spent the greater part of their

time preparing for it. We modern people regard a noble

death after a well-spent life with the quiet calm of the ancient

Greeks and Romans. After three score years of work and effort,

we go to sleep with the feeling that all will be well.

But during the Middle Ages, the King of Terrors with

his grinning skull and his rattling bones was man's steady

companion. He woke his victims up with terrible tunes on his

scratchy fiddle he sat down with them at dinner--he smiled

at them from behind trees and shrubs when they took a girl

out for a walk. If you had heard nothing but hair-raising

yarns about cemeteries and coffins and fearful diseases when

you were very young, instead of listening to the fairy stories

of Anderson and Grimm, you, too, would have lived all your

days in a dread of the final hour and the gruesome day of

Judgment. That is exactly what happened to the children of

the Middle Ages. They moved in a world of devils and spooks

and only a few occasional angels. Sometimes, their fear of

the future filled their souls with humility and piety, but often

it influenced them the other way and made them cruel and

sentimental. They would first of all murder all the women

and children of a captured city and then they would devoutly

march to a holy spot and with their hands gory with the blood

of innocent victims, they would pray that a merciful heaven forgive

them their sins. Yea, they would do more than pray, they

would weep bitter tears and would confess themselves the most

wicked of sinners. But the next day, they would once more

butcher a camp of Saracen enemies without a spark of mercy

in their hearts.

Of course, the Crusaders were Knights and obeyed a somewhat

different code of manners from the common men. But in

such respects the common man was just the same as his master.

He, too, resembled a shy horse, easily frightened by a

shadow or a silly piece of paper, capable of excellent and faithful

service but liable to run away and do terrible damage when

his feverish imagination saw a ghost.

In judging these good people, however, it is wise to remember

the terrible disadvantages under which they lived.

They were really barbarians who posed as civilised people.

Charlemagne and Otto the Great were called ``Roman Emperors,''

but they had as little resemblance to a real Roman Emperor

(say Augustus or Marcus Aurelius) as ``King'' Wumba

Wumba of the upper Congo has to the highly educated rulers

of Sweden or Denmark. They were savages who lived amidst

glorious ruins but who did not share the benefits of the

civilisation which their fathers and grandfathers had destroyed.

They knew nothing. They were ignorant of almost every fact

which a boy of twelve knows to-day. They were obliged to go

to one single book for all their information. That was the

Bible. But those parts of the Bible which have influenced the

history of the human race for the better are those chapters of

the New Testament which teach us the great moral lessons of

love, charity and forgiveness. As a handbook of astronomy,

zoology, botany, geometry and all the other sciences, the venerable

book is not entirely reliable. In the twelfth century, a

second book was added to the mediaeval library, the great

encyclopaedia of useful knowledge, compiled by Aristotle, the

Greek philosopher of the fourth century before Christ. Why

the Christian church should have been willing to accord such

high honors to the teacher of Alexander the Great, whereas

they condemned all other Greek philosophers on account of

their heathenish doctrines, I really do not know. But next to

the Bible, Aristotle was recognized as the only reliable teacher

whose works could be safely placed into the hands of true

Christians.

His works had reached Europe in a somewhat roundabout

way. They had gone from Greece to Alexandria. They had

then been translated from the Greek into the Arabic language

by the Mohammedans who conquered Egypt in the seventh

century. They had followed the Moslem armies into Spain and

the philosophy of the great Stagirite (Aristotle was a native of

Stagira in Macedonia) was taught in the Moorish universities

of Cordova. The Arabic text was then translated into Latin

by the Christian students who had crossed the Pyrenees to get

a liberal education and this much travelled version of the famous

books was at last taught at the different schools of northwestern

Europe. It was not very clear, but that made it all

the more interesting.

With the help of the Bible and Aristotle, the most brilliant

men of the Middle Ages now set to work to explain all things

between Heaven and Earth in their relation to the expressed

will of God. These brilliant men, the so-called Scholasts or

Schoolmen, were really very intelligent, but they had obtained

their information exclusively from books, and never from actual

observation. If they wanted to lecture on the sturgeon

or on caterpillars, they read the Old and New Testaments and

Aristotle, and told their students everything these good books

had to say upon the subject of caterpillars and sturgeons.

They did not go out to the nearest river to catch a sturgeon.

They did not leave their libraries and repair to the backyard

to catch a few caterpillars and look at these animals and study

them in their native haunts. Even such famous scholars as

Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas did not inquire whether

the sturgeons in the land of Palestine and the caterpillars of

Macedonia might not have been different from the sturgeons

and the caterpillars of western Europe.

When occasionally an exceptionally curious person like

Roger Bacon appeared in the council of the learned and began

to experiment with magnifying glasses and funny little telescopes

and actually dragged the sturgen and the caterpillar

into the lecturing room and proved that they were different

from the creatures described by the Old Testament and by

Aristotle, the Schoolmen shook their dignified heads. Bacon

was going too far. When he dared to suggest that an hour

of actual observation was worth more than ten years with

Aristotle and that the works of that famous Greek might as

well have remained untranslated for all the good they had ever

done, the scholasts went to the police and said, ``This man is

a danger to the safety of the state. He wants us to study

Greek that we may read Aristotle in the original. Why should

he not be contented with our Latin-Arabic translation which

has satisfied our faithful people for so many hundred years?

Why is he so curious about the insides of fishes and the insides

of insects? He is probably a wicked magician trying to upset

the established order of things by his Black Magic.'' And so

well did they plead their cause that the frightened guardians

of the peace forbade Bacon to write a single word for more

than ten years. When he resumed his studies he had learned

a lesson. He wrote his books in a queer cipher which made it

impossible for his contemporaries to read them, a trick which

became common as the Church became more desperate in its

attempts to prevent people from asking questions which would

lead to doubts and infidelity.

This, however, was not done out of any wicked desire to

keep people ignorant. The feeling which prompted the heretic

hunters of that day was really a very kindly one. They firmly

believed--nay, they knew--that this life was but the preparation

for our real existence in the next world. They felt convinced

that too much knowledge made people uncomfortable,

filled their minds with dangerous opinions and led to doubt

and hence to perdition. A mediaeval Schoolman who saw one

of his pupils stray away from the revealed authority of the

Bible and Aristotle, that he might study things for himself, felt

as uncomfortable as a loving mother who sees her young child

approach a hot stove. She knows that he will burn his little

fingers if he is allowed to touch it and she tries to keep him

back, if necessary she will use force. But she really loves

the child and if he will only obey her, she will be as good to him

as she possibly can be. In the same way the mediaeval guardians

of people's souls, while they were strict in all matters

pertaining to the Faith, slaved day and night to render the

greatest possible service to the members of their flock. They

held out a helping hand whenever they could and the society

of that day shows the influence of thousands of good men and

pious women who tried to make the fate of the average mortal

as bearable as possible.

A serf was a serf and his position would never change. But

the Good Lord of the Middle Ages who allowed the serf to

remain a slave all his life had bestowed an immortal soul upon

this humble creature and therefore he must be protected in his

rights, that he might live and die as a good Christian. When

he grew too old or too weak to work he must be taken care

of by the feudal master for whom he had worked. The serf,

therefore, who led a monotonous and dreary life, was never

haunted by fear of to-morrow. He knew that he was ``safe''--

that he could not be thrown out of employment, that he would

always have a roof over his head (a leaky roof, perhaps, but

roof all the same), and that he would always have something

to eat.

This feeling of stability'' and of safety'' was found in all

classes of society. In the towns the merchants and the artisans

established guilds which assured every member of a steady income.

It did not encourage the ambitious to do better than

their neighbours. Too often the guilds gave protection to

the slacker'' who managed to get by.'' But they established

a general feeling of content and assurance among the

labouring classes which no longer exists in our day of general

competition. The Middle Ages were familiar with the dangers

of what we modern people call ``corners,'' when a single rich

man gets hold of all the available grain or soap or pickled

herring, and then forces the world to buy from him at his own

price. The authorities, therefore, discouraged wholesale trading

and regulated the price at which merchants were allowed

to sell their goods.

The Middle Ages disliked competition. Why compete and

fill the world with hurry and rivalry and a multitude of pushing

men, when the Day of Judgement was near at hand, when

riches would count for nothing and when the good serf would

enter the golden gates of Heaven while the bad knight was

sent to do penance in the deepest pit of Inferno?

In short, the people of the Middle Ages were asked to surrender

part of their liberty of thought and action, that they

might enjoy greater safety from poverty of the body and poverty

of the soul.

And with a very few exceptions, they did not object. They

firmly believed that they were mere visitors upon this planet--

that they were here to be prepared for a greater and more

important life. Deliberately they turned their backs upon a

world which was filled with suffering and wickedness and

injustice. They pulled down the blinds that the rays of the

sun might not distract their attention from that chapter in the

Apocalypse which told them of that heavenly light which was

to illumine their happiness in all eternity. They tried to close

their eyes to most of the joys of the world in which they lived

that they might enjoy those which awaited them in the near

future. They accepted life as a necessary evil and welcomed

death as the beginning of a glorious day.

The Greeks and the Romans had never bothered about the

future but had tried to establish their Paradise right here upon

this earth. They had succeeded in making life extremely pleasant

for those of their fellow men who did not happen to be

slaves. Then came the other extreme of the Middle Ages,

when man built himself a Paradise beyond the highest clouds

and turned this world into a vale of tears for high and low,

for rich and poor, for the intelligent and the dumb. It was

time for the pendulum to swing back in the other direction, as

I shall tell you in my next chapter.

MEDIAEVAL TRADE

HOW THE CRUSADES ONCE MORE MADE THE

MEDITERRANEAN A BUSY CENTRE OF

TRADE AND HOW THE CITIES OF THE

ITALIAN PENINSULA BECAME THE GREAT

DISTRIBUTING CENTRE FOR THE COMMERCE

WITH ASIA AND AFRICA

THERE were three good reasons why the Italian cities should

have been the first to regain a position of great importance

during the late Middle Ages. The Italian peninsula had been

settled by Rome at a very early date. There had been more

roads and more towns and more schools than anywhere else

in Europe.

The barbarians had burned as lustily in Italy as elsewhere,

but there had been so much to destroy that more had been able

to survive. In the second place, the Pope lived in Italy and

as the head of a vast political machine, which owned land and

serfs and buildings and forests and rivers and conducted courts

of law, he was in constant receipt of a great deal of money.

The Papal authorities had to be paid in gold and silver as did

the merchants and ship-owners of Venice and Genoa. The

cows and the eggs and the horses and all the other agricultural

products of the north and the west must be changed into actual

cash before the debt could be paid in the distant city of Rome.

This made Italy the one country where there was a comparative

abundance of gold and silver. Finally, during the Crusades,

the Italian cities had become the point of embarkation

for the Crusaders and had profiteered to an almost unbelievable

extent.

And after the Crusades had come to an end, these same

Italian cities remained the distributing centres for those Oriental

goods upon which the people of Europe had come to depend

during the time they had spent in the near east.

Of these towns, few were as famous as Venice. Venice was

a republic built upon a mud bank. Thither people from the

mainland had fled during the invasions of the barbarians in the

fourth century. Surrounded on all sides by the sea they had

engaged in the business of salt-making. Salt had been very

scarce during the Middle Ages, and the price had been high.

For hundreds of years Venice had enjoyed a monopoly of

this indispensable table commodity (I say indispensable, because

people, like sheep, fall ill unless they get a certain amount

of salt in their food). The people had used this monopoly to

increase the power of their city. At times they had even dared

to defy the power of the Popes. The town had grown rich and

had begun to build ships, which engaged in trade with the

Orient. During the Crusades, these ships were used to carry

passengers to the Holy Land, and when the passengers could

not pay for their tickets in cash, they were obliged to help the

Venetians who were for ever increasing their colonies in the

AEgean Sea, in Asia Minor and in Egypt.

By the end of the fourteenth century, the population had

grown to two hundred thousand, which made Venice the biggest

city of the Middle Ages. The people were without influence

upon the government which was the private affair of a

small number of rich merchant families. They elected a senate

and a Doge (or Duke), but the actual rulers of the city were

the members of the famous Council of Ten,--who maintained

themselves with the help of a highly organised system of secret

service men and professional murderers, who kept watch upon

all citizens and quietly removed those who might be dangerous

to the safety of their high-handed and unscrupulous Committee

of Public Safety.

The other extreme of government, a democracy of very

turbulent habits, was to be found in Florence. This city

controlled the main road from northern Europe to Rome and used

the money which it had derived from this fortunate economic

position to engage in manufacturing. The Florentines tried to

follow the example of Athens. Noblemen, priests and members

of the guilds all took part in the discussions of civic affairs.

This led to great civic upheaval. People were forever being divided

into political parties and these parties fought each other

with intense bitterness and exiled their enemies and confiscated

their possessions as soon as they had gained a victory in the

council. After several centuries of this rule by organised mobs,

the inevitable happened. A powerful family made itself master

of the city and governed the town and the surrounding country

after the fashion of the old Greek ``tyrants.'' They were called

the Medici. The earliest Medici had been physicians (medicus

is Latin for physician, hence their name), but later they had

turned banker. Their banks and their pawnshops were to be

found in all the more important centres of trade. Even today

our American pawn-shops display the three golden balls

which were part of the coat of arms of the mighty house of

the Medici, who became rulers of Florence and married their

daughters to the kings of France and were buried in graves

worthy of a Roman Caesar.

Then there was Genoa, the great rival of Venice, where

the merchants specialised in trade with Tunis in Africa and

the grain depots of the Black Sea. Then there were more than

two hundred other cities, some large and some small, each a perfect

commercial unit, all of them fighting their neighbours and

rivals with the undying hatred of neighbours who are depriving

each other of their profits.

Once the products of the Orient and Africa had been

brought to these distributing centres, they must be prepared

for the voyage to the west and the north.

Genoa carried her goods by water to Marseilles, from where

they were reshipped to the cities along the Rhone, which in

turn served as the market places of northern and western

France.

Venice used the land route to northern Europe. This ancient

road led across the Brenner pass, the old gateway for

the barbarians who had invaded Italy. Past Innsbruck, the

merchandise was carried to Basel. From there it drifted down

the Rhine to the North Sea and England, or it was taken to

Augsburg where the Fugger family (who were both bankers

and manufacturers and who prospered greatly by ``shaving''

the coins with which they paid their workmen), looked after

the further distribution to Nuremberg and Leipzig and the

cities of the Baltic and to Wisby (on the Island of Gotland)

which looked after the needs of the Northern Baltic and dealt

directly with the Republic of Novgorod, the old commercial

centre of Russia which was destroyed by Ivan the Terrible in

the middle of the sixteenth century.

The little cities on the coast of north-western Europe had

an interesting story of their own. The mediaeval world ate a

great deal of fish. There were many fast days and then people

were not permitted to eat meat. For those who lived away

from the coast and from the rivers, this meant a diet of eggs

or nothing at all. But early in the thirteenth century a Dutch

fisherman had discovered a way of curing herring, so that it

could be transported to distant points. The herring fisheries

of the North Sea then became of great importance. But some

time during the thirteenth century, this useful little fish (for

reasons of its own) moved from the North Sea to the Baltic and

the cities of that inland sea began to make money. All the

world now sailed to the Baltic to catch herring and as that fish

could only be caught during a few months each year (the rest

of the time it spends in deep water, raising large families of

little herrings) the ships would have been idle during the rest

of the time unless they had found another occupation. They

were then used to carry the wheat of northern and central Russia

to southern and western Europe. On the return voyage

they brought spices and silks and carpets and Oriental rugs

from Venice and Genoa to Bruges and Hamburg and Bremen.

Out of such simple beginnings there developed an important

system of international trade which reached from the

manufacturing cities of Bruges and Ghent (where the almighty

guilds fought pitched battles with the kings of France and

England and established a labour tyranny which completely

ruined both the employers and the workmen) to the Republic

of Novgorod in northern Russia, which was a mighty city until

Tsar Ivan, who distrusted all merchants, took the town and

killed sixty thousand people in less than a month's time and

reduced the survivors to beggary.

That they might protect themselves against pirates and

excessive tolls and annoying legislation, the merchants of the

north founded a protective league which was called the

``Hansa.'' The Hansa, which had its headquarters in Lubeck,

was a voluntary association of more than one hundred cities.

The association maintained a navy of its own which patrolled

the seas and fought and defeated the Kings of England and

Denmark when they dared to interfere with the rights and the

privileges of the mighty Hanseatic merchants.

I wish that I had more space to tell you some of the wonderful

stories of this strange commerce which was carried on

across the high mountains and across the deep seas amidst

such dangers that every voyage became a glorious adventure.

But it would take several volumes and it cannot be done here.

Besides, I hope that I have told you enough about the Middle

Ages to make you curious to read more in the excellent books

of which I shall give you a list at the end of this volume.

The Middle Ages, as I have tried to show you, had been a

period of very slow progress. The people who were in power

believed that ``progress'' was a very undesirable invention of

the Evil One and ought to be discouraged, and as they hap-

pened to occupy the seats of the mighty, it was easy to enforce

their will upon the patient serfs and the illiterate knights.

Here and there a few brave souls sometimes ventured forth into

the forbidden region of science, but they fared badly and were

considered lucky when they escaped with their lives and a jail

sentence of twenty years.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the flood of

international commerce swept over western Europe as the Nile

had swept across the valley of ancient Egypt. It left behind

a fertile sediment of prosperity. Prosperity meant leisure

hours and these leisure hours gave both men and women a

chance to buy manuscripts and take an interest in literature

and art and music.

Then once more was the world filled with that divine curiosity

which has elevated man from the ranks of those other

mammals who are his distant cousins but who have remained

dumb, and the cities, of whose growth and development I have

told you in my last chapter, offered a safe shelter to these

brave pioneers who dared to leave the very narrow domain

of the established order of things.

They set to work. They opened the windows of their

cloistered and studious cells. A flood of sunlight entered the

dusty rooms and showed them the cobwebs which had gathered

during the long period of semi-darkness.

They began to clean house. Next they cleaned their gardens.

Then they went out into the open fields, outside the crumbling

town walls, and said, ``This is a good world. We are

glad that we live in it.''

At that moment, the Middle Ages came to an end and a new

world began.

THE RENAISSANCE

PEOPLE ONCE MORE DARED TO BE HAPPY

JUST BECAUSE THEY WERE ALIVE. THEY

TRIED TO SAVE THE REMAINS OF THE

OLDER AND MORE AGREEABLE CIVILISATION

OF ROME AND GREECE AND THEY

WERE SO PROUD OF THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS

THAT THEY SPOKE OF A RENAISSANCE

OR RE-BIRTH OF CIVILISATION

THE Renaissance was not a political or religious movement.

It was a state of mind.

The men of the Renaissance continued to be the obedient

sons of the mother church. They were subjects of kings and

emperors and dukes and murmured not.

But their outlook upon life was changed. They began to

wear different clothes--to speak a different language--to live

different lives in different houses.

They no longer concentrated all their thoughts and their

efforts upon the blessed existence that awaited them in Heaven.

They tried to establish their Paradise upon this planet, and,

truth to tell, they succeeded in a remarkable degree.

I have quite often warned you against the danger that

lies in historical dates. People take them too literally. They

think of the Middle Ages as a period of darkness and ignor-

ance. ``Click,'' says the clock, and the Renaissance begins and

cities and palaces are flooded with the bright sunlight of an

eager intellectual curiosity.

As a matter of fact, it is quite impossible to draw such

sharp lines. The thirteenth century belonged most decidedly

to the Middle Ages. All historians agree upon that. But was

it a time of darkness and stagnation merely? By no means.

People were tremendously alive. Great states were being

founded. Large centres of commerce were being developed.

High above the turretted towers of the castle and the peaked

roof of the town-hall, rose the slender spire of the newly built

Gothic cathedral. Everywhere the world was in motion. The

high and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall, who had just become

conscious of their own strength (by way of their recently

acquired riches) were struggling for more power with their

feudal masters. The members of the guilds who had just become

aware of the important fact that ``numbers count'' were

fighting the high and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall. The

king and his shrewd advisers went fishing in these troubled

waters and caught many a shining bass of profit which they

proceeded to cook and eat before the noses of the surprised and

disappointed councillors and guild brethren.

To enliven the scenery during the long hours of evening

when the badly lighted streets did not invite further political

and economic dispute, the Troubadours and Minnesingers told

their stories and sang their songs of romance and adventure

and heroism and loyalty to all fair women. Meanwhile youth,

impatient of the slowness of progress, flocked to the universities,

and thereby hangs a story.

The Middle Ages were ``internationally minded.'' That

sounds difficult, but wait until I explain it to you. We modern

people are ``nationally minded.'' We are Americans or Englishmen

or Frenchmen or Italians and speak English or French

or Italian and go to English and French and Italian universities,

unless we want to specialise in some particular branch

of learning which is only taught elsewhere, and then we learn

another language and go to Munich or Madrid or Moscow.

But the people of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rarely

talked of themselves as Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians.

They said, ``I am a citizen of Sheffield or Bordeaux or Genoa.''

Because they all belonged to one and the same church they felt

a certain bond of brotherhood. And as all educated men could

speak Latin, they possessed an international language which

removed the stupid language barriers which have grown up

in modern Europe and which place the small nations at such

an enormous disadvantage. Just as an example, take the case

of Erasmus, the great preacher of tolerance and laughter, who

wrote his books in the sixteenth century. He was the native

of a small Dutch village. He wrote in Latin and all the world

was his audience. If he were alive to-day, he would write in

Dutch. Then only five or six million people would be able to

read him. To be understood by the rest of Europe and America,

his publishers would be obliged to translate his books into

twenty different languages. That would cost a lot of money

and most likely the publishers would never take the trouble

or the risk.

Six hundred years ago that could not happen. The greater

part of the people were still very ignorant and could not read

or write at all. But those who had mastered the difficult art

of handling the goose-quill belonged to an international republic

of letters which spread across the entire continent and which

knew of no boundaries and respected no limitations of language

or nationality. The universities were the strongholds of

this republic. Unlike modern fortifications, they did not follow

the frontier. They were to be found wherever a teacher

and a few pupils happened to find themselves together. There

again the Middle Ages and the Renaissance differed from our

own time. Nowadays, when a new university is built, the

process (almost invariably) is as follows: Some rich man

wants to do something for the community in which he lives or

a particular religious sect wants to build a school to keep its

faithful children under decent supervision, or a state needs doc-

tors and lawyers and teachers. The university begins as a

large sum of money which is deposited in a bank. This money

is then used to construct buildings and laboratories and dormitories.

Finally professional teachers are hired, entrance examinations

are held and the university is on the way.

But in the Middle Ages things were done differently. A wise man

said to himself, ``I have discovered a great truth. I must impart my

knowledge to others.'' And he began to preach his wisdom

wherever and whenever he could get a few people to listen to him,

like a modern soap-box orator. If he was an interesting speaker, the

crowd came and stayed. If he was dull, they shrugged their shoulders

and continued their way.

By and by certain young men began to come regularly to hear

the words of wisdom of this great teacher. They brought copybooks

with them and a little bottle of ink and a goose quill and

wrote down what seemed to be important. One day it rained.

The teacher and his pupils retired to an empty basement or

the room of the ``Professor.'' The learned man sat in his chair

and the boys sat on the floor. That was the beginning of the

University, the ``universitas,'' a corporation of professors and

students during the Middle Ages, when the ``teacher'' counted

for everything and the building in which he taught counted for

very little.

As an example, let me tell you of something that happened

in the ninth century. In the town of Salerno near Naples there

were a number of excellent physicians. They attracted people

desirous of learning the medical profession and for almost a

thousand years (until 1817) there was a university of Salerno

which taught the wisdom of Hippocrates, the great Greek doctor

who had practiced his art in ancient Hellas in the fifth

century before the birth of Christ.

Then there was Abelard, the young priest from Brittany,

who early in the twelfth century began to lecture on theology

and logic in Paris. Thousands of eager young men flocked

to the French city to hear him. Other priests who disagreed

with him stepped forward to explain their point of view. Paris

was soon filled with a clamouring multitude of Englishmen and

Germans and Italians and students from Sweden and Hungary

and around the old cathedral which stood on a little island in

the Seine there grew the famous University of Paris.

In Bologna in Italy, a monk by the name of Gratian had

compiled a text-book for those whose business it was to know

the laws of the church. Young priests and many laymen then

came from all over Europe to hear Gratian explain his ideas.

To protect themselves against the landlords and the innkeepers

and the boarding-house ladies of the city, they formed a corporation

(or University) and behold the beginning of the university

of Bologna.

Next there was a quarrel in the University of Paris. We do

not know what caused it, but a number of disgruntled teachers

together with their pupils crossed the channel and found a

hospitable home in n little village on the Thames called Oxford,

and in this way the famous University of Oxford came into

being. In the same way, in the year 1222, there had been a split

in the University of Bologna. The discontented teachers (again

followed by their pupils) had moved to Padua and their proud city

thenceforward boasted of a university of its own. And so it went

from Valladolid in Spain to Cracow in distant Poland and from

Poitiers in France to Rostock in Germany.

It is quite true that much of the teaching done by these

early professors would sound absurd to our ears, trained to

listen to logarithms and geometrical theorems. The point

however, which I want to make is this--the Middle Ages and

especially the thirteenth century were not a time when the

world stood entirely still. Among the younger generation,

there was life, there was enthusiasm, and there was a restless

if somewhat bashful asking of questions. And out of this

turmoil grew the Renaissance.

But just before the curtain went down upon the last scene

of the Mediaeval world, a solitary figure crossed the stage, of

whom you ought to know more than his mere name. This

man was called Dante. He was the son of a Florentine lawyer

who belonged to the Alighieri family and he saw the light of

day in the year 1265. He grew up in the city of his ancestors

while Giotto was painting his stories of the life of St. Francis

of Assisi upon the walls of the Church of the Holy Cross, but

often when he went to school, his frightened eyes would see the

puddles of blood which told of the terrible and endless warfare

that raged forever between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines,

the followers of the Pope and the adherents of the Emperors.

When he grew up, he became a Guelph, because his father

had been one before him, just as an American boy might become

a Democrat or a Republican, simply because his father

had happened to be a Democrat or a Republican. But after a

few years, Dante saw that Italy, unless united under a single

head, threatened to perish as a victim of the disordered jealousies

of a thousand little cities. Then he became a Ghilbeiline.

He looked for help beyond the Alps. He hoped that a

mighty emperor might come and re-establish unity and order.

Alas! he hoped in vain. The Ghibellines were driven out of

Florence in the year 1802. From that time on until the day

of his death amidst the dreary ruins of Ravenna, in the year

1321, Dante was a homeless wanderer, eating the bread of

charity at the table of rich patrons whose names would have

sunk into the deepest pit of oblivion but for this single fact,

that they had been kind to a poet in his misery. During the

many years of exile, Dante felt compelled to justify himself

and his actions when he had been a political leader in his

home-town, and when he had spent his days walking along

the banks of the Arno that he might catch a glimpse of the

lovely Beatrice Portinari, who died the wife of another man, a

dozen years before the Ghibelline disaster.

He had failed in the ambitions of his career. He had

faithfully served the town of is birth and before a corrupt

court he had been accused of stealing the public funds and

had been condemned to be burned alive should he venture

back within the realm of the city of Florence. To clear

himself before his own conscience and before his contemporaries,

Dante then created an Imaginary World and with great

detail he described the circumstances which had led to

his defeat and depicted the hopeless condition of greed and lust

and hatred which had turned his fair and beloved Italy into a

battlefield for the pitiless mercenaries of wicked and selfish

tyrants.

He tells us how on the Thursday before Easter of the year

1300 he had lost his way in a dense forest and how he found

his path barred by a leopard and a lion and a wolf. He gave

himself up for lost when a white figure appeared amidst the

trees. It was Virgil, the Roman poet and philosopher, sent

upon his errand of mercy by the Blessed Virgin and by Beatrice,

who from high Heaven watched over the fate of her

true lover. Virgil then takes Dante through Purgatory and

through Hell. Deeper and deeper the path leads them until

they reach the lowest pit where Lucifer himself stands frozen

into the eternal ice surrounded by the most terrible of sinners,

traitors and liars and those who have achieved fame and

success by lies and by deceit. But before the two wanderers

have reached this terrible spot, Dante has met all those who

in some way or other have played a role in the history of his

beloved city. Emperors and Popes, dashing knights and

whining usurers, they are all there, doomed to eternal punishment

or awaiting the day of deliverance, when they shall

leave Purgatory for Heaven.

It is a curious story. It is a handbook of everything the

people of the thirteenth century did and felt and feared and

prayed for. Through it all moves the figure of the lonely

Florentine exile, forever followed by the shadow of his own

despair.

And behold! when the gates of death were closing upon

the sad poet of the Middle Ages, the portals of life swung

open to the child who was to be the first of the men of the

Renaissance. That was Francesco Petrarca, the son of the

notary public of the little town of Arezzo.

Francesco's father had belonged to the same political party

as Dante. He too had been exiled and thus it happened that

Petrarca (or Petrarch, as we call him) was born away from

Florence. At the age of fifteen he was sent to Montpellier

in France that he might become a lawyer like his father. But

the boy did not want to be a jurist. He hated the law. He

wanted to be a scholar and a poet--and because he wanted to

be a scholar and a poet beyond everything else, he became one,

as people of a strong will are apt to do. He made long

voyages, copying manuscripts in Flanders and in the cloisters

along the Rhine and in Paris and Liege and finally in Rome.

Then he went to live in a lonely valley of the wild mountains

of Vaucluse, and there he studied and wrote and soon he had

become so famous for his verse and for his learning that both

the University of Paris and the king of Naples invited him

to come and teach their students and subjects. On the way

to his new job, he was obliged to pass through Rome. The

people had heard of his fame as an editor of half-forgotten

Roman authors. They decided to honour him and in the

ancient forum of the Imperial City, Petrarch was crowned with

the laurel wreath of the Poet.

From that moment on, his life was an endless career of

honour and appreciation. He wrote the things which people

wanted most to hear. They were tired of theological

disputations. Poor Dante could wander through hell as much as

he wanted. But Petrarch wrote of love and of nature and the

sun and never mentioned those gloomy things which seemed

to have been the stock in trade of the last generation. And

when Petrarch came to a city, all the people flocked out to

meet him and he was received like a conquering hero. If he

happened to bring his young friend Boccaccio, the story teller,

with him, so much the better. They were both men of their

time, full of curiosity, willing to read everything once, digging

in forgotten and musty libraries that they might find still another

manuscript of Virgil or Ovid or Lucrece or any of the

other old Latin poets. They were good Christians. Of course

they were! Everyone was. But no need of going around with

a long face and wearing a dirty coat just because some day

or other you were going to die. Life was good. People were

meant to be happy. You desired proof of this? Very well.

Take a spade and dig into the soil. What did you find?

Beautiful old statues. Beautiful old vases. Ruins of ancient

buildings. All these things were made by the people of the

greatest empire that ever existed. They ruled all the world

for a thousand years. They were strong and rich and handsome

(just look at that bust of the Emperor Augustus!). Of

course, they were not Christians and they would never be

able to enter Heaven. At best they would spend their days

in purgatory, where Dante had just paid them a visit.

But who cared? To have lived in a world like that of

ancient Rome was heaven enough for any mortal being. And

anyway, we live but once. Let us be happy and cheerful for

the mere joy of existence.

Such, in short, was the spirit that had begun to fill the

narrow and crooked streets of the many little Italian cities.

You know what we mean by the ``bicycle craze'' or the

``automobile craze.'' Some one invents a bicycle. People who

for hundreds of thousands of years have moved slowly and

painfully from one place to another go ``crazy'' over the prospect

of rolling rapidly and easily over hill and dale. Then

a clever mechanic makes the first automobile. No longer is it

necessary to pedal and pedal and pedal. You just sit and

let little drops of gasoline do the work for you. Then everybody

wants an automobile. Everybody talks about Rolls-

Royces and Flivvers and carburetors and mileage and oil. Explorers

penetrate into the hearts of unknown countries that

they may find new supplies of gas. Forests arise in Sumatra

and in the Congo to supply us with rubber. Rubber and oil

become so valuable that people fight wars for their possession.

The whole world is ``automobile mad'' and little children can

say car'' before they learn to whisper papa'' and ``mamma.''

In the fourteenth century, the Italian people went crazy

about the newly discovered beauties of the buried world of

Rome. Soon their enthusiasm was shared by all the people of

western Europe. The finding of an unknown manuscript became

the excuse for a civic holiday. The man who wrote a

grammar became as popular as the fellow who nowadays invents

a new spark-plug. The humanist, the scholar who devoted his

time and his energies to a study of ``homo'' or mankind (instead

of wasting his hours upon fruitless theological investigations),

that man was regarded with greater honour and a deeper respect

than was ever bestowed upon a hero who had just conquered

all the Cannibal Islands.

In the midst of this intellectual upheaval, an event occurred

which greatly favoured the study of the ancient philosophers

and authors. The Turks were renewing their attacks upon

Europe. Constantinople, capital of the last remnant of the

original Roman Empire, was hard pressed. In the year 1393

the Emperor, Manuel Paleologue, sent Emmanuel Chrysoloras

to western Europe to explain the desperate state of old Byzantium

and to ask for aid. This aid never came. The Roman

Catholic world was more than willing to see the Greek Catholic

world go to the punishment that awaited such wicked heretics.

But however indifferent western Europe might be to the fate

of the Byzantines, they were greatly interested in the ancient

Greeks whose colonists had founded the city on the Bosphorus

ten centuries after the Trojan war. They wanted to learn

Greek that they might read Aristotle and Homer and Plato.

They wanted to learn it very badly, but they had no books and

no grammars and no teachers. The magistrates of Florence

heard of the visit of Chrysoloras. The people of their city

were ``crazy to learn Greek.'' Would he please come and

teach them? He would, and behold! the first professor of

Greek teaching alpha, beta, gamma to hundreds of eager young

men, begging their way to the city of the Arno, living in stables

and in dingy attics that they night learn how to decline the verb

and enter into the companionship of

Sophocles and Homer.

Meanwhile in the universities, the old schoolmen, teaching

their ancient theology and their antiquated logic; explaining

the hidden mysteries of the old Testament and discussing the

strange science of their Greek-Arabic-Spanish-Latin edition of

Aristotle, looked on in dismay and horror. Next, they turned

angry. This thing was going too far. The young men were

deserting the lecture halls of the established universities to

go and listen to some wild-eyed ``humanist'' with his newfangled

notions about a ``reborn civilization.''

They went to the authorities. They complained. But one

cannot force an unwilling horse to drink and one cannot

make unwilling ears listen to something which does not really

interest them. The schoolmen were losing ground rapidly. Here

and there they scored a short victory. They combined forces

with those fanatics who hated to see other people enjoy a

happiness which was foreign to their own souls. In Florence,

the centre of the Great Rebirth, a terrible fight was fought

between the old order and the new. A Dominican monk, sour

of face and bitter in his hatred of beauty, was the leader of

the mediaeval rear-guard. He fought a valiant battle. Day

after day he thundered his warnings of God's holy wrath

through the wide halls of Santa Maria del Fiore. ``Repent,''

he cried, ``repent of your godlessness, of your joy in things

that are not holy!'' He began to hear voices and to see flaming

swords that flashed through the sky. He preached to the

little children that they might not fall into the errors of these

ways which were leading their fathers to perdition. He organised

companies of boy-scouts, devoted to the service of the

great God whose prophet he claimed to be. In a sudden moment

of frenzy, the frightened people promised to do penance

for their wicked love of beauty and pleasure. They carried

their books and their statues and their paintings to the market

place and celebrated a wild ``carnival of the vanities'' with holy

singing and most unholy dancing, while Savonarola applied his

torch to the accumulated treasures.

But when the ashes cooled down, the people began to realise

what they had lost. This terrible fanatic had made them destroy

that which they had come to love above all things. They

turned against him, Savonarola was thrown into jail. He was

tortured. But he refused to repent for anything he had done.

He was an honest man. He had tried to live a holy life. He

had willingly destroyed those who deliberately refused to

share his own point of view. It had been his duty to eradicate

evil wherever he found it. A love of heathenish books and

heathenish beauty in the eyes of this faithful son of the Church,

had been an evil. But he stood alone. He had fought the

battle of a time that was dead and gone. The Pope in Rome

never moved a finger to save him. On the contrary, he approved

of his ``faithful Florentines'' when they dragged Savonarola

to the gallows, hanged him and burned his body amidst

the cheerful howling and yelling of the mob.

It was a sad ending, but quite inevitable. Savonarola

would have been a great man in the eleventh century. In the

fifteenth century he was merely the leader of a lost cause.

For better or worse, the Middle Ages had come to an end when

the Pope had turned humanist and when the Vatican became

the most important museum of Roman and Greek antiquities.

THE AGE OF EXPRESSION

THE PEOPLE BEGAN TO FEEL THE NEED OF

GIVING EXPRESSION TO THEIR NEWLY

DISCOVERED JOY OF LIVING. THEY EXPRESSED

THEIR HAPPINESS IN POETRY

AND IN SCULPTURE AND IN ARCHITECTURE

AND IN PAINTING AND IN THE

BOOKS THEY PRINTED

IN the year 1471 there died a pious old man who had spent

seventy-two of his ninety-one years behind the sheltering walls

of the cloister of Mount St. Agnes near the good town of

Zwolle, the old Dutch Hanseatic city on the river Ysel. He

was known as Brother Thomas and because he had been born

in the village of Kempen, he was called Thomas a Kempis.

At the age of twelve he had been sent to Deventer, where

Gerhard Groot, a brilliant graduate of the universities of

Paris, Cologne and Prague, and famous as a wandering

preacher, had founded the Society of the Brothers of the

Common Life. The good brothers were humble laymen who

tried to live the simple life of the early Apostles of Christ

while working at their regular jobs as carpenters and house-

painters and stone masons. They maintained an excellent

school, that deserving boys of poor parents might be taught

the wisdom of the Fathers of the church. At this school,

little Thomas had learned how to conjugate Latin verbs and

how to copy manuscripts. Then he had taken his vows, had

put his little bundle of books upon his back, had wandered to

Zwolle and with a sigh of relief he had closed the door upon a

turbulent world which did not attract him.

Thomas lived in an age of turmoil, pestilence and sudden

death. In central Europe, in Bohemia, the devoted disciples of

Johannus Huss, the friend and follower of John Wycliffe, the

English reformer, were avenging with a terrible warfare the death

of their beloved leader who had been burned at the stake by order of

that same Council of Constance, which had promised him a safe-conduct

if he would come to Switzerland and explain his doctrines to the Pope,

the Emperor, twenty-three cardinals, thirty-three archbishops and bishops,

one hundred and fifty abbots and more than a hundred princes and

dukes who had gathered together to reform their church.

In the west, France had been fighting for a hundred years that

she might drive the English from her territories and just then was

saved from utter defeat by the fortunate appearance of Joan of Arc.

And no sooner had this struggle come to an end than France and Burgundy

were at each other's throats, engaged upon a struggle of life and death

for the supremacy of western Europe.

In the south, a Pope at Rome was calling the curses of

Heaven down upon a second Pope who resided at Avignon,

in southern France, and who retaliated in kind. In the

far east the Turks were destroying the last remnants of the

Roman Empire and the Russians had started upon a final

crusade to crush the power of their Tartar masters.

But of all this, Brother Thomas in his quiet cell never

heard. He had his manuscripts and his own thoughts and

he was contented. He poured his love of God into a little

volume. He called it the Imitation of Christ. It has since

been translated into more languages than any other book

save the Bible. It has been read by quite as many people

as ever studied the Holy Scriptures. It has influenced the

lives of countless millions. And it was the work of a man

whose highest ideal of existence was expressed in the simple

wish that ``he might quietly spend his days sitting in a little

corner with a little book.''

Good Brother Thomas represented the purest ideals of the

Middle Ages. Surrounded on all sides by the forces of the

victorious Renaissance, with the humanists loudly proclaiming

the coming of modern times, the Middle Ages gathered

strength for a last sally. Monasteries were reformed. Monks

gave up the habits of riches and vice. Simple, straightforward

and honest men, by the example of their blameless

and devout lives, tried to bring the people back to the ways of

righteousness and humble resignation to the will of God. But

all to no avail. The new world rushed past these good people.

The days of quiet meditation were gone. The great era of

``expression'' had begun.

Here and now let me say that I am sorry that I must use

so many ``big words.'' I wish that I could write this history in

words of one syllable. But it cannot be done. You cannot

write a text-book of geometry without reference to a hypotenuse

and triangles and a rectangular parallelopiped. You

simply have to learn what those words mean or do without

mathematics. In history (and in all life) you will eventually

be obliged to learn the meaning of many strange words of

Latin and Greek origin. Why not do it now?

When I say that the Renaissance was an era of expression,

I mean this: People were no longer contented to be the

audience and sit still while the emperor and the pope told

them what to do and what to think. They wanted to be actors

upon the stage of life. They insisted upon giving ``expression''

to their own individual ideas. If a man happened to be interested

in statesmanship like the Florentine historian, Niccolo

Macchiavelli, then he ``expressed'' himself in his books which

revealed his own idea of a successful state and an efficient

ruler. If on the other hand he had a liking for painting, he

``expressed'' his love for beautiful lines and lovely colours in

the pictures which have made the names of Giotto, Fra Angelico,

Rafael and a thousand others household words wherever

people have learned to care for those things which express

a true and lasting beauty.

If this love for colour and line happened to be combined with

an interest in mechanics and hydraulics, the result was a Leonardo

da Vinci, who painted his pictures, experimented with

his balloons and flying machines, drained the marshes of the

Lombardian plains and ``expressed'' his joy and interest in all

things between Heaven and Earth in prose, in painting, in

sculpture and in curiously conceived engines. When a man of

gigantic strength, like Michael Angelo, found the brush and

the palette too soft for his strong hands, he turned to sculpture

and to architecture, and hacked the most terrific creatures out

of heavy blocks of marble and drew the plans for the church

of St. Peter, the most concrete ``expression'' of the glories

of the triumphant church. And so it went.

All Italy (and very soon all of Europe) was filled with

men and women who lived that they might add their mite to

the sum total of our accumulated treasures of knowledge and

beauty and wisdom. In Germany, in the city of Mainz, Johann

zum Gansefleisch, commonly known as Johann Gutenberg, had

just invented a new method of copying books. He had studied

the old woodcuts and had perfected a system by which individual

letters of soft lead could be placed in such a way that

they formed words and whole pages. It is true, he soon lost

all his money in a law-suit which had to do with the original

invention of the press. He died in poverty, but the ``expression''

of his particular inventive genius lived after him.

Soon Aldus in Venice and Etienne in Paris and Plantin in

Antwerp and Froben in Basel were flooding the world with

carefully edited editions of the classics printed in the Gothic

letters of the Gutenberg Bible, or printed in the Italian type

which we use in this book, or printed in Greek letters, or in

Hebrew.

Then the whole world became the eager audience of those

who had something to say. The day when learning had been

a monopoly of a privileged few came to an end. And the

last excuse for ignorance was removed from this world, when

Elzevier of Haarlem began to print his cheap and popular

editions. Then Aristotle and Plato, Virgil and Horace and

Pliny, all the goodly company of the ancient authors and

philosophers and scientists, offered to become man's faithful

friend in exchange for a few paltry pennies. Humanism had

made all men free and equal before the printed word.

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES

BUT NOW THAT PEOPLE HAD BROKEN

THROUGH THE BONDS OF THEIR NARROW

MEDIAEVAL LIMITATIONS, THEY HAD TO

HAVE MORE ROOM FOR THEIR WANDERINGS.

THE EUROPEAN WORLD HAD

GROWN TOO SMALL FOR THEIR AMBITIONS.

IT WAS THE TIME OF THE GREAT

VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY

THE Crusades had been a lesson in the liberal art of travelling.

But very few people had ever ventured beyond the well-

known beaten track which led from Venice to Jaffe. In the

thirteenth century the Polo brothers, merchants of Venice,

had wandered across the great Mongolian desert and after

climbing mountains as high as the moon, they had found their

way to the court of the great Khan of Cathay, the mighty

emperor of China. The son of one of the Polos, by the name

of Marco, had written a book about their adventures, which

covered a period of more than twenty years. The astonished

world had gaped at his descriptions of the golden towers of

the strange island of Zipangu, which was his Italian way of

spelling Japan. Many people had wanted to go east, that

they might find this gold-land and grow rich. But the trip was

too far and too dangerous and so they stayed at home.

Of course, there was always the possibility of making the

voyage by sea. But the sea was very unpopular in the Middle

Ages and for many very good reasons. In the first place, ships

were very small. The vessels on which Magellan made his

famous trip around the world, which lasted many years, were

not as large as a modern ferryboat. They carried from twenty

to fifty men, who lived in dingy quarters (too low to allow any

of them to stand up straight) and the sailors were obliged to

eat poorly cooked food as the kitchen arrangements were very

bad and no fire could be made whenever the weather was the

least bit rough. The mediaeval world knew how to pickle herring

and how to dry fish. But there were no canned goods

and fresh vegetables were never seen on the bill of fare as

soon as the coast had been left behind. Water was carried in

small barrels. It soon became stale and then tasted of rotten

wood and iron rust and was full of slimy growing things. As

the people of the Middle Ages knew nothing about microbes

(Roger Bacon, the learned monk of the thirteenth century

seems to have suspected their existence, but he wisely kept

his discovery to himself) they often drank unclean water and

sometimes the whole crew died of typhoid fever. Indeed the

mortality on board the ships of the earliest navigators was

terrible. Of the two hundred sailors who in the year 1519 left

Seville to accompany Magellan on his famous voyage around

the world, only eighteen returned. As late as the seventeenth

century when there was a brisk trade between western Europe

and the Indies, a mortality of 40 percent was nothing unusual

for a trip from Amsterdam to Batavia and back. The greater

part of these victims died of scurvy, a disease which is caused

by lack of fresh vegetables and which affects the gums and

poisons the blood until the patient dies of sheer exhaustion.

Under those circumstances you will understand that the sea

did not attract the best elements of the population. Famous

discoverers like Magellan and Columbus and Vasco da Gama

travelled at the head of crews that were almost entirely composed

of ex-jailbirds, future murderers and pickpockets out

of a Job.

These navigators certainly deserve our admiration for the

courage and the pluck with which they accomplished their

hopeless tasks in the face of difficulties of which the people of

our own comfortable world can have no conception. Their

ships were leaky. The rigging was clumsy. Since the middle

of the thirteenth century they had possessed some sort of a

compass (which had come to Europe from China by way of

Arabia and the Crusades) but they had very bad and incorrect

maps. They set their course by God and by guess. If luck

was with them they returned after one or two or three years.

In the other case, their bleeched bones remained behind on

some lonely beach. But they were true pioneers. They gambled

with luck. Life to them was a glorious adventure. And

all the suffering, the thirst and the hunger and the pain were

forgotten when their eyes beheld the dim outlines of a new coast

or the placid waters of an ocean that had lain forgotten since

the beginning of time.

Again I wish that I could make this book a thousand pages

long. The subject of the early discoveries is so fascinating.

But history, to give you a true idea of past times, should be

like those etchings which Rembrandt used to make. It should

cast a vivid light on certain important causes, on those which

are best and greatest. All the rest should be left in the shadow

or should be indicated by a few lines. And in this chapter I

can only give you a short list of the most important discoveries.

Keep in mind that all during the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries the navigators were trying to accomplish just ONE

THING--they wanted to find a comfortable and safe road to the

empire of Cathay (China), to the island of Zipangu (Japan)

and to those mysterious islands, where grew the spices which

the mediaeval world had come to like since the days of the

Crusades, and which people needed in those days before the

introduction of cold storage, when meat and fish spoiled very

quickly and could only be eaten after a liberal sprinkling of

pepper or nutmeg.

The Venetians and the Genoese had been the great navigators

of the Mediterranean, but the honour for exploring the

coast of the Atlantic goes to the Portuguese. Spain and Portugal

were full of that patriotic energy which their age-old

struggle against the Moorish invaders had developed. Such

energy, once it exists, can easily be forced into new channels.

In the thirteenth century, King Alphonso III had conquered

the kingdom of Algarve in the southwestern corner of the

Spanish peninsula and had added it to his dominions. In the

next century, the Portuguese had turned the tables on the

Mohammedans, had crossed the straits of Gibraltar and had

taken possession of Ceuta, opposite the Arabic city of Ta'Rifa

(a word which in Arabic means ``inventory'' and which by way

of the Spanish language has come down to us as ``tariff,'') and

Tangiers, which became the capital of an African addition to

Algarve.

They were ready to begin their career as explorers.

In the year 1415, Prince Henry, known as Henry the

Navigator, the son of John I of Portugal and Philippa, the

daughter of John of Gaunt (about whom you can read in

Richard II, a play by William Shakespeare) began to make

preparations for the systematic exploration of northwestern

Africa. Before this, that hot and sandy coast had been visited

by the Phoenicians and by the Norsemen, who remembered it

as the home of the hairy ``wild man'' whom we have come to

know as the gorilla. One after another, Prince Henry

and his captains discovered the Canary Islands--re-discovered

the island of Madeira which a century before had been visited

by a Genoese ship, carefully charted the Azores which had

been vaguely known to both the Portuguese and the Spaniards,

and caught a glimpse of the mouth of the Senegal River on

the west coast of Africa, which they supposed to be the western

mouth of the Nile. At last, by the middle of the Fifteenth

Century, they saw Cape Verde, or the Green Cape, and the

Cape Verde Islands, which lie almost halfway between the

coast of Africa and Brazil.

But Henry did not restrict himself in his investigations to

the waters of the Ocean. He was Grand Master of the Order

of Christ. This was a Portuguese continuation of the crusading

order of the Templars which had been abolished by

Pope Clement V in the year 1312 at the request of King

Philip the Fair of France, who had improved the occasion by

burning his own Templars at the stake and stealing all their

possessions. Prince Henry used the revenues of the domains

of his religious order to equip several expeditions which explored

the hinterland of the Sahara and of the coast of Guinea.

But he was still very much a son of the Middle Ages and

spent a great deal of time and wasted a lot of money upon a

search for the mysterious ``Presser John,'' the mythical Christian

Priest who was said to be the Emperor of a vast empire

``situated somewhere in the east.'' The story of this strange

potentate had first been told in Europe in the middle of the

twelfth century. For three hundred years people had tried

to find ``Presser John'' and his descendants Henry took part

in the search. Thirty years after his death, the riddle was

solved.

In the year 1486 Bartholomew Diaz, trying to find the land

of Prester John by sea, had reached the southernmost point

of Africa. At first he called it the Storm Cape, on account of

the strong winds which had prevented him from continuing his

voyage toward the east, but the Lisbon pilots who understood

the importance of this discovery in their quest for the India

water route, changed the name into that of the Cape of Good

Hope.

One year later, Pedro de Covilham, provided with letters

of credit on the house of Medici, started upon a similar mission

by land. He crossed the Mediterranean and after leaving

Egypt, he travelled southward. He reached Aden, and from

there, travelling through the waters of the Persian Gulf which

few white men had seen since the days of Alexander the Great,

eighteen centuries before, he visited Goa and Calicut on the

coast of India where he got a great deal of news about the

island of the Moon (Madagascar) which was supposed to lie

halfway between Africa and India. Then he returned, paid

a secret visit to Mecca and to Medina, crossed the Red Sea

once more and in the year 1490 he discovered the realm of

Prester John, who was no one less than the Black Negus (or

King) of Abyssinia, whose ancestors had adopted Christianity

in the fourth century, seven hundred years before the Christian

missionaries had found their way to Scandinavia.

These many voyages had convinced the Portuguese geographers

and cartographers that while the voyage to the Indies

by an eastern sea-route was possible, it was by no means easy.

Then there arose a great debate. Some people wanted to continue

the explorations east of the Cape of Good Hope. Others

said, ``No, we must sail west across the Atlantic and then we

shall reach Cathay.''

Let us state right here that most intelligent people of that

day were firmly convinced that the earth was not as flat as a

pancake but was round. The Ptolemean system of the universe,

invented and duly described by Claudius Ptolemy, the great

Egyptian geographer, who had lived in the second century of

our era, which had served the simple needs of the men of the

Middle Ages, had long been discarded by the scientists of the

Renaissance. They had accepted the doctrine of the Polish

mathematician, Nicolaus Copernicus, whose studies had con-

vinced him that the earth was one of a number of round planets

which turned around the sun, a discovery which he did not venture

to publish for thirty-six years (it was printed in 1548,

the year of his death) from fear of the Holy Inquisition, a

Papal court which had been established in the thirteenth century

when the heresies of the Albigenses and the Waldenses

in France and in Italy (very mild heresies of devoutly pious

people who did not believe in private property and preferred

to live in Christ-like poverty) had for a moment threatened the

absolute power of the bishops of Rome. But the belief in the

roundness of the earth was common among the nautical experts

and, as I said, they were now debating the respective

advantages of the eastern and the western routes.

Among the advocates of the western route was a Genoese

mariner by the name of Cristoforo Colombo. He was the son

of a wool merchant. He seems to have been a student at the

University of Pavia where he specialised in mathematics and

geometry. Then he took up his father's trade but soon we find

him in Chios in the eastern Mediterranean travelling on business.

Thereafter we hear of voyages to England but whether

he went north in search of wool or as the captain of a ship we

do not know. In February of the year 1477, Colombo (if we

are to believe his own words) visited Iceland, but very likely

he only got as far as the Faroe Islands which are cold enough

in February to be mistaken for Iceland by any one. Here

Colombo met the descendants of those brave Norsemen who

in the tenth century had settled in Greenland and who had

visited America in the eleventh century, when Leif's vessel

had been blown to the coast of Vineland, or Labrador.

What had become of those far western colonies no one

knew. The American colony of Thorfinn Karlsefne, the husband

of the widow of Leif's brother Thorstein, founded in the

year 1003, had been discontinued three years later on account

of the hostility of the Esquimaux. As for Greenland, not a

word had been heard from the settlers since the year 1440.

Very likely the Greenlanders had all died of the Black Death.

which had just killed half the people of Norway. However

that might be, the tradition of a ``vast land in the distant west''

still survived among the people of the Faroe and Iceland, and

Colombo must have heard of it. He gathered further information

among the fishermen of the northern Scottish islands and

then went to Portugal where he married the daughter of one

of the captains who had served under Prince Henry the

Navigator.

From that moment on (the year 1478) he devoted himself

to the quest of the western route to the Indies. He sent his

plans for such a voyage to the courts of Portugal and Spain.

The Portuguese, who felt certain that they possessed a monop-

oly of the eastern route, would not listen to his plans. In

Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, whose

marriage in 1469 had made Spain into a single kingdom, were

busy driving the Moors from their last stronghold, Granada.

They had no money for risky expeditions. They needed every

peseta for their soldiers.

Few people were ever forced to fight as desperately for

their ideas as this brave Italian. But the story of Colombo

(or Colon or Columbus, as we call him,) is too well known to

bear repeating. The Moors surrendered Granada on the second

of January of the year 1492. In the month of April of the

same year, Columbus signed a contract with the King and

Queen of Spain. On Friday, the 3rd of August, he left Palos

with three little ships and a crew of 88 men, many of whom

were criminals who had been offered indemnity of punishment

if they joined the expedition. At two o'clock in the morning

of Friday, the 12th of October, Columbus discovered land. On

the fourth of January of the year 1493, Columbus waved farewell

to the 44 men of the little fortress of La Navidad (none

of whom was ever again seen alive) and returned homeward.

By the middle of February he reached the Azores where the

Portuguese threatened to throw him into gaol. On the fifteenth

of March, 1493, the admiral reached Palos and together with

his Indians (for he was convinced that he had discovered some

outlying islands of the Indies and called the natives red

Indians) he hastened to Barcelona to tell his faithful patrons

that he had been successful and that the road to the gold and

the silver of Cathay and Zipangu was at the disposal of their

most Catholic Majesties.

Alas, Columbus never knew the truth. Towards the end

of his life, on his fourth voyage, when he had touched the mainland

of South America, he may have suspected that all was

not well with his discovery. But he died in the firm belief

that there was no solid continent between Europe and Asia

and that he had found the direct route to China.

Meanwhile, the Portuguese, sticking to their eastern route,

had been more fortunate. In the year 1498, Vasco da Gama

had been able to reach the coast of Malabar and return safely

to Lisbon with a cargo of spice. In the year 1502 he had

repeated the visit. But along the western route, the work of

exploration had been most disappointing. In 1497 and 1498

John and Sebastian Cabot had tried to find a passage to Japan

but they had seen nothing but the snowbound coasts and the

rocks of Newfoundland, which had first been sighted by the

Northmen, five centuries before. Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine

who became the Pilot Major of Spain, and who gave his

name to our continent, had explored the coast of Brazil, but

had found not a trace of the Indies.

In the year 1513, seven years after the death of Columbus,

the truth at last began to dawn upon the geographers of

Europe. Vasco Nunez de Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of

Panama, had climbed the famous peak in Darien, and had

looked down upon a vast expanse of water which seemed to

suggest the existence of another ocean.

Finally in the year 1519 a fleet of five small Spanish ships

under command of the Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand de

Magellan, sailed westward (and not eastward since that route,

was absolutely in the hands of the Portuguese who allowed no

competition) in search of the Spice Islands. Magellan crossed

the Atlantic between Africa and Brazil and sailed southward.

He reached a narrow channel between the southernmost point

of Patagonia, the ``land of the people with the big feet,'' and

the Fire Island (so named on account of a fire, the only sign of

the existence of natives, which the sailors watched one night).

For almost five weeks the ships of Magellan were at the mercy

of the terrible storms and blizzards which swept through the

straits. A mutiny broke out among the sailors. Magellan

suppressed it with terrible severity and sent two of his men

on shore where they were left to repent of their sins at leisure.

At last the storms quieted down, the channel broadened, and

Magellan entered a new ocean. Its waves were quiet and

placid. He called it the Peaceful Sea, the Mare Pacifico.

Then he continued in a western direction. He sailed for

ninety-eight days without seeing land. His people almost

perished from hunger and thirst and ate the rats that infested

the ships, and when these were all gone they chewed pieces of

sail to still their gnawing hunger.

In March of the year 1521 they saw land. Magellan called

it the land of the Ladrones (which means robbers) because the

natives stole everything they could lay hands on. Then further

westward to the Spice Islands!

Again land was sighted. A group of lonely islands. Magellan

called them the Philippines, after Philip, the son of his

master Charles V, the Philip II of unpleasant historical memory.

At first Magellan was well received, but when he used

the guns of his ships to make Christian converts he was killed

by the aborigines, together with a number of his captains and

sailors. The survivors burned one of the three remaining ships

and continued their voyage. They found the Moluccas, the

famous Spice Islands; they sighted Borneo and reached Tidor.

There, one of the two ships, too leaky to be of further use,

remained behind with her crew. The ``Vittoria,'' under Sebastian

del Cano, crossed the Indian Ocean, missed seeing the

northern coast of Australia (which was not discovered until

the first half of the seventeenth century when ships of the

Dutch East India Company explored this flat and inhospitable

land), and after great hardships reached Spain.

This was the most notable of all voyages. It had taken

three years. It had been accomplished at a great cost both of

men and money. But it had established the fact that the earth

was round and that the new lands discovered by Columbus were

not a part of the Indies but a separate continent. From that

time on, Spain and Portugal devoted all their energies to the

development of their Indian and American trade. To prevent

an armed conflict between the rivals, Pope Alexander VI (the

only avowed heathen who was ever elected to this most holy

office) had obligingly divided the world into two equal parts

by a line of demarcation which followed the 50th degree of

longitude west of Greenwich, the so-called division of Tordesillas

of 1494. The Portuguese were to establish their colonies

to the east of this line, the Spaniards were to have theirs

to the west. This accounts for the fact that the entire American

continent with the exception of Brazil became Spanish and

that all of the Indies and most of Africa became Portuguese

until the English and the Dutch colonists (who had no respect

for Papal decisions) took these possessions away in the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries.

When news of the discovery of Columbus reached the

Rialto of Venice, the Wall street of the Middle Ages, there

was a terrible panic. Stocks and bonds went down 40 and 50

percent. After a short while, when it appeared that Columbus

had failed to find the road to Cathay, the Venetian merchants

recovered from their fright. But the voyages of da Gama and

Magellan proved the practical possibilities of an eastern water-

route to the Indies. Then the rulers of Genoa and Venice,

the two great commercial centres of the Middle Ages and the

Renaissance, began to be sorry that they had refused to listen

to Columbus. But it was too late. Their Mediterranean became

an inland sea. The overland trade to the Indies and

China dwindled to insignificant proportions. The old days

of Italian glory were gone. The Atlantic became the new

centre of commerce and therefore the centre of civilisation.

It has remained so ever since.

See how strangely civilisation has progressed since those

early days, fifty centuries before, when the inhabitants of the

Valley of the Nile began to keep a written record of history,

From the river Nile, it went to Mesopotamia, the land between

the rivers. Then came the turn of Crete and Greece and

Rome. An inland sea became the centre of trade and the cities

along the Mediterranean were the home of art and science and

philosophy and learning. In the sixteenth century it moved

westward once more and made the countries that border upon

the Atlantic become the masters of the earth.

There are those who say that the world war and the suicide

of the great European nations has greatly diminished the

importance of the Atlantic Ocean. They expect to see civilisation

cross the American continent and find a new home in the

Pacific. But I doubt this.

The westward trip was accompanied by a steady increase in

the size of ships and a broadening of the knowledge of the navigators.

The flat-bottomed vessels of the Nile and the Euphrates

were replaced by the sailing vessels of the Phoenicians, the

AEgeans, the Greeks, the Carthaginians and the Romans.

These in turn were discarded for the square rigged vessels of

the Portuguese and the Spaniards. And the latter were driven

from the ocean by the full-rigged craft of the English and the

Dutch.

At present, however, civilisation no longer depends upon

ships. Aircraft has taken and will continue to take the place

of the sailing vessel and the steamer. The next centre of

civilisation will depend upon the development of aircraft and

water power. And the sea once more shall be the undisturbed

home of the little fishes, who once upon a time shared their deep

residence with the earliest ancestors of the human race.

BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS

CONCERNING BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS

THE discoveries of the Portuguese and the Spaniards had

brought the Christians of western Europe into close contact

with the people of India and of China. They knew of course

that Christianity was not the only religion on this earth. There

were the Mohammedans and the heathenish tribes of northern

Africa who worshipped sticks and stones and dead trees. But

in India and in China the Christian conquerors found new

millions who had never heard of Christ and who did not want

to hear of Him, because they thought their own religion, which

was thousands of years old, much better than that of the West.

As this is a story of mankind and not an exclusive history of

the people of Europe and our western hemisphere, you ought

to know something of two men whose teaching and whose

example continue to influence the actions and the thoughts

of the majority of our fellow-travellers on this earth.

In India, Buddha was recognised as the great religious

teacher. His history is an interesting one. He was born in

the Sixth Century before the birth of Christ, within sight of the

mighty Himalaya Mountains, where four hundred years before

Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), the first of the great leaders of

the Aryan race (the name which the Eastern branch of the

Indo-European race had given to itself), had taught his people

to regard life as a continuous struggle between Ahriman,

and Ormuzd, the Gods of Evil and Good. Buddha's

father was Suddhodana, a mighty chief among the tribe of the

Sakiyas. His mother, Maha Maya, was the daughter of a

neighbouring king. She had been married when she was a very

young girl. But many moons had passed beyond the distant

ridge of hills and still her husband was without an heir who

should rule his lands after him. At last, when she was fifty

years old, her day came and she went forth that she might be

among her own people when her baby should come into this

world.

It was a long trip to the land of the Koliyans, where Maha

Maya had spent her earliest years. One night she was resting

among the cool trees of the garden of Lumbini. There her son

was born. He was given the name of Siddhartha, but we know

him as Buddha, which means the Enlightened One.

In due time, Siddhartha grew up to be a handsome young

prince and when he was nineteen years old, he was married to

his cousin Yasodhara. During the next ten years he lived

far away from all pain and all suffering, behind the protecting

walls of the royal palace, awaiting the day when he should

succeed his father as King of the Sakiyas.

But it happened that when he was thirty years old, he drove

outside of the palace gates and saw a man who was old and

worn out with labour and whose weak limbs could hardly carry

the burden of life. Siddhartha pointed him out to his coachman,

Channa, but Channa answered that there were lots of

poor people in this world and that one more or less did not

matter. The young prince was very sad but he did not say

anything and went back to live with his wife and his father

and his mother and tried to be happy. A little while later he

left the palace a second time. His carriage met a man who

suffered from a terrible disease. Siddhartha asked Channa

what had been the cause of this man's suffering, but the coachman

answered that there were many sick people in this world

and that such things could not be helped and did not matter

very much. The young prince was very sad when he heard this

but again he returned to his people.

A few weeks passed. One evening Siddhartha ordered his

carriage in order to go to the river and bathe. Suddenly his

horses were frightened by the sight of a dead man whose rotting

body lay sprawling in the ditch beside the road. The young

prince, who had never been allowed to see such things, was

frightened, but Channa told him not to mind such trifles. The

world was full of dead people. It was the rule of life that all

things must come to an end. Nothing was eternal. The grave

awaited us all and there was no escape.

That evening, when Siddhartha returned to his home, he

was received with music. While he was away his wife had

given birth to a son. The people were delighted because now

they knew that there was an heir to the throne and they

celebrated the event by the beating of many drums. Siddhartha,

however, did not share their joy. The curtain of life had been

lifted and he had learned the horror of man's existence. The

sight of death and suffering followed him like a terrible dream.

That night the moon was shining brightly. Siddhartha

woke up and began to think of many things. Never again

could he be happy until he should have found a solution to the

riddle of existence. He decided to find it far away from all

those whom he loved. Softly he went into the room where

Yasodhara was sleeping with her baby. Then he called for

his faithful Channa and told him to follow.

Together the two men went into the darkness of the night,

one to find rest for his soul, the other to be a faithful servant

unto a beloved master.

The people of India among whom Siddhartha wandered for

many years were just then in a state of change. Their ancestors,

the native Indians, had been conquered without great difficulty

by the war-like Aryans (our distant cousins) and thereafter

the Aryans had been the rulers and masters of tens of

millions of docile little brown men. To maintain themselves in

the seat of the mighty, they had divided the population into

different classes and gradually a system of ``caste'' of the most

rigid sort had been enforced upon the natives. The descendants

of the Indo-European conquerors belonged to the highest

``caste,'' the class of warriors and nobles. Next came the caste

of the priests. Below these followed the peasants and the

business men. The ancient natives, however, who were called

Pariahs, formed a class of despised and miserable slaves and

never could hope to be anything else.

Even the religion of the people was a matter of caste. The

old Indo-Europeans, during their thousands of years of

wandering, had met with many strange adventures. These had

been collected in a book called the Veda. The language of

this book was called Sanskrit, and it was closely related to the

different languages of the European continent, to Greek and

Latin and Russian and German and two-score others. The

three highest castes were allowed to read these holy scriptures.

The Pariah, however, the despised member of the lowest caste,

was not permitted to know its contents. Woe to the man of

noble or priestly caste who should teach a Pariah to study the

sacred volume!

The majority of the Indian people, therefore, lived in

misery. Since this planet offered them very little joy, salvation

from suffering must be found elsewhere. They tried to

derive a little consolation from meditation upon the bliss of

their future existence.

Brahma, the all-creator who was regarded by the Indian

people as the supreme ruler of life and death, was worshipped

as the highest ideal of perfection. To become like Brahma, to

lose all desires for riches and power, was recognised as the most

exalted purpose of existence. Holy thoughts were regarded

as more important than holy deeds, and many people went

into the desert and lived upon the leaves of trees and starved

their bodies that they might feed their souls with the glorious

contemplation of the splendours of Brahma, the Wise, the

Good and the Merciful.

Siddhartha, who had often observed these solitary wanderers

who were seeking the truth far away from the turmoil

of the cities and the villages, decided to follow their example.

He cut his hair. He took his pearls and his rubies and sent

them back to his family with a message of farewell, which the

ever faithful Channa carried. Without a single follower, the

young prince then moved into the wilderness.

Soon the fame of his holy conduct spread among the mountains.

Five young men came to him and asked that they might

be allowed to listen to his words of wisdom. He agreed to be

their master if they would follow him. They consented, and

he took them into the hills and for six years he taught them

all he knew amidst the lonely peaks of the Vindhya Mountains.

But at the end of this period of study, he felt that he was still

far from perfection. The world that he had left continued to

tempt him. He now asked that his pupils leave him and then

he fasted for forty-nine days and nights, sitting upon the roots

of an old tree. At last he received his reward. In the dusk of

the fiftieth evening, Brahma revealed himself to his faithful

servant. From that moment on, Siddhartha was called Buddha

and he was revered as the Enlightened One who had come to

save men from their unhappy mortal fate.

The last forty-five years of his life, Buddha spent within

the valley of the Ganges River, teaching his simple lesson of

submission and meekness unto all men. In the year 488 before

our era, he died, full of years and beloved by millions of people.

He had not preached his doctrines for the benefit of a single

class. Even the lowest Pariah might call himself his disciple.

This, however, did not please the nobles and the priests and

the merchants who did their best to destroy a creed which recognised

the equality of all living creatures and offered men the

hope of a second life (a reincarnation) under happier circumstances.

As soon as they could, they encouraged the people of

India to return to the ancient doctrines of the Brahmin creed

with its fasting and its tortures of the sinful body. But

Buddhism could not be destroyed. Slowly the disciples of the

Enlightened One wandered across the valleys of the Himalayas,

and moved into China. They crossed the Yellow Sea

and preached the wisdom of their master unto the people of

Japan, and they faithfully obeyed the will of their great master,

who had forbidden them to use force. To-day more people

recognise Buddha as their teacher than ever before and their

number surpasses that of the combined followers of Christ and Mohammed.

As for Confucius, the wise old man of the Chinese, his

story is a simple one. He was born in the year 550 B.C. He

led a quiet, dignified and uneventful life at a time when China

was without a strong central government and when the Chinese

people were at the mercy of bandits and robber-barons who

went from city to city, pillaging and stealing and murdering

and turning the busy plains of northern and central China into

a wilderness of starving people.

Confucius, who loved his people, tried to save them. He

did not have much faith in the use of violence. He was a very

peaceful person. He did not think that he could make people

over by giving them a lot of new laws. He knew that the only

possible salvation would come from a change of heart, and he

set out upon the seemingly hopeless task of changing the character

of his millions of fellow men who inhabited the wide plains

of eastern Asia. The Chinese had never been much interested

in religion as we understand that word. They believed in

devils and spooks as most primitive people do. But they had

no prophets and recognised no ``revealed truth.'' Confucius

is almost the only one among the great moral leaders who did

not see visions, who did not proclaim himself as the messenger

of a divine power; who did not, at some time or another, claim

that he was inspired by voices from above.

He was just a very sensible and kindly man, rather given

to lonely wanderings and melancholy tunes upon his faithful

flute. He asked for no recognition. He did not demand that

any one should follow him or worship him. He reminds us

of the ancient Greek philosophers, especially those of the Stoic

School, men who believed in right living and righteous thinking

without the hope of a reward but simply for the peace of

the soul that comes with a good conscience.

Confucius was a very tolerant man. He went out of his

way to visit Lao-Tse, the other great Chinese leader and the

founder of a philosophic system called ``Taoism,'' which was

merely an early Chinese version of the Golden Rule.

Confucius bore no hatred to any one. He taught the virtue

of supreme self-possession. A person of real worth, according

to the teaching of Confucius, did not allow himself to be

ruffled by anger and suffered whatever fate brought him with

the resignation of those sages who understand that everything

which happens, in one way or another, is meant for the best.

At first he had only a few students. Gradually the number

increased. Before his death, in the year 478 B.C., several of the

kings and the princes of China confessed themselves his disciples.

When Christ was born in Bethlehem, the philosophy of

Confucius had already become a part of the mental make-up

of most Chinamen. It has continued to influence their lives

ever since. Not however in its pure, original form. Most religions

change as time goes on. Christ preached humility and

meekness and absence from worldly ambitions, but fifteen

centuries after Golgotha, the head of the Christian church was

spending millions upon the erection of a building that bore

little relation to the lonely stable of Bethlehem.

Lao-Tse taught the Golden Rule, and in less than three

centuries the ignorant masses had made him into a real and

very cruel God and had buried his wise commandments under

a rubbish-heap of superstition which made the lives of the average

Chinese one long series of frights and fears and horrors.

Confucius had shown his students the beauties of honouring

their Father and their Mother. They soon began to be more

interested in the memory of their departed parents than in the

happiness of their children and their grandchildren. Deliberately

they turned their backs upon the future and tried to

peer into the vast darkness of the past. The worship of the

ancestors became a positive religious system. Rather than

disturb a cemetery situated upon the sunny and fertile side of

a mountain, they would plant their rice and wheat upon the

barren rocks of the other slope where nothing could possibly

grow. And they preferred hunger and famine to the desecration

of the ancestral grave.

At the same time the wise words of Confucius never quite

lost their hold upon the increasing millions of eastern Asia.

Confucianism, with its profound sayings and shrewd observations,

added a touch of common-sense philosophy to the soul of

every Chinaman and influenced his entire life, whether he was

a simple laundry man in a steaming basement or the ruler of vast

provinces who dwelt behind the high walls of a secluded palace.

In the sixteenth century the enthusiastic but rather uncivilised

Christians of the western world came face to face with

the older creeds of the East. The early Spaniards and Portuguese

looked upon the peaceful statues of Buddha and contemplated

the venerable pictures of Confucius and did not in

the least know what to make of those worthy prophets with

their far-away smile. They came to the easy conclusion that

these strange divinities were just plain devils who represented

something idolatrous and heretical and did not deserve the

respect of the true sons of the Church. Whenever the spirit

of Buddha or Confucius seemed to interfere with the trade in

spices and silks, the Europeans attacked the ``evil influence''

with bullets and grape-shot. That system had certain very

definite disadvantages. It has left us an unpleasant heritage

of ill-will which promises little good for the immediate future.

THE REFORMATION

THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST

COMPARED TO A GIGANTIC PENDULUM

WHICH FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD AND

BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE

AND THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY

ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE

WERE FOLLOWED BY THE ARTISTIC AND

LITERARY INDIFFERENCE AND THE RELIGIOUS

ENTHUSIASM OF THE REFORMATION

OF course you have heard of the Reformation. You think

of a small but courageous group of pilgrims who crossed the

ocean to have ``freedom of religious worship.'' Vaguely in the

course of time (and more especially in our Protestant countries)

the Reformation has come to stand for the idea of

``liberty of thought.'' Martin Luther is represented as the

leader of the vanguard of progress. But when history is

something more than a series of flattering speeches addressed

to our own glorious ancestors, when to use the words of the

German historian Ranke, we try to discover what ``actually

happened,'' then much of the past is seen in a very different

light.

Few things in human life are either entirely good or entirely

bad. Few things are either black or white. It is the duty of

the honest chronicler to give a true account of all the good and

bad sides of every historical event. It is very difficult to do

this because we all have our personal likes and dislikes. But

we ought to try and be as fair as we can be, and must not allow

our prejudices to influence us too much.

Take my own case as an example. I grew up in the very

Protestant centre of a very Protestant country. I never saw

any Catholics until I was about twelve years old. Then I felt

very uncomfortable when I met them. I was a little bit afraid.

I knew the story of the many thousand people who had been

burned and hanged and quartered by the Spanish Inquisition

when the Duke of Alba tried to cure the Dutch people of their

Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies. All that was very real

to me. It seemed to have happened only the day before. It

might occur again. There might be another Saint Bartholomew's

night, and poor little me would be slaughtered in my

nightie and my body would be thrown out of the window, as

had happened to the noble Admiral de Coligny.

Much later I went to live for a number of years in a Catholic

country. I found the people much pleasanter and much

more tolerant and quite as intelligent as my former countrymen.

To my great surprise, I began to discover that there

was a Catholic side to the Reformation, quite as much as a

Protestant.

Of course the good people of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries, who actually lived through the Reformation, did

not see things that way. They were always right and their

enemy was always wrong. It was a question of hang or be

hanged, and both sides preferred to do the hanging. Which

was no more than human and for which they deserve no blame.

When we look at the world as it appeared in the year 1500,

an easy date to remember, and the year in which the Emperor

Charles V was born, this is what we see. The feudal disorder

of the Middle Ages has given way before the order of a number

of highly centralised kingdoms. The most powerful of

all sovereigns is the great Charles, then a baby in a cradle.

He is the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella and of Maxi-

milian of Habsburg, the last of the mediaeval knights, and of

his wife Mary, the daughter of Charles the Bold, the ambitious

Burgundian duke who had made successful war upon France

but had been killed by the independent Swiss peasants. The

child Charles, therefore, has fallen heir to the greater part of

the map, to all the lands of his parents, grandparents, uncles,

cousins and aunts in Germany, in Austria, in Holland, in

Belgium, in Italy, and in Spain, together with all their colonies

in Asia, Africa and America. By a strange irony of fate, he

has been born in Ghent, in that same castle of the counts of

Flanders, which the Germans used as a prison during their

recent occupation of Belgium, and although a Spanish king

and a German emperor, he receives the training of a Fleming.

As his father is dead (poisoned, so people say, but this is

never proved), and his mother has lost her mind (she is travelling

through her domains with the coffin containing the body

of her departed husband), the child is left to the strict

discipline of his Aunt Margaret. Forced to rule Germans and

Italians and Spaniards and a hundred strange races, Charles

grows up a Fleming, a faithful son of the Catholic Church,

but quite averse to religious intolerance. He is rather lazy,

both as a boy and as a man. But fate condemns him to rule

the world when the world is in a turmoil of religious fervour.

Forever he is speeding from Madrid to Innsbruck and from

Bruges to Vienna. He loves peace and quiet and he is always

at war. At the age of fifty-five, we see him turn his back upon

the human race in utter disgust at so much hate and so much

stupidity. Three years later he dies, a very tired and disappointed

man.

So much for Charles the Emperor. How about the Church,

the second great power in the world? The Church has changed

greatly since the early days of the Middle Ages, when it started

out to conquer the heathen and show them the advantages of

a pious and righteous life. In the first place, the Church has

grown too rich. The Pope is no longer the shepherd of a flock

of humble Christians. He lives in a vast palace and surrounds

himself with artists and musicians and famous literary men.

His churches and chapels are covered with new pictures in

which the saints look more like Greek Gods than is strictly

necessary. He divides his time unevenly between affairs of

state and art. The affairs of state take ten percent of his time.

The other ninety percent goes to an active interest in Roman

statues, recently discovered Greek vases, plans for a new summer

home, the rehearsal of a new play. The Archbishops and

the Cardinals follow the example of their Pope. The Bishops

try to imitate the Archbishops. The village priests, however,

have remained faithful to their duties. They keep themselves

aloof from the wicked world and the heathenish love of beauty

and pleasure. They stay away from the monasteries where

the monks seem to have forgotten their ancient vows of simplicity

and poverty and live as happily as they dare without

causing too much of a public scandal.

Finally, there are the common people. They are much

better off than they have ever been before. They are more

prosperous, they live in better houses, their children go to better

schools, their cities are more beautiful than before, their

firearms have made them the equal of their old enemies, the

robber-barons, who for centuries have levied such heavy taxes

upon their trade. So much for the chief actors in the

Reformation.

Now let us see what the Renaissance has done to Europe,

and then you will understand how the revival of learning and

art was bound to be followed by a revival of religious interests.

The Renaissance began in Italy. From there it spread

to France. It was not quite successful in Spain, where

five hundred years of warfare with the Moors had made the

people very narrow minded and very fanatical in all religious

matters. The circle had grown wider and wider, but once the

Alps had been crossed, the Renaissance had suffered a change.

The people of northern Europe, living in a very different

climate, had an outlook upon life which contrasted strangely

with that of their southern neighbours. The Italians lived out

in the open, under a sunny sky. It was easy for them to laugh

and to sing and to be happy. The Germans, the Dutch, the

English, the Swedes, spent most of their time indoors, listening

to the rain beating on the closed windows of their comfortable

little houses. They did not laugh quite so much. They

took everything more seriously. They were forever conscious

of their immortal souls and they did not like to be funny about

matters which they considered holy and sacred. The ``humanistic''

part of the Renaissance, the books, the studies of ancient

authors, the grammar and the text-books, interested them

greatly. But the general return to the old pagan civilisation

of Greece and Rome, which was one of the chief results of the

Renaissance in Italy, filled their hearts with horror.

But the Papacy and the College of Cardinals was almost

entirely composed of Italians and they had turned the Church

into a pleasant club where people discussed art and music and

the theatre, but rarely mentioned religion. Hence the split

between the serious north and the more civilised but easy-going

and indifferent south was growing wider and wider all the

time and nobody seemed to be aware of the danger that threatened

the Church.

There were a few minor reasons which will explain why the

Reformation took place in Germany rather than in Sweden

or England. The Germans bore an ancient grudge against

Rome. The endless quarrels between Emperor and Pope had

caused much mutual bitterness. In the other European countries

where the government rested in the hands of a strong

king, the ruler had often been able to protect his subjects

against the greed of the priests. In Germany, where a shadowy

emperor ruled a turbulent crowd of little princelings, the good

burghers were more directly at the mercy of their bishops and

prelates. These dignitaries were trying to collect large sums

of money for the benefit of those enormous churches which

were a hobby of the Popes of the Renaissance. The Germans

felt that they were being mulcted and quite naturally they did

not like it.

And then there is the rarely mentioned fact that Germany

was the home of the printing press. In northern Europe books

were cheap and the Bible was no longer a mysterious manu-

script owned and explained by the priest. It was a household

book of many families where Latin was understood by the

father and by the children. Whole families began to read it,

which was against the law of the Church. They discovered that

the priests were telling them many things which, according to

the original text of the Holy Scriptures, were somewhat different.

This caused doubt. People began to ask questions. And

questions, when they cannot be answered, often cause a great

deal of trouble.

The attack began when the humanists of the North opened

fire upon the monks. In their heart of hearts they still had

too much respect and reverence for the Pope to direct their

sallies against his Most Holy Person. But the lazy, ignorant

monks, living behind the sheltering walls of their rich monasteries,

offered rare sport.

The leader in this warfare, curiously enough, was a very

faithful son of the church Gerard Gerardzoon, or Desiderius

Erasmus, as he is usually called, was a poor boy, born in

Rotterdam in Holland, and educated at the same Latin school

of Deventer from which Thomas a Kempis had graduated.

He had become a priest and for a time he had lived in a monastery.

He had travelled a great deal and knew whereof he wrote,

When he began his career as a public pamphleteer (he would

have been called an editorial writer in our day) the world was

greatly amused at an anonymous series of letters which had

just appeared under the title of ``Letters of Obscure Men.''

In these letters, the general stupidity and arrogance of the

monks of the late Middle Ages was exposed in a strange

German-Latin doggerel which reminds one of our modern

limericks. Erasmus himself was a very learned and serious

scholar, who knew both Latin and Greek and gave us the first

reliable version of the New Testament, which he translated

into Latin together with a corrected edition of the original

Greek text. But he believed with Sallust, the Roman poet,

that nothing prevents us from ``stating the truth with a smile

upon our lips.''

In the year 1500, while visiting Sir Thomas More in Eng-

land, he took a few weeks off and wrote a funny little book,

called the ``Praise of Folly,'' in which he attacked the monks

and their credulous followers with that most dangerous of all

weapons, humor. The booklet was the best seller of the sixteenth

century. It was translated into almost every language

and it made people pay attention to those other books of

Erasmus in which he advocated reform of the many abuses of

the church and appealed to his fellow humanists to help him

in his task of bringing about a great rebirth of the Christian

faith.

But nothing came of these excellent plans. Erasmus was

too reasonable and too tolerant to please most of the enemies

of the church. They were waiting for a leader of a more

robust nature.

He came, and his name was Martin Luther.

Luther was a North-German peasant with a first-class

brain and possessed of great personal courage. He was a

university man, a master of arts of the University of Erfurt;

afterwards he joined a Dominican monastery. Then he became

a college professor at the theological school of Wittenberg

and began to explain the scriptures to the indifferent ploughboys

of his Saxon home. He had a lot of spare time and this he used

to study the original texts of the Old and New Testaments.

Soon he began to see the great difference which existed between

the words of Christ and those that were preached by the Popes and the Bishops.

In the year 1511, he visited Rome on official business.

Alexander VI, of the family of Borgia, who had enriched himself

for the benefit of his son and daughter, was dead. But his

successor, Julius II, a man of irreproachable personal character,

was spending most of his time fighting and building and

did not impress this serious minded German theologian with

his piety. Luther returned to Wittenberg a much disappointed

man. But worse was to follow.

The gigantic church of St. Peter which Pope Julius had

wished upon his innocent successors, although only half begun,

was already in need of repair. Alexander VI had spent every

penny of the Papal treasury. Leo X, who succeeded Julius

in the year 1513, was on the verge of bankruptcy. He reverted

to an old method of raising ready cash. He began to sell

``indulgences.'' An indulgence was a piece of parchment which

in return for a certain sum of money, promised a sinner a decrease

of the time which he would have to spend in purgatory.

It was a perfectly correct thing according to the creed of the

late Middle Ages. Since the church had the power to forgive

the sins of those who truly repented before they died, the

church also had the right to shorten, through its intercession

with the Saints, the time during which the soul must be punfied

in the shadowy realms of Purgatory.

It was unfortunate that these Indulgences must be sold for

money. But they offered an easy form of revenue and besides,

those who were too poor to pay, received theirs for nothing.

Now it happened in the year 1517 that the exclusive territory

for the sale of indulgences in Saxony was given to a

Dominican monk by the name of Johan Tetzel. Brother

Johan was a hustling salesman. To tell the truth he was a

little too eager. His business methods outraged the pious

people of the little duchy. And Luther, who was an honest

fellow, got so angry that he did a rash thing. On the 31st of

October of the year 1517, he went to the court church and upon

the doors thereof he posted a sheet of paper with ninety-five

statements (or theses), attacking the sale of indulgences.

These statements had been written in Latin. Luther had no

intention of starting a riot. He was not a revolutionist. He

objected to the institution of the Indulgences and he wanted his

fellow professors to know what he thought about them. But

this was still a private affair of the clerical and professorial

world and there was no appeal to the prejudices of the community

of laymen.

Unfortunately, at that moment when the whole world had

begun to take an interest in the religious affairs of the day

it was utterly impossible to discuss anything, without at once

creating a serious mental disturbance. In less than two

months, all Europe was discussing the ninety-five theses of

the Saxon monk. Every one must take sides. Every obscure

little theologian must print his own opinion. The papal

authorities began to be alarmed. They ordered the Wittenberg

professor to proceed to Rome and give an account of his action.

Luther wisely remembered what had happened to Huss. He

stayed in Germany and he was punished with excommunication.

Luther burned the papal bull in the presence of an

admiring multitude and from that moment, peace between himself

and the Pope was no longer possible.

Without any desire on his part, Luther had become the

leader of a vast army of discontented Christians. German

patriots like Ulrich von Hutten, rushed to his defence. The

students of Wittenberg and Erfurt and Leipzig offered to

defend him should the authorities try to imprison him. The

Elector of Saxony reassured the eager young men. No harm

would befall Luther as long as he stayed on Saxon ground.

All this happened in the year 1520. Charles V was twenty

years old and as the ruler of half the world, was forced to

remain on pleasant terms with the Pope. He sent out calls

for a Diet or general assembly in the good city of Worms on

the Rhine and commanded Luther to be present and give an

account of his extraordinary behaviour. Luther, who now

was the national hero of the Germans, went. He refused to

take back a single word of what he had ever written or said.

His conscience was controlled only by the word of God. He

would live and die for his conscience

The Diet of Worms, after due deliberation, declared

Luther an outlaw before God and man, and forbade all Germans

to give him shelter or food or drink, or to read a single

word of the books which the dastardly heretic had written.

But the great reformer was in no danger. By the majority

of the Germans of the north the edict was denounced as a most

unjust and outrageous document. For greater safety, Luther

was hidden in the Wartburg, a castle belonging to the Elector

of Saxony, and there he defied all papal authority by translating

the entire Bible into the German language, that all the

people might read and know the word of God for themselves.

By this time, the Reformation was no longer a spiritual

and religious affair. Those who hated the beauty of the modern

church building used this period of unrest to attack and

destroy what they did not like because they did not understand

it. Impoverished knights tried to make up for past losses by

grabbing the territory which belonged to the monasteries.

Discontented princes made use of the absence of the Emperor

to increase their own power. The starving peasants, following

the leadership of half-crazy agitators, made the best of

the opportunity and attacked the castles of their masters and

plundered and murdered and burned with the zeal of the old

Crusaders.

A veritable reign of disorder broke loose throughout the

Empire. Some princes became Protestants (as the ``protesting''

adherents of Luther were called) and persecuted their

Catholic subjects. Others remained Catholic and hanged their

Protestant subjects. The Diet of Speyer of the year 1526

tried to settle this difficult question of allegiance by ordering

that ``the subjects should all be of the same religious denomination

as their princes.'' This turned Germany into a checkerboard

of a thousand hostile little duchies and principalities and

created a situation which prevented the normal political

growth for hundreds of years.

In February of the year 1546 Luther died and was put

to rest in the same church where twenty-nine years before he

had proclaimed his famous objections to the sale of Indulgences.

In less than thirty years, the indifferent, joking and

laughing world of the Renaissance had been transformed into

the arguing, quarrelling, back-biting, debating-society of the

Reformation. The universal spiritual empire of the Popes

came to a sudden end and the whole Western Europe was

turned into a battle-field, where Protestants and Catholics

killed each other for the greater glory of certain theological

doctrines which are as incomprehensible to the present generation

as the mysterious inscriptions of the ancient Etruscans.

RELIGIOUS WARFARE

THE AGE OF THE GREAT RELIGIOUS

CONTROVERSIES

THE sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the age of

religious controversy.

If you will notice you will find that almost everybody

around you is forever ``talking economics'' and discussing

wages and hours of labor and strikes in their relation to the

life of the community, for that is the main topic of interest

of our own time.

The poor little children of the year 1600 or 1650 fared

worse. They never heard anything but ``religion.'' Their

heads were filled with predestination,'' transubstantition,''

``free will,'' and a hundred other queer words, expressing

obscure points of ``the true faith,'' whether Catholic or

Protestant. According to the desire of their parents they were

baptised Catholics or Lutherans or Calvinists or Zwinglians

or Anabaptists. They learned their theology from the Augsburg

catechism, composed by Luther, or from the ``institutes

of Christianity,'' written by Calvin, or they mumbled the

Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith which were printed in the English

Book of Common Prayer, and they were told that these

alone represented the ``True Faith.''

They heard of the wholesale theft of church property

perpetrated by King Henry VIII, the much-married monarch of

England, who made himself the supreme head of the English

church, and assumed the old papal rights of appointing bishops

and priests. They had a nightmare whenever some one

mentioned the Holy Inquisition, with its dungeons and its

many torture chambers, and they were treated to equally horrible

stories of how a mob of outraged Dutch Protestants had

got hold of a dozen defenceless old priests and hanged them

for the sheer pleasure of killing those who professed

a different faith. It was unfortunate that the two

contending parties were so equally matched. Otherwise

the struggle would have come to a quick solution.

Now it dragged on for eight generations, and

it grew so complicated that I can only tell you the most

important details, and must ask you to get the

rest from one of the many histories of the Reformation.

The great reform movement of the Protestants

had been followed by a thoroughgoing reform

within the bosom of the Church. Those popes who

had been merely amateur humanists and dealers in Roman

and Greek antiquities, disappeared from the scene and

their place was taken by serious men who spent twenty hours

a day administering those holy duties which had been placed

in their hands.

The long and rather disgraceful happiness of the monasteries

came to an end. Monks and nuns were forced to be up

at sunrise, to study the Church Fathers, to tend the sick and

console the dying. The Holy Inquisition watched day and

night that no dangerous doctrines should be spread by way of

the printing press. Here it is customary to mention poor

Galileo, who was locked up because he had been a little too

indiscreet in explaining the heavens with his funny little

telescope and had muttered certain opinions about the behaviour

of the planets which were entirely opposed to the official views

of the church. But in all fairness to the Pope, the clergy and

the Inquisition, it ought to be stated that the Protestants were

quite as much the enemies of science and medicine as the Catholics

and with equal manifestations of ignorance and intolerance

regarded the men who investigated things for themselves

as the most dangerous enemies of mankind.

And Calvin, the great French reformer and the tyrant

(both political and spiritual) of Geneva, not only assisted the

French authorities when they tried to hang Michael Servetus

(the Spanish theologian and physician who had become famous

as the assistant of Vesalius, the first great anatomist), but

when Servetus had managed to escape from his French jail and

had fled to Geneva, Calvin threw this brilliant man into prison

and after a prolonged trial, allowed him to be burned at the

stake on account of his heresies, totally indifferent to his fame

as a scientist.

And so it went. We have few reliable statistics upon the

subject, but on the whole, the Protestants tired of this game

long before the Catholics, and the greater part of honest men

and women who were burned and hanged and decapitated on

account of their religious beliefs fell as victims of the very

energetic but also very drastic church of Rome.

For tolerance (and please remember this when you grow

older), is of very recent origin and even the people of our own

so-called ``modern world'' are apt to be tolerant only upon such

matters as do not interest them very much. They are tolerant

towards a native of Africa, and do not care whether he becomes

a Buddhist or a Mohammedan, because neither Buddhism nor

Mohammedanism means anything to them. But when they

hear that their neighbour who was a Republican and believed

in a high protective tariff, has joined the Socialist party and

now wants to repeal all tariff laws, their tolerance ceases and

they use almost the same words as those employed by a kindly

Catholic (or Protestant) of the seventeenth century, who was

informed that his best friend whom he had always respected

and loved had fallen a victim to the terrible heresies of the

Protestant (or Catholic) church.

``Heresy'' until a very short time ago was regarded as a

disease. Nowadays when we see a man neglecting the personal

cleanliness of his body and his home and exposing himself

and his children to the dangers of typhoid fever or another

preventable disease, we send for the board-of-health and the

health officer calls upon the police to aid him in removing this

person who is a danger to the safety of the entire community.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a heretic, a man

or a woman who openly doubted the fundamental principles

upon which his Protestant or Catholic religion had been

founded, was considered a more terrible menace than a typhoid

carrier. Typhoid fever might (very likely would) destroy the

body. But heresy, according to them, would positively destroy

the immortal soul. It was therefore the duty of all good and

logical citizens to warn the police against the enemies of the

established order of things and those who failed to do so were

as culpable as a modern man who does not telephone to the

nearest doctor when he discovers that his fellow-tenants are

suffering from cholera or small-pox.

In the years to come you will hear a great deal about

preventive medicine. Preventive medicine simply means that our

doctors do not wait until their patients are sick, then step

forward and cure them. On the contrary, they study the patient

and the conditions under which he lives when he (the patient)

is perfectly well and they remove every possible cause of illness

by cleaning up rubbish, by teaching him what to eat and what

to avoid, and by giving him a few simple ideas of personal

hygiene. They go even further than that, and these good

doctors enter the schools and teach the children how to use

tooth-brushes and how to avoid catching colds.

The sixteenth century which regarded (as I have tried to

show you) bodily illness as much less important than sickness

which threatened the soul, organised a system of spiritual

preventive medicine. As soon as a child was old enough to spell

his first words, he was educated in the true (and the ``only

true'') principles of the Faith. Indirectly this proved to be a

good thing for the general progress of the people of Europe.

The Protestant lands were soon dotted with schools. They

used a great deal of very valuable time to explain the Catechism,

but they gave instruction in other things besides theology.

They encouraged reading and they were responsible

for the great prosperity of the printing trade.

But the Catholics did not lag behind. They too devoted

much time and thought to education. The Church, in this matter,

found an invaluable friend and ally in the newly-founded

order of the Society of Jesus. The founder of this remarkable

organisation was a Spanish soldier who after a life of unholy

adventures had been converted and thereupon felt himself

bound to serve the church just as many former sinners, who

have been shown the errors of their way by the Salvation Army,

devote the remaining years of their lives to the task of aiding

and consoling those who are less fortunate.

The name of this Spaniard was Ignatius de Loyola. He

was born in the year before the discovery of America. He had

been wounded and lamed for life and while he was in the hospital

he had seen a vision of the Holy Virgin and her Son, who

bade him give up the wickedness of his former life. He decided

to go to the Holy Land and finish the task of the Crusades.

But a visit to Jerusalem had shown him the impossibility

of the task and he returned west to help in the warfare

upon the heresies of the Lutherans.

In the year 1534 he was studying in Paris at the Sorbonne.

Together with seven other students he founded a fraternity.

The eight men promised each other that they would lead holy

lives, that they would not strive after riches but after righteousness,

and would devote themselves, body and soul, to the service

of the Church. A few years later this small fraternity

had grown into a regular organisation and was recognised by

Pope Paul III as the Society of Jesus.

Loyola had been a military man. He believed in discipline,

and absolute obedience to the orders of the superior dignitaries

became one of the main causes for the enormous success of the

Jesuits. They specialised in education. They gave their

teachers a most thorough-going education before they allowed

them to talk to a single pupil. They lived with their students

and they entered into their games. They watched them with

tender care. And as a result they raised a new generation of

faithful Catholics who took their religious duties as seriously

as the people of the early Middle Ages.

The shrewd Jesuits, however, did not waste all their efforts

upon the education of the poor. They entered the palaces

of the mighty and became the private tutors of future emperors

and kings. And what this meant you will see for yourself

when I tell you about the Thirty Years War. But before

this terrible and final outbreak of religious fanaticism, a great

many other things had happened.

Charles V was dead. Germany and Austria had been left

to his brother Ferdinand. All his other possessions, Spain and

the Netherlands and the Indies and America had gone to his

son Philip. Philip was the son of Charles and a Portuguese

princess who had been first cousin to her own husband. The

children that are born of such a union are apt to be rather

queer. The son of Philip, the unfortunate Don Carlos, (murdered

afterwards with his own father's consent,) was crazy.

Philip was not quite crazy, but his zeal for the Church bordered

closely upon religious insanity. He believed that Heaven had

appointed him as one of the saviours of mankind. Therefore,

whosoever was obstinate and refused to share his Majesty's

views, proclaimed himself an enemy of the human race and

must be exterminated lest his example corrupt the souls of

his pious neighbours.

Spain, of course, was a very rich country. All the gold and

silver of the new world flowed into the Castilian and Aragonian

treasuries. But Spain suffered from a curious eco-

nomic disease. Her peasants were hard working men and

even harder working women. But the better classes maintained

a supreme contempt for any form of labour, outside of

employment in the army or navy or the civil service. As for

the Moors, who had been very industrious artisans, they had

been driven out of the country long before. As a result, Spain,

the treasure chest of the world, remained a poor country because

all her money had to be sent abroad in exchange for the

wheat and the other necessities of life which the Spaniards

neglected to raise for themselves.

Philip, ruler of the most powerful nation of the

sixteenth century, depended for his revenue upon the taxes

which were gathered in the busy commercial bee-hive of

the Netherlands. But these Flemings and Dutchmen were

devoted followers of the doctrines of Luther and Calvin

and they had cleansed their churches of all images and holy

paintings and they had informed the Pope that they no

longer regarded him as their shepherd but intended to follow

the dictates of their consciences and the commands of their

newly translated Bible.

This placed the king in a very difficult position. He could

not possibly tolerate the heresies of his Dutch subjects, but

he needed their money. If he allowed them to be Protestants

and took no measures to save their souls he was deficient in

his duty toward God. If he sent the Inquisition to the Netherlands

and burned his subjects at the stake, he would lose the

greater part of his income.

Being a man of uncertain will-power he hesitated a long

time. He tried kindness and sternness and promises and

threats. The Hollanders remained obstinate, and continued to

sing psalms and listen to the sermons of their Lutheran and

Calvinist preachers. Philip in his despair sent his ``man of

iron,'' the Duke of Alba, to bring these hardened sinners to

terms. Alba began by decapitating those leaders who had not

wisely left the country before his arrival. In the year 1572

(the same year that the French Protestant leaders were all

killed during the terrible night of Saint Bartholomew), he

attacked a number of Dutch cities and massacred the inhabitants

as an example for the others. The next year he laid siege

to the town of Leyden, the manufacturing center of Holland.

Meanwhile, the seven small provinces of the northern

Netherlands had formed a defensive union, the so-called union

of Utrecht, and had recognised William of Orange, a German

prince who had been the private secretary of the Emperor

Charles V, as the leader of their army and as commander of

their freebooting sailors, who were known as the Beggars of

the Sea. William, to save Leyden, cut the dykes, created a

shallow inland sea, and delivered the town with the help of a

strangely equipped navy consisting of scows and flat-bottomed

barges which were rowed and pushed and pulled through the

mud until they reached the city walls.

It was the first time that an army of the invincible Spanish

king had suffered such a humiliating defeat. It surprised the

world just as the Japanese victory of Mukden, in the Russian-

Japanese war, surprised our own generation. The Protestant

powers took fresh courage and Philip devised new means for

the purpose of conquering his rebellious subjects. He hired

a poor half-witted fanatic to go and murder William of

Orange. But the sight of their dead leader did not bring the

Seven Provinces to their knees. On the contrary it made them

furiously angry. In the year 1581, the Estates General (the

meeting of the representatives of the Seven Provinces) came

together at the Hague and most solemnly abjured their

``wicked king Philip'' and themselves assumed the burden

of sovereignty which thus far had been invested in their

``King by the Grace of God.''

This is a very important event in the history of the great

struggle for political liberty. It was a step which reached

much further than the uprising of the nobles which ended with

the signing of the Magna Carta. These good burghers said

``Between a king and his subjects there is a silent understanding

that both sides shall perform certain services and shall

recognise certain definite duties. If either party fails to live

up to this contract, the other has the right to consider it ter-

minated.'' The American subjects of King George III in

the year 1776 came to a similar conclusion. But they had three

thousand miles of ocean between themselves and their ruler

and the Estates General took their decision (which meant a

slow death in case of defeat) within hearing of the Spanish

guns and although in constant fear of an avenging Spanish

fleet.

The stories about a mysterious Spanish fleet that was to conquer

both Holland and England, when Protestant Queen

Elizabeth had succeeded Catholic ``Bloody Mary'' was an old

one. For years the sailors of the waterfront had talked

about it. In the eighties of the sixteenth century, the

rumour took a definite shape. According to pilots who had

been in Lisbon, all the Spanish and Portuguese wharves were

building ships. And in the southern Netherlands (in Belgium)

the Duke of Parma was collecting a large expeditionary

force to be carried from Ostend to London and Amsterdam

as soon as the fleet should arrive.

In the year 1586 the Great Armada set sail for the north.

But the harbours of the Flemish coast were blockaded by a

Dutch fleet and the Channel was guarded by the English, and

the Spaniards, accustomed to the quieter seas of the south, did

not know how to navigate in this squally and bleak northern

climate. What happened to the Armada once it was attacked

by ships and by storms I need not tell you. A few ships, by

sailing around Ireland, escaped to tell the terrible story of

defeat. The others perished and lie at the bottom of the North

Sea.

Turn about is fair play. The British nod the Dutch Prot-

estants now carried the war into the territory of the enemy.

Before the end of the century, Houtman, with the help of a

booklet written by Linschoten (a Hollander who had been in

the Portuguese service), had at last discovered the route to

the Indies. As a result the great Dutch East India Company

was founded and a systematic war upon the Portuguese and

Spanish colonies in Asia and Africa was begun in all seriousness.

It was during this early era of colonial conquest that a

curious lawsuit was fought out in the Dutch courts. Early in

the seventeenth century a Dutch Captain by the name of van

Heemskerk, a man who had made himself famous as the head

of an expedition which had tried to discover the North Eastern

Passage to the Indies and who had spent a winter on the frozen

shores of the island of Nova Zembla, had captured a Portuguese

ship in the straits of Malacca. You will remember that

the Pope had divided the world into two equal shares, one of

which had been given to the Spaniards and the other to the

Portuguese. The Portuguese quite naturally regarded the

water which surrounded their Indian islands as part of their

own property and since, for the moment, they were not at war

with the United Seven Netherlands, they claimed that the

captain of a private Dutch trading company had no right to

enter their private domain and steal their ships. And they

brought suit. The directors of the Dutch East India Company

hired a bright young lawyer, by the name of De Groot or

Grotius, to defend their case. He made the astonishing plea

that the ocean is free to all comers. Once outside the distance

which a cannon ball fired from the land can reach, the sea is

or (according to Grotius) ought to be, a free and open highway

to all the ships of all nations. It was the first time that this

startling doctrine had been publicly pronounced in a court

of law. It was opposed by all the other seafaring people. To

counteract the effect of Grotius' famous plea for the ``Mare

Liberum,'' or ``Open Sea,'' John Selden, the Englishman,

wrote his famous treatise upon the Mare Clausum'' or Closed

Sea'' which treated of the natural right of a sovereign to regard

the seas which surrounded his country as belonging to his territory.

I mention this here because the question had not yet

been decided and during the last war caused all sorts of

difficulties and complications.

To return to the warfare between Spaniard and Hollander

and Englishman, before twenty years were over the most

valuable colonies of the Indies and the Cape of Good Hope and

Ceylon and those along the coast of China and even Japan were

in Protestant hands. In 1621 a West Indian Company was

founded which conquered Brazil and in North America built

a fortress called Nieuw Amsterdam at the mouth of the river

which Henry Hudson had discovered in the year 1609

These new colonies enriched both England and the Dutch

Republic to such an extent that they could hire foreign soldiers

to do their fighting on land while they devoted themselves

to commerce and trade. To them the Protestant revolt meant

independence and prosperity. But in many other parts of

Europe it meant a succession of horrors compared to which the

last war was a mild excursion of kindly Sunday-school boys.

The Thirty Years War which broke out in the year 1618

and which ended with the famous treaty of Westphalia in 1648

was the perfectly natural result of a century of ever increasing

religious hatred. It was, as I have said, a terrible war. Everybody

fought everybody else and the struggle ended only when

all parties had been thoroughly exhausted and could fight no

longer.

In less than a generation it turned many parts of central

Europe into a wilderness, where the hungry peasants fought

for the carcass of a dead horse with the even hungrier wolf.

Five-sixths of all the German towns and villages were destroyed.

The Palatinate, in western Germany, was plundered

twenty-eight times. And a population of eighteen million

people was reduced to four million.

The hostilities began almost as soon as Ferdinand II of

the House of Habsburg had been elected Emperor. He was

the product of a most careful Jesuit training and was a most

obedient and devout son of the Church. The vow which he had

made as a young man, that he would eradicate all sects and

all heresies from his domains, Ferdinand kept to the best of

his ability. Two days before his election, his chief opponent,

Frederick, the Protestant Elector of the Palatinate and a

son-in-law of James I of England, had been made King of

Bohemia, in direct violation of Ferdinand's wishes.

At once the Habsburg armies marched into Bohemia. The

young king looked in vain for assistance against this formidable

enemy. The Dutch Republic was willing to help, but,

engaged in a desperate war of its own with the Spanish branch

of the Habsburgs, it could do little. The Stuarts in England

were more interested in strengthening their own absolute power

at home than spending money and men upon a forlorn adventure

in far away Bohemia. After a struggle of a few months,

the Elector of the Palatinate was driven away and his domains

were given to the Catholic house of Bavaria. This was the beginning

of the great war.

Then the Habsburg armies, under Tilly and Wallenstein,

fought their way through the Protestant part of Germany

until they had reached the shores of the Baltic. A Catholic

neighbour meant serious danger to the Protestant king of

Denmark. Christian IV tried to defend himself by attacking

his enemies before they had become too strong for him. The

Danish armies marched into Germany but were defeated.

Wallenstein followed up his victory with such energy and violence

that Denmark was forced to sue for peace. Only one

town of the Baltic then remained in the hands of the Protestants.

That was Stralsund.

There, in the early summer of the year 1630, landed King

Gustavus Adolphus of the house of Vasa, king of Sweden,

and famous as the man who had defended his country against

the Russians. A Protestant prince of unlimited ambition,

desirous of making Sweden the centre of a great Northern

Empire, Gustavus Adolphus was welcomed by the Protestant

princes of Europe as the saviour of the Lutheran cause. He

defeated Tilly, who had just successfully butchered the Protestant

inhabitants of Magdeburg. Then his troops began their

great march through the heart of Germany in an attempt to

reach the Habsburg possessions in Italy. Threatened in the

rear by the Catholics, Gustavus suddenly veered around and

defeated the main Habsburg army in the battle of Lutzen.

Unfortunately the Swedish king was killed when he strayed

away from his troops. But the Habsburg power had been

broken.

Ferdinand, who was a suspicious sort of person, at once

began to distrust his own servants. Wallenstein, his commander-

in-chief, was murdered at his instigation. When the

Catholic Bourbons, who ruled France and hated their Habsburg

rivals, heard of this, they joined the Protestant Swedes.

The armies of Louis XIII invaded the eastern part of Germany,

and Turenne and Conde added their fame to that of

Baner and Weimar, the Swedish generals, by murdering, pillaging

and burning Habsburg property. This brought great

fame and riches to the Swedes and caused the Danes to become

envious. The Protestant Danes thereupon declared war upon

the Protestant Swedes who were the allies of the Catholic

French, whose political leader, the Cardinal de Richelieu, had

just deprived the Huguenots (or French Protestants) of those

rights of public worship which the Edict of Nantes of the year

1598 had guaranteed them.

The war, after the habit of such encounters, did not decide

anything, when it came to an end with the treaty of Westphalia

in 1648. The Catholic powers remained Catholic and

the Protestant powers stayed faithful to the doctrines of

Luther and Calvin and Zwingli. The Swiss and Dutch Protestants

were recognised as independent republics. France

kept the cities of Metz and Toul and Verdun and a part of the

Alsace. The Holy Roman Empire continued to exist as a sort

of scare-crow state, without men, without money, without hope

and without courage.

The only good the Thirty Years War accomplished was a

negative one. It discouraged both Catholics and Protestants

from ever trying it again. Henceforth they left each other in

peace. This however did not mean that religious feeling and

theological hatred had been removed from this earth. On the

contrary. The quarrels between Catholic and Protestant

came to an end, but the disputes between the different Protestant

sects continued as bitterly as ever before. In Holland

a difference of opinion as to the true nature of predestination

(a very obscure point of theology, but exceedingly important

the eyes of your great-grandfather) caused a quarrel which

ended with the decapitation of John of Oldenbarneveldt, the

Dutch statesman, who had been responsible for the success of

the Republic during the first twenty years of its independence,

and who was the great organising genius of her Indian trading

company. In England, the feud led to civil war.

But before I tell you of this outbreak which led to the first

execution by process-of-law of a European king, I ought to

say something about the previous history of England. In this

book I am trying to give you only those events of the past

which can throw a light upon the conditions of the present

world. If I do not mention certain countries, the cause is not

to be found in any secret dislike on my part. I wish that I

could tell you what happened to Norway and Switzerland and

Serbia and China. But these lands exercised no great influence

upon the development of Europe in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries. I therefore pass them by with a polite

and very respectful bow. England however is in a different

position. What the people of that small island have done during

the last five hundred years has shaped the course of history

in every corner of the world. Without a proper knowledge of

the background of English history, you cannot understand

what you read in the newspapers. And it is therefore necessary

that you know how England happened to develop a parliamentary

form of government while the rest of the European continent

was still ruled by absolute monarchs.

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION

HOW THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE ``DIVINE

RIGHT'' OF KINGS AND THE LESS DIVINE

BUT MORE REASONABLE ``RIGHT OF

PARLIAMENT'' ENDED DISASTROUSLY FOR

KING CHARLES II

CAESAR, the earliest explorer of north-western Europe, had

crossed the Channel in the year 55 B.C. and had conquered

England. During four centuries the country then remained

a Roman province. But when the Barbarians began to

threaten Rome, the garrisons were called back from the frontier

that they might defend the home country and Britannia

was left without a government and without protection.

As soon as this became known among the hungry Saxon

tribes of northern Germany, they sailed across the North Sea

and made themselves at home in the prosperous island. They

founded a number of independent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms

(so called after the original Angles or English and the Saxon

invaders) but these small states were for ever quarrelling with

each other and no King was strong enough to establish himself

as the head of a united country. For more than five hundred

years, Mercia and Northumbria and Wessex and Sussex

and Kent and East Anglia, or whatever their names, were

exposed to attacks from various Scandinavian pirates. Finally

in the eleventh century, England, together with Norway and

northern Germany became part of the large Danish Empire

of Canute the Great and the last vestiges of independence

disappeared.

The Danes, in the course of time, were driven away but no

sooner was England free, than it was conquered for the fourth

time. The new enemies were the descendants of another tribe

of Norsemen who early in the tenth century had invaded

France and had founded the Duchy of Normandy. William,

Duke of Normandy, who for a long time had looked across the

water with an envious eye, crossed the Channel in October

of the year 1066. At the battle of Hastings, on October the

fourteenth of that year, he destroyed the weak forces of Harold

of Wessex, the last of the Anglo-Saxon Kings and established

himself as King of England. But neither William nor his

successors of the House of Anjou and Plantagenet regarded

England as their true home. To them the island was merely a

part of their great inheritance on the continent--a sort of

colony inhabited by rather backward people upon whom they

forced their own language and civilisation. Gradually however

the colony'' of England gained upon the Mother

country'' of Normandy. At the same time the Kings of

France were trying desperately to get rid of the powerful Norman-

English neighbours who were in truth no more than disobedient

servants of the French crown. After a century of war

fare the French people, under the leadership of a young girl by

the name of Joan of Arc, drove the ``foreigners'' from their

soil. Joan herself, taken a prisoner at the battle of Compiegne

in the year 1430 and sold by her Burgundian captors to the

English soldiers, was burned as a witch. But the English

never gained foothold upon the continent and their Kings were

at last able to devote all their time to their British possessions.

As the feudal nobility of the island had been engaged in one of

those strange feuds which were as common in the middle ages

as measles and small-pox, and as the greater part of the old

landed proprietors had been killed during these so-called Wars

of the Roses, it was quite easy for the Kings to increase their

royal power. And by the end of the fifteenth century, England

was a strongly centralised country, ruled by Henry VII

of the House of Tudor, whose famous Court of Justice, the

``Star Chamber'' of terrible memory, suppressed all attempts

on the part of the surviving nobles to regain their old influence

upon the government of the country with the utmost severity.

In the year 1509 Henry VII was succeeded by his son

Henry VIII, and from that moment on the history of England

gained a new importance for the country ceased to be a

mediaeval island and became a modern state.

Henry had no deep interest in religion. He gladly used a

private disagreement with the Pope about one of his many

divorces to declare himself independent of Rome and make

the church of England the first of those ``nationalistic churches''

in which the worldly ruler also acts as the spiritual head of his

subjects. This peaceful reformation of 1034 not only gave

the house of Tudor the support of the English clergy, who

for a long time had been exposed to the violent attacks of many

Lutheran propagandists, but it also increased the Royal power

through the confiscation of the former possessions of the

monasteries. At the same time it made Henry popular with the

merchants and tradespeople, who as the proud and prosperous

inhabitants of an island which was separated from the rest of

Europe by a wide and deep channel, had a great dislike for

everything ``foreign'' and did not want an Italian bishop to rule

their honest British souls.

In 1517 Henry died. He left the throne to his small son,

aged ten. The guardians of the child, favoring the modern

Lutheran doctrines, did their best to help the cause of Protestantism.

But the boy died before he was sixteen, and was succeeded

by his sister Mary, the wife of Philip II of Spain, who

burned the bishops of the new ``national church'' and in other

ways followed the example of her royal Spanish husband

Fortunately she died, in the year 1558, and was succeeded

by Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn,

the second of his six wives, whom he had decapitated when she

no longer pleased him. Elizabeth, who had spent some time in

prison, and who had been released only at the request of the

Holy Roman Emperor, was a most cordial enemy of everything

Catholic and Spanish. She shared her father's indifference

in the matter of religion but she inherited his ability as a

very shrewd judge of character, and spent the forty-five years

of her reign in strengthening the power of the dynasty and in

increasing the revenue and possessions of her merry islands.

In this she was most ably assisted by a number of men who

gathered around her throne and made the Elizabethan age a

period of such importance that you ought to study it in detail

in one of the special books of which I shall tell you in the

bibliography at the end of this volume.

Elizabeth, however, did not feel entirely safe upon her

throne. She had a rival and a very dangerous one. Mary,

of the house of Stuart, daughter of a French duchess and a

Scottish father, widow of king Francis II of France and

daughter-in-law of Catherine of Medici (who had organised

the murders of Saint Bartholomew's night), was the mother of

a little boy who was afterwards to become the first Stuart king

of England. She was an ardent Catholic and a willing friend

to those who were the enemies of Elizabeth. Her own lack

of political ability and the violent methods which she employed

to punish her Calvinistic subjects, caused a revolution in Scotland

and forced Mary to take refuge on English territory. For

eighteen years she remained in England, plotting forever and

a day against the woman who had given her shelter and who

was at last obliged to follow the advice of her trusted councilors

``to cutte off the Scottish Queen's heade.''

The head was duly ``cutte off'' in the year 1587 and caused

a war with Spain. But the combined navies of England and

Holland defeated Philip's Invincible Armada, as we have already

seen, and the blow which had been meant to destroy the

power of the two great anti-Catholic leaders was turned into a

profitable business adventure.

For now at last, after many years of hesitation, the English

as well as the Dutch thought it their good right to invade

the Indies and America and avenge the ills which their Protes-

tent brethren had suffered at the hands of the Spaniards. The

English had been among the earliest successors of Columbus.

British ships, commanded by the Venetian pilot Giovanni Caboto

(or Cabot), had been the first to discover and explore the

northern American continent in 1496. Labrador and Newfoundland

were of little importance as a possible colony. But

the banks of Newfoundland offered a rich reward to the

English fishing fleet. A year later, in 1497, the same Cabot

had explored the coast of Florida.

Then had come the busy years of Henry VII and Henry

VIII when there had been no money for foreign explorations.

But under Elizabeth, with the country at peace and Mary

Stuart in prison, the sailors could leave their harbour without

fear for the fate of those whom they left behind. While Elizabeth

was still a child, Willoughby had ventured to sail past the

North Cape and one of his captains, Richard Chancellor, pushing

further eastward in his quest of a possible road to the Indies,

had reached Archangel, Russia, where he had established

diplomatic and commercial relations with the mysterious rulers

of this distant Muscovite Empire. During the first years of

Elizabeth's rule this voyage had been followed up by many

others. Merchant adventurers, working for the benefit of a

``joint stock Company'' had laid the foundations of trading

companies which in later centuries were to become colonies.

Half pirate, half diplomat, willing to stake everything on a

single lucky voyage, smugglers of everything that could be

loaded into the hold of a vessel, dealers in men and merchandise

with equal indifference to everything except their profit, the

sailors of Elizabeth had carried the English flag and the fame

of their Virgin Queen to the four corners of the Seven Seas.

Meanwhile William Shakespeare kept her Majesty amused at

home, and the best brains and the best wit of England co-operated

with the queen in her attempt to change the feudal inheritance

of Henry VIII into a modern national state.

In the year 1603 the old lady died at the age of seventy.

Her cousin, the great-grandson of her own grandfather Henry

VII and son of Mary Stuart, her rival and enemy, succeeded

her as James I. By the Grace of God, he found himself the

ruler of a country which had escaped the fate of its continental

rivals. While the European Protestants and Catholics were

killing each other in a hopeless attempt to break the power of

their adversaries and establish the exclusive rule of their own

particular creed, England was at peace and ``reformed'' at

leisure without going to the extremes of either Luther or

Loyola. It gave the island kingdom an enormous advantage in

the coming struggle for colonial possessions. It assured England

a leadership in international affairs which that country

has maintained until the present day. Not even the disastrous

adventure with the Stuarts was able to stop this normal development.

The Stuarts, who succeeded the Tudors, were ``foreigners''

in England. They do not seem to have appreciated or understood

this fact. The native house of Tudor could steal a horse,

but the ``foreign'' Stuarts were not allowed to look at the

bridle without causing great popular disapproval. Old Queen

Bess had ruled her domains very much as she pleased. In

general however, she had always followed a policy which meant

money in the pocket of the honest (and otherwise) British

merchants. Hence the Queen had been always assured of the

wholehearted support of her grateful people. And small liberties

taken with some of the rights and prerogatives of Parliament

were gladly overlooked for the ulterior benefits which

were derived from her Majesty's strong and successful foreign

policies.

Outwardly King James continued the same policy. But he

lacked that personal enthusiasm which had been so very typical

of his great predecessor. Foreign commerce continued to be

encouraged. The Catholics were not granted any liberties.

But when Spain smiled pleasantly upon England in an effort

to establish peaceful relations, James was seen to smile back.

The majority of the English people did not like this, but

James was their King and they kept quiet.

Soon there were other causes of friction. King James and

his son, Charles I, who succeeded him in the year 1625 both

firmly believed in the principle of their ``divine right'' to

administer their realm as they thought fit without consulting the

wishes of their subjects. The idea was not new. The Popes,

who in more than one way had been the successors of the

Roman Emperors (or rather of the Roman Imperial ideal of

a single and undivided state covering the entire known world),

had always regarded themselves and had been publicly recognised

as the ``Vice-Regents of Christ upon Earth.'' No one

questioned the right of God to rule the world as He saw fit.

As a natural result, few ventured to doubt the right of the

divine ``Vice-Regent'' to do the same thing and to demand the

obedience of the masses because he was the direct representative

of the Absolute Ruler of the Universe and responsible

only to Almighty God.

When the Lutheran Reformation proved successful, those

rights which formerly had been invested in the Papacy were

taken over by the many European sovereigns who became

Protestants. As head of their own national or dynastic

churches they insisted upon being ``Christ's Vice-Regents''

within the limit of their own territory. The people did not question

the right of their rulers to take such a step. They accepted

it, just as we in our own day accept the idea of a representative

system which to us seems the only reasonable and just

form of government. It is unfair therefore to state that either

Lutheranism or Calvinism caused the particular feeling of

irritation which greeted King-James's oft and loudly repeated

assertion of his ``Divine Right.'' There must have been other

grounds for the genuine English disbelief in the Divine Right

of Kings.

The first positive denial of the ``Divine Right'' of sovereigns

had been heard in the Netherlands when the Estates General

abjured their lawful sovereign King Philip II of Spain, in the

year 1581. The King,'' so they said, has broken his contract

and the King therefore is dismissed like any other unfaithful

servant.'' Since then, this particular idea of a king's

responsibilities towards his subjects had spread among many of the

nations who inhabited the shores of the North Sea. They were

in a very favourable position. They were rich. The poor people

in the heart of central Europe, at the mercy of their

Ruler's body-guard, could not afford to discuss a problem

which would at once land them in the deepest dungeon of the

nearest castle. But the merchants of Holland and England

who possessed the capital necessary for the maintenance of

great armies and navies, who knew how to handle the almighty

weapon called ``credit,'' had no such fear. They were willing

to pit the ``Divine Right'' of their own good money against

the ``Divine Right'' of any Habsburg or Bourbon or Stuart.

They knew that their guilders and shillings could beat the

clumsy feudal armies which were the only weapons of the King.

They dared to act, where others were condemned to suffer

in silence or run the risk of the scaffold.

When the Stuarts began to annoy the people of England

with their claim that they had a right to do what they pleased

and never mind the responsibility, the English middle classes

used the House of Commons as their first line of defence

against this abuse of the Royal Power. The Crown refused to

give in and the King sent Parliament about its own business.

Eleven long years, Charles I ruled alone. He levied taxes

which most people regarded as illegal and he managed his

British kingdom as if it had been his own country estate. He

had capable assistants and we must say that he had the courage

of his convictions.

Unfortunately, instead of assuring himself of the support

of his faithful Scottish subjects, Charles became involved in

a quarrel with the Scotch Presbyterians. Much against his

will, but forced by his need for ready cash, Charles was at

last obliged to call Parliament together once more. It met in

April of 1640 and showed an ugly temper. It was dissolved

a few weeks later. A new Parliament convened in November.

This one was even less pliable than the first one. The members

understood that the question of ``Government by Divine

Right'' or ``Government by Parliament'' must be fought out

for good and all. They attacked the King in his chief councillors

and executed half a dozen of them. They announced that

they would not allow themselves to be dissolved without their

own approval. Finally on December 1, 1641, they presented

to the King a ``Grand Remonstrance'' which gave a detailed

account of the many grievances of the people against their Ruler.

Charles, hoping to derive some support for his own policy

in the country districts, left London in January of 1642. Each

side organised an army and prepared for open warfare between

the absolute power of the crown and the absolute power

of Parliament. During this struggle, the most powerful religious

element of England, called the Puritans, (they were

Anglicans who had tried to purify their doctrines to the most

absolute limits), came quickly to the front. The regiments of

``Godly men,'' commanded by Oliver Cromwell, with their

iron discipline and their profound confidence in the holiness of

their aims, soon became the model for the entire army of the

opposition. Twice Charles was defeated. After the battle

of Naseby, in 1645, he fled to Scotland. The Scotch sold him

to the English.

There followed a period of intrigue and an uprising

of the Scotch Presbyterians against the English Puritan.

In August of the year 1648 after the three-days' battle of

Preston Pans, Cromwell made an end to this second civil war,

and took Edinburgh. Meanwhile his soldiers, tired of further

talk and wasted hours of religious debate, had decided to act

on their own initiative. They removed from Parliament all

those who did not agree with their own Puritan views. Thereupon

the ``Rump,'' which was what was left of the old Parliament,

accused the King of high treason. The House of Lords

refused to sit as a tribunal. A special tribunal was appointed

and it condemned the King to death. On the 30th of January

of the year 1649, King Charles walked quietly out of a window

of White Hall onto the scaffold. That day, the Sovereign

People, acting through their chosen representatives, for the

first time executed a ruler who had failed to understand his own

position in the modern state.

The period which followed the death of Charles is usually

called after Oliver Cromwell. At first the unofficial Dictator

of England, he was officially made Lord Protector in the year

He ruled five years. He used this period to continue

the policies of Elizabeth. Spain once more became the arch

enemy of England and war upon the Spaniard was made a national

and sacred issue.

The commerce of England and the interests of the traders

were placed before everything else, and the Protestant creed of

the strictest nature was rigourously maintained. In maintaining

England's position abroad, Cromwell was successful. As a

social reformer, however, he failed very badly. The world is

made up of a number of people and they rarely think alike.

In the long run, this seems a very wise provision. A government

of and by and for one single part of the entire community

cannot possibly survive. The Puritans had been a great

force for good when they tried to correct the abuse of the

royal power. As the absolute Rulers of England they became

intolerable.

When Cromwell died in 1658, it was an easy matter for the

Stuarts to return to their old kingdom. Indeed, they were

welcomed as ``deliverers'' by the people who had found the

yoke of the meek Puritans quite as hard to bear as that of autocratic

King Charles. Provided the Stuarts were willing to forget

about the Divine Right of their late and lamented father

and were willing to recognise the superiority of Parliament, the

people promised that they would be loyal and faithful subjects.

Two generations tried to make a success of this new arrangement.

But the Stuarts apparently had not learned their

lesson and were unable to drop their bad habits. Charles II,

who came back in the year 1660, was an amiable but worthless

person. His indolence and his constitutional insistence upon

following the easiest course, together with his conspicuous success

as a liar, prevented an open outbreak between himself and

his people. By the act of Uniformity in 1662 he broke the

power of the Puritan clergy by banishing all dissenting clergymen

from their parishes. By the so-called Conventicle Act of

1664 he tried to prevent the Dissenters from attending religious

meetings by a threat of deportation to the West Indies. This

looked too much like the good old days of Divine Right. People

began to show the old and well-known signs of impatience,

and Parliament suddenly experienced difficulty in providing

the King with funds.

Since he could not get money from an unwilling Parliament,

Charles borrowed it secretly from his neighbour and cousin

King Louis of France. He betrayed his Protestant allies in

return for 200,000 pounds per year, and laughed at the poor

simpletons of Parliament.

Economic independence suddenly gave the King great faith

in his own strength. He had spent many years of exile among

his Catholic relations and he had a secret liking for their

religion. Perhaps he could bring England back to Rome! He

passed a Declaration of Indulgence which suspended the old

laws against the Catholics and Dissenters. This happened just

when Charles' younger brother James was said to have become

a Catholic. All this looked suspicious to the man in the street

People began to fear some terrible Popish plot. A new spirit

of unrest entered the land. Most of the people wanted to prevent

another outbreak of civil war. To them Royal Oppression

and a Catholic King--yea, even Divine Right,--were

preferable to a new struggle between members of the same

race. Others however were less lenient. They were the much-

feared Dissenters, who invariably had the courage of their

convictions. They were led by several great noblemen who did

not want to see a return of the old days of absolute royal

power.

For almost ten years, these two great parties, the Whigs

(the middle class element, called by this derisive name be-

cause in the year 1640 a lot of Scottish Whiggamores or horse-

drovers headed by the Presbyterian clergy, had marched to

Edinburgh to oppose the King) and the Tories (an epithet

originally used against the Royalist Irish adherents but now

applied to the supporters of the King) opposed each other, but

neither wished to bring about a crisis. They allowed Charles to

die peacefully in his bed and permitted the Catholic James II

to succeed his brother in 1685. But when James, after threatening

the country with the terrible foreign invention of a ``standing

army'' (which was to be commanded by Catholic Frenchmen),

issued a second Declaration of Indulgence in 1688, and

ordered it to be read in all Anglican churches, he went just a

trifle beyond that line of sensible demarcation which can only be

transgressed by the most popular of rulers under very

exceptional circumstances. Seven bishops refused to comply

with the Royal Command. They were accused of ``seditious

libel.'' They were brought before a court. The jury which

pronounced the verdict of ``not guilty'' reaped a rich harvest

of popular approval.

At this unfortunate moment, James (who in a second marriage

had taken to wife Maria of the Catholic house of Modena-

Este) became the father of a son. This meant that the throne

was to go to a Catholic boy rather than to his older sisters,

Mary and Anne, who were Protestants. The man in the street

again grew suspicious. Maria of Modena was too old to have

children! It was all part of a plot! A strange baby had been

brought into the palace by some Jesuit priest that England

might have a Catholic monarch. And so on. It looked as if

another civil war would break out. Then seven well-known

men, both Whigs and Tories, wrote a letter asking the husband

of James's oldest daughter Mary, William III the Stadtholder

or head of the Dutch Republic, to come to England and

deliver the country from its lawful but entirely undesirable

sovereign.

On the fifth of November of the year 1688, William landed

at Torbay. As he did not wish to make a martyr out of his

father-in-law, he helped him to escape safely to France. On

the 22nd of January of 1689 he summoned Parliament. On

the 13th of February of the same year he and his wife Mary

were proclaimed joint sovereigns of England and the country

was saved for the Protestant cause.

Parliament, having undertaken to be something more than

a mere advisory body to the King, made the best of its

opportunities. The old Petition of Rights of the year 1628 was

fished out of a forgotten nook of the archives. A second and

more drastic Bill of Rights demanded that the sovereign of

England should belong to the Anglican church. Furthermore

it stated that the king had no right to suspend the laws or

permit certain privileged citizens to disobey certain laws. It

stipulated that ``without consent of Parliament no taxes could

be levied and no army could be maintained.'' Thus in the year

1689 did England acquire an amount of liberty unknown in

any other country of Europe.

But it is not only on account of this great liberal measure

that the rule of William in England is still remembered. During

his lifetime, government by a ``responsible'' ministry first

developed. No king of course can rule alone. He needs a few

trusted advisors. The Tudors had their Great Council which

was composed of Nobles and Clergy. This body grew too

large. It was restricted to the small ``Privy Council.'' In the

course of time it became the custom of these councillors to meet

the king in a cabinet in the palace. Hence they were called

the ``Cabinet Council.'' After a short while they were known

as the ``Cabinet.''

William, like most English sovereigns before him, had

chosen his advisors from among all parties. But with the increased

strength of Parliament, he had found it impossible to

direct the politics of the country with the help of the Tories

while the Whigs had a majority in the house of Commons.

Therefore the Tories had been dismissed and the Cabinet Council

had been composed entirely of Whigs. A few years later

when the Whigs lost their power in the House of Commons, the

king, for the sake of convenience, was obliged to look for his

support among the leading Tories. Until his death in 1702,

William was too busy fighting Louis of France to bother much

about the government of England. Practically all important

affairs had been left to his Cabinet Council. When William's

sister-in-law, Anne, succeeded him in 1702 this condition of

affairs continued. When she died in 1714 (and unfortunately

not a single one of her seventeen children survived her) the

throne went to George I of the House of Hanover, the son of

Sophie, grand-daughter of James I.

This somewhat rustic monarch, who never learned a word

of English, was entirely lost in the complicated mazes of England's

political arrangements. He left everything to his Cabinet

Council and kept away from their meetings, which bored

him as he did not understand a single sentence. In this way

the Cabinet got into the habit of ruling England and Scotland

(whose Parliament had been joined to that of England

in 1707) without bothering the King, who was apt to spend

a great deal of his time on the continent.

During the reign of George I and George II, a succession of

great Whigs (of whom one, Sir Robert Walpole, held office for

twenty-one years) formed the Cabinet Council of the King.

Their leader was finally recognised as the official leader not

only of the actual Cabinet but also of the majority party in

power in Parliament. The attempts of George III to take

matters into his own hands and not to leave the actual business

of government to his Cabinet were so disastrous that

they were never repeated. And from the earliest years of the

eighteenth century on, England enjoyed representative government,

with a responsible ministry which conducted the affairs

of the land.

To be quite true, this government did not represent all

classes of society. Less than one man in a dozen had the right

to vote. But it was the foundation for the modern representative

form of government. In a quiet and orderly fashion it

took the power away from the King and placed it in the hands

of an ever increasing number of popular representatives. It did

not bring the millenium to England, but it saved that country

from most of the revolutionary outbreaks which proved so

disastrous to the European continent in the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries.

THE BALANCE OF POWER

IN FRANCE ON THE OTHER HAND THE ``DIVINE

RIGHT OF KINGS'' CONTINUED WITH

GREATER POMP AND SPLENDOUR THAN

EVER BEFORE AND THE AMBITION OF

THE RULER WAS ONLY TEMPERED BY

THE NEWLY INVENTED LAW OF THE

``BALANCE OF POWER''

As a contrast to the previous chapter, let me tell you what

happened in France during the years when the English people

were fighting for their liberty. The happy combination

of the right man in the right country at the right moment is very

rare in History. Louis XIV was a realisation of this ideal, as

far as France was concerned, but the rest of Europe would

have been happier without him.

The country over which the young king was called to rule

was the most populous and the most brilliant nation of that

day. Louis came to the throne when Mazarin and Richelieu,

the two great Cardinals, had just hammered the ancient French

Kingdom into the most strongly centralised state of the seventeenth

century. He was himself a man of extraordinary ability.

We, the people of the twentieth century, are still

surrounded by the memories of the glorious age of the Sun King.

Our social life is based upon the perfection of manners and the

elegance of expression attained at the court of Louis. In

international and diplomatic relations, French is still the official

language of diplomacy and international gatherings because

two centuries ago it reached a polished elegance and a purity

of expression which no other tongue had as yet been able to

equal. The theatre of King Louis still teaches us lessons

which we are only too slow in learning. During his reign the

French Academy (an invention of Richelieu) came to occupy

a position in the world of letters which other countries have

flattered by their imitation. We might continue this list for

many pages. It is no matter of mere chance that our modern

bill-of-fare is printed in French. The very difficult art of

decent cooking, one of the highest expressions of civilisation,

was first practiced for the benefit of the great Monarch. The

age of Louis XIV was a time of splendour and grace which can

still teach us a lot.

Unfortunately this brilliant picture has another side which

was far less encouraging. Glory abroad too often means

misery at home, and France was no exception to this rule

Louis XIV succeeded his father in the year 1643. He died in

the year 1715. That means that the government of France

was in the hands of one single man for seventy-two years,

almost two whole generations.

It will be well to get a firm grasp of this idea, ``one single

man.'' Louis was the first of a long list of monarchs who in

many countries established that particular form of highly efficient

autocracy which we call ``enlightened despotism.'' He

did not like kings who merely played at being rulers and

turned official affairs into a pleasant picnic. The Kings of

that enlightened age worked harder than any of their subjects.

They got up earlier and went to bed later than anybody else,

and felt their ``divine responsibility'' quite as strongly as their

``divine right'' which allowed them to rule without consulting

their subjects.

Of course, the king could not attend to everything in person.

He was obliged to surround himself with a few helpers

and councillors. One or two generals, some experts upon foreign

politics, a few clever financiers and economists would do

for this purpose. But these dignitaries could act only through

their Sovereign. They had no individual existence. To the

mass of the people, the Sovereign actually represented in his

own sacred person the government of their country. The

glory of the common fatherland became the glory of a single

dynasty. It meant the exact opposite of our own American

ideal. France was ruled of and by and for the House of Bourbon.

The disadvantages of such a system are clear. The King

grew to be everything. Everybody else grew to be nothing at

all. The old and useful nobility was gradually forced to give

up its former shares in the government of the provinces. A little

Royal bureaucrat, his fingers splashed with ink, sitting behind

the greenish windows of a government building in faraway

Paris, now performed the task which a hundred years

before had been the duty of the feudal Lord. The feudal Lord,

deprived of all work, moved to Paris to amuse himself as best

he could at the court. Soon his estates began to suffer from

that very dangerous economic sickness, known as ``Absentee

Landlordism.'' Within a single generation, the industrious

and useful feudal administrators had become the well-mannered

but quite useless loafers of the court of Versailles.

Louis was ten years old when the peace of Westphalia was

concluded and the House of Habsburg, as a result of the

Thirty Years War, lost its predominant position in Europe.

It was inevitable that a man with his ambition should use so

favourable a moment to gain for his own dynasty the honours

which had formerly been held by the Habsburgs. In the year

1660 Louis had married Maria Theresa, daughter of the King

of Spain. Soon afterward, his father-in-law, Philip IV, one

of the half-witted Spanish Habsburgs, died. At once Louis

claimed the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) as part of his

wife's dowry. Such an acquisition would have been disastrous

to the peace of Europe, and would have threatened the safety

of the Protestant states. Under the leadership of Jan de Witt,

Raadpensionaris or Foreign Minister of the United Seven

Netherlands, the first great international alliance, the Triple

Alliance of Sweden, England and Holland, of the year 1661,

was concluded. It did not last long. With money and fair

promises Louis bought up both King Charles and the Swedish

Estates. Holland was betrayed by her allies and was left to

her own fate. In the year 1672 the French invaded the low

countries. They marched to the heart of the country. For a

second time the dikes were opened and the Royal Sun of

France set amidst the mud of the Dutch marshes. The peace

of Nimwegen which was concluded in 1678 settled nothing but

merely anticipated another war.

A second war of aggression from 1689 to 1697, ending with

the Peace of Ryswick, also failed to give Louis that position in

the affairs of Europe to which he aspired. His old enemy,

Jan de Witt, had been murdered by the Dutch rabble, but his

successor, William III (whom you met in the last chapter),

had checkmated all efforts of Louis to make France the ruler of

Europe.

The great war for the Spanish succession, begun in the

year 1701, immediately after the death of Charles II, the last

of the Spanish Habsburgs, and ended in 1713 by the Peace

of Utrecht, remained equally undecided, but it had ruined the

treasury of Louis. On land the French king had been victorious,

but the navies of England and Holland had spoiled all

hope for an ultimate French victory; besides the long struggle

had given birth to a new and fundamental principle of international

politics, which thereafter made it impossible for one

single nation to rule the whole of Europe or the whole of the

world for any length of time.

That was the so-called ``balance of power.'' It was not a

written law but for three centuries it has been obeyed as closely

as are the laws of nature. The people who originated the idea

maintained that Europe, in its nationalistic stage of development,

could only survive when there should be an absolute balance

of the many conflicting interests of the entire continent.

No single power or single dynasty must ever be allowed to

dominate the others. During the Thirty Years War, the

Habsburgs had been the victims of the application of this law.

They, however, had been unconscious victims. The issues during

that struggle were so clouded in a haze of religious strife

that we do not get a very clear view of the main tendencies

of that great conflict. But from that time on, we begin to see

how cold, economic considerations and calculations prevail in

all matters of international importance. We discover the

development of a new type of statesman, the statesman with the

personal feelings of the slide-rule and the cash-register. Jan

de Witt was the first successful exponent of this new school

of politics. William III was the first great pupil. And Louis

XIV with all his fame and glory, was the first conscious victim.

There have been many others since.

THE RISE OF RUSSIA

THE STORY OF THE MYSTERIOUS MOSCOVITE

EMPIRE WHICH SUDDENLY BURST UPON

THE GRAND POLITICAL STAGE OF EUROPE

IN the year 1492, as you know, Columbus discovered America.

Early in the year, a Tyrolese by the name of Schnups,

travelling as the head of a scientific expedition for the

Archbishop of Tyrol, and provided with the best letters

of introduction and excellent credit tried to reach the mythical

town of Moscow. He did not succeed. When he reached the

frontiers of this vast Moscovite state which was vaguely supposed

to exist in the extreme Eastern part of Europe, he was

firmly turned back. No foreigners were wanted. And

Schnups went to visit the heathen Turk in Constantinople, in

order that he might have something to report to his clerical

master when he came back from his explorations.

Sixty-one years later, Richard Chancellor, trying to discover

the North-eastern passage to the Indies, and blown by

an ill wind into the White Sea, reached the mouth of the Dwina

and found the Moscovite village of Kholmogory, a few hours

from the spot where in 1584 the town of Archangel was founded.

This time the foreign visitors were requested to come

to Moscow and show themselves to the Grand Duke. They

went and returned to England with the first commercial treaty

ever concluded between Russia and the western world. Other

nations soon followed and something became known of this

mysterious land.

Geographically, Russia is a vast plain. The Ural mountains

are low and form no barrier against invaders. The

rivers are broad but often shallow. It was an ideal territory for

nomads.

While the Roman Empire was founded, grew in power and

disappeared again, Slavic tribes, who had long since left their

homes in Central Asia, wandered aimlessly through the forests

and plains of the region between the Dniester and Dnieper

rivers. The Greeks had sometimes met these Slavs and a few

travellers of the third and fourth centuries mention them.

Otherwise they were as little known as were the Nevada Indians

in the year 1800.

Unfortunately for the peace of these primitive peoples, a

very convenient trade-route ran through their country. This

was the main road from northern Europe to Constantinople.

It followed the coast of the Baltic until the Neva was reached.

Then it crossed Lake Ladoga and went southward along the

Volkhov river. Then through Lake Ilmen and up the small

Lovat river. Then there was a short portage until the Dnieper

was reached. Then down the Dnieper into the Black Sea.

The Norsemen knew of this road at a very early date. In

the ninth century they began to settle in northern Russia, just

as other Norsemen were laying the foundation for independent

states in Germany and France. But in the year 862, three

Norsemen, brothers, crossed the Baltic and founded three small

dynasties. Of the three brothers, only one, Rurik, lived for a

number of years. He took possession of the territory of his

brothers, and twenty years after the arrival of this first

Norseman, a Slavic state had been established with Kiev as its

capital.

From Kiev to the Black Sea is a short distance. Soon the

existence of an organised Slavic State became known in

Constantinople. This meant a new field for the zealous

missionaries of the Christian faith. Byzantine monks followed the

Dnieper on their way northward and soon reached the heart of

Russia. They found the people worshipping strange gods

who were supposed to dwell in woods and rivers and in mountain

caves. They taught them the story of Jesus. There was

no competition from the side of Roman missionaries. These

good men were too busy educating the heathen Teutons to

bother about the distant Slavs. Hence Russia received its religion

and its alphabet and its first ideas of art and architecture

from the Byzantine monks and as the Byzantine empire (a

relic of the eastern Roman empire) had become very oriental

and had lost many of its European traits, the Russians suffered

in consequence.

Politically speaking these new states of the great Russian

plains did not fare well. It was the Norse habit to divide

every inheritance equally among all the sons. No sooner had

a small state been founded but it was broken up among eight

or nine heirs who in turn left their territory to an ever increasing

number of descendants. It was inevitable that these small

competing states should quarrel among themselves. Anarchy

was the order of the day. And when the red glow of the eastern

horizon told the people of the threatened invasion of a savage

Asiatic tribe, the little states were too weak and too divided

to render any sort of defence against this terrible enemy.

It was in the year 1224 that the first great Tartar invasion

took place and that the hordes of Jenghiz Khan, the conqueror

of China, Bokhara, Tashkent and Turkestan made their first

appearance in the west. The Slavic armies were beaten near

the Kalka river and Russia was at the mercy of the Mongolians.

Just as suddenly as they had come they disappeared.

Thirteen years later, in 1237, however, they returned. In less

than five years they conquered every part of the vast Russian

plains. Until the year 1380 when Dmitry Donskoi, Grand

Duke of Moscow, beat them on the plains of Kulikovo, the

Tartars were the masters of the Russian people.

All in all, it took the Russians two centuries to deliver

themselves from this yoke. For a yoke it was and a most

offensive and objectionable one. It turned the Slavic peasants

into miserable slaves. No Russian could hope to survive un-

less he was willing to creep before a dirty little yellow man who

sat in a tent somewhere in the heart of the steppes of southern

Russia and spat at him. It deprived the mass of the people of

all feeling of honour and independence. It made hunger and

misery and maltreatment and personal abuse the normal state

of human existence. Until at last the average Russian, were he

peasant or nobleman, went about his business like a neglected

dog who has been beaten so often that his spirit has been broken

and he dare not wag his tail without permission.

There was no escape. The horsemen of the Tartar Khan

were fast and merciless. The endless prairie did not give a

man a chance to cross into the safe territory of his neighbour.

He must keep quiet and bear what his yellow master decided

to inflict upon him or run the risk of death. Of course, Europe

might have interfered. But Europe was engaged upon business

of its own, fighting the quarrels between the Pope and

the emperor or suppressing this or that or the other heresy.

And so Europe left the Slav to his fate, and forced him to

work out his own salvation.

The final saviour of Russia was one of the many small states,

founded by the early Norse rulers. It was situated in the heart

of the Russian plain. Its capital, Moscow, was upon a steep

hill on the banks of the Moskwa river. This little principality,

by dint of pleasing the Tartar (when it was necessary to

please), and opposing him (when it was safe to do so), had,

during the middle of the fourteenth century made itself the

leader of a new national life. It must be remembered that the

Tartars were wholly deficient in constructive political ability.

They could only destroy. Their chief aim in conquering new

territories was to obtain revenue. To get this revenue in the

form of taxes, it was necessary to allow certain remnants of

the old political organization to continue. Hence there were

many little towns, surviving by the grace of the Great Khan,

that they might act as tax-gatherers and rob their neighbours

for the benefit of the Tartar treasury.

The state of Moscow, growing fat at the expense of the

surrounding territory, finally became strong enough to risk

open rebellion against its masters, the Tartars. It was successful

and its fame as the leader in the cause of Russian independence

made Moscow the natural centre for all those who

still believed in a better future for the Slavic race. In the year

1458, Constantinople was taken by the Turks. Ten years

later, under the rule of Ivan III, Moscow informed the

western world that the Slavic state laid claim to the worldly

and spiritual inheritance of the lost Byzantine Empire, and

such traditions of the Roman empire as had survived in

Constantinople. A generation afterwards, under Ivan the Terrible,

the grand dukes of Moscow were strong enough to adopt the

title of Caesar, or Tsar, and to demand recognition by the western

powers of Europe.

In the year 1598, with Feodor the First, the old Muscovite

dynasty, descendants of the original Norseman Rurik, came to

an end. For the next seven years, a Tartar half-breed, by the

name of Boris Godunow, reigned as Tsar. It was during

this period that the future destiny of the large masses of the

Russian people was decided. This Empire was rich in land

but very poor in money. There was no trade and there were

no factories. Its few cities were dirty villages. It was composed

of a strong central government and a vast number of

illiterate peasants. This government, a mixture of Slavic,

Norse, Byzantine and Tartar influences, recognised nothing

beyond the interest of the state. To defend this state, it

needed an army. To gather the taxes, which were necessary

to pay the soldiers, it needed civil servants. To pay these many

officials it needed land. In the vast wilderness on the east

and west there was a sufficient supply of this commodity. But

land without a few labourers to till the fields and tend the

cattle, has no value. Therefore the old nomadic peasants

were robbed of one privilege after the other, until finally, during

the first year of the sixteenth century, they were formally

made a part of the soil upon which they lived. The Russian

peasants ceased to be free men. They became serfs or slaves

and they remained serfs until the year 1861, when their fate

had become so terrible that they were beginning to die out.

In the seventeenth century, this new state with its growing

territory which was spreading quickly into Siberia, had become

a force with which the rest of Europe was obliged to

reckon. In 1618, after the death of Boris Godunow, the

Russian nobles had elected one of their own number to be

Tsar. He was Michael, the son of Feodor, of the Moscow family

of Romanow who lived in a little house just outside the

Kremlin.

In the year 1672 his great-grandson, Peter, the son of another

Feodor, was born. When the child was ten years old,

his step-sister Sophia took possession of the Russian throne.

The little boy was allowed to spend his days in the suburbs of

the national capital, where the foreigners lived. Surrounded

by Scotch barkeepers, Dutch traders, Swiss apothecaries, Italian

barbers, French dancing teachers and German school-masters,

the young prince obtained a first but rather extraordinary

impression of that far-away and mysterious Europe where

things were done differently.

When he was seventeen years old, he suddenly pushed

Sister Sophia from the throne. Peter himself became the ruler

of Russia. He was not contented with being the Tsar of a

semi-barbarous and half-Asiatic people. He must be the sovereign

head of a civilised nation. To change Russia overnight

from a Byzantine-Tartar state into a European empire was no

small undertaking. It needed strong hands and a capable

head. Peter possessed both. In the year 1698, the great

operation of grafting Modern Europe upon Ancient Russia was

performed. The patient did not die. But he never got over

the shock, as the events of the last five years have shown very

plainly.

RUSSIA vs. SWEDEN

RUSSIA AND SWEDEN FIGHT MANY WARS TO

DECIDE WHO SHALL BE THE LEADING

POWER OF NORTH-EASTERN EUROPE

IN the year 1698, Tsar Peter set forth upon his first

voyage to western Europe. He travelled by way of Berlin and

went to Holland and to England. As a child he had almost

been drowned sailing a homemade boat in the duck pond of

his father's country home. This passion for water remained

with him to the end of his life. In a practical way it showed

itself in his wish to give his land-locked domains access to

the open sea.

While the unpopular and harsh young ruler was away

from home, the friends of the old Russian ways in Moscow set

to work to undo all his reforms. A sudden rebellion among

his life-guards, the Streltsi regiment, forced Peter to hasten

home by the fast mail. He appointed himself executioner-in-

chief and the Streltsi were hanged and quartered and killed to

the last man. Sister Sophia, who had been the head of the

rebellion, was locked up in a cloister and the rule of Peter be-

gan in earnest. This scene was repeated in the year 1716 when

Peter had gone on his second western trip. That time the

reactionaries followed the leadership of Peter's half-witted

son, Alexis. Again the Tsar returned in great haste. Alexis

was beaten to death in his prison cell and the friends of the

old fashioned Byzantine ways marched thousands of dreary

miles to their final destination in the Siberian lead mines.

After that, no further outbreaks of popular discontent took

place. Until the time of his death, Peter could reform in peace.

It is not easy to give you a list of his reforms in chronological

order. The Tsar worked with furious haste. He followed

no system. He issued his decrees with such rapidity that it is

difficult to keep count. Peter seemed to feel that everything

that had ever happened before was entirely wrong. The whole

of Russia therefore must be changed within the shortest possible

time. When he died he left behind a well-trained army of

200,000 men and a navy of fifty ships. The old system of government

had been abolished over night. The Duma, or convention

of Nobles, had been dismissed and in its stead, the Tsar

had surrounded himself with an advisory board of state officials,

called the Senate.

Russia was divided into eight large ``governments'' or provinces.

Roads were constructed. Towns were built. Industries

were created wherever it pleased the Tsar, without any regard

for the presence of raw material. Canals were dug and mines

were opened in the mountains of the east. In this land of illiterates,

schools were founded and establishments of higher learning,

together with Universities and hospitals and professional

schools. Dutch naval engineers and tradesmen and artisans

from all over the world were encouraged to move to Russia.

Printing shops were established, but all books must be first read

by the imperial censors. The duties of each class of society

were carefully written down in a new law and the entire system

of civil and criminal laws was gathered into a series of printed

volumes. The old Russian costumes were abolished by Imperial

decree, and policemen, armed with scissors, watching

all the country roads, changed the long-haired Russian mou-

jiks suddenly into a pleasing imitation of smooth-shaven west.

Europeans.

In religious matters, the Tsar tolerated no division of

power. There must be no chance of a rivalry between an

Emperor and a Pope as had happened in Europe. In the year

1721, Peter made himself head of the Russian Church. The

Patriarchate of Moscow was abolished and the Holy Synod

made its appearance as the highest source of authority in all

matters of the Established Church.

Since, however, these many reforms could not be success-

ful while the old Russian elements had a rallying point in the

town of Moscow, Peter decided to move his government to a

new capital. Amidst the unhealthy marshes of the Baltic Sea

the Tsar built this new city. He began to reclaim the land in

the year 1703. Forty thousand peasants worked for years

to lay the foundations for this Imperial city. The Swedes

attacked Peter and tried to destroy his town and illness and

misery killed tens of thousands of the peasants. But the work

was continued, winter and summer, and the ready-made town

soon began to grow. In the year 1712, it was officially de-

clared to be the ``Imperial Residence.'' A dozen years later

it had 75,000 inhabitants. Twice a year the whole city was

flooded by the Neva. But the terrific will-power of the Tsar

created dykes and canals and the floods ceased to do harm.

When Peter died in 1725 he was the owner of the largest city

in northern Europe.

Of course, this sudden growth of so dangerous a rival had

been a source of great worry to all the neighbours. From his

side, Peter had watched with interest the many adventures of

his Baltic rival, the kingdom of Sweden. In the year 1654,

Christina, the only daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, the hero

of the Thirty Years War, had renounced the throne and had

gone to Rome to end her days as a devout Catholic. A Protestant

nephew of Gustavus Adolphus had succeeded the last

Queen of the House of Vasa. Under Charles X and Charles

XI, the new dynasty had brought Sweden to its highest point

of development. But in 1697, Charles XI died suddenly and

was succeeded by a boy of fifteen, Charles XII.

This was the moment for which many of the northern states

had waited. During the great religious wars of the seventeenth

century, Sweden had grown at the expense of her neighbours.

The time had come, so the owners thought, to balance the account.

At once war broke out between Russia, Poland, Denmark

and Saxony on the one side, and Sweden on the other.

The raw and untrained armies of Peter were disastrously beaten

by Charles in the famous battle of Narva in November of

the year 1700. Then Charles, one of the most interesting military

geniuses of that century, turned against his other enemies

and for nine years he hacked and burned his way through the

villages and cities of Poland, Saxony, Denmark and the Baltic

provinces, while Peter drilled and trained his soldiers in distant

Russia.

As a result, in the year 1709, in the battle of Poltawa, the

Moscovites destroyed the exhausted armies of Sweden. Charles

continued to be a highly picturesque figure, a wonderful hero

of romance, but in his vain attempt to have his revenge, he

ruined his own country. In the year 1718, he was accidentally

killed or assassinated (we do not know which) and when peace

was made in 1721, in the town of Nystadt, Sweden had lost all

of her former Baltic possessions except Finland. The new

Russian state, created by Peter, had become the leading power

of northern Europe. But already a new rival was on the

way. The Prussian state was taking shape.

THE RISE OF PRUSSIA

THE EXTRAORDINARY RISE OF A LITTLE

STATE IN A DREARY PART OF NORTHERN

GERMANY, CALLED PRUSSIA

THE history of Prussia is the history of a frontier district.

In the ninth century, Charlemagne had transferred the old

centre of civilisation from the Mediterranean to the wild regions

of northwestern Europe. His Frankish soldiers had pushed

the frontier of Europe further and further towards the east.

They had conquered many lands from the heathenish Slavs and

Lithuanians who were living in the plain between the Baltic

Sea and the Carpathian Mountains, and the Franks administered

those outlying districts just as the United States used

to administer her territories before they achieved the dignity

of statehood.

The frontier state of Brandenburg had been originally

founded by Charlemagne to defend his eastern possessions

against raids of the wild Saxon tribes. The Wends, a Slavic

tribe which inhabited that region, were subjugated during the

tenth century and their market-place, by the name of Brennabor,

became the centre of and gave its name to the new province

of Brandenburg.

During the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries, a succession of noble families exercised the functions of

imperial governor in this frontier state. Finally in the

fifteenth century, the House of Hohenzollern made its appear-

ance, and as Electors of Brandenburg, commenced to change a

sandy and forlorn frontier territory into one of the most efficient

empires of the modern world.

These Hohenzollerns, who have just been removed from

the historical stage by the combined forces of Europe and

America, came originally from southern Germany. They were

of very humble origin. In the twelfth century a certain Frederick

of Hohenzollern had made a lucky marriage and had been

appointed keeper of the castle of Nuremberg. His descendants

had used every chance and every opportunity to improve their

power and after several centuries of watchful grabbing, they

had been appointed to the dignity of Elector, the name given to

those sovereign princes who were supposed to elect the Emperors

of the old German Empire. During the Reformation,

they had taken the side of the Protestants and the early

seventeenth century found them among the most powerful of the

north German princes.

During the Thirty Years War, both Protestants and

Catholics had plundered Brandenburg and Prussia with equal

zeal. But under Frederick William, the Great Elector, the

damage was quickly repaired and by a wise and careful use of

all the economic and intellectual forces of the country, a state

was founded in which there was practically no waste.

Modern Prussia, a state in which the individual and his

wishes and aspirations have been entirely absorbed by the

interests of the community as a whole this Prussia dates back

to the father of Frederick the Great. Frederick William I was

a hard working, parsimonious Prussian sergeant, with a great

love for bar-room stories and strong Dutch tobacco, an intense

dislike of all frills and feathers, (especially if they were of

French origin,) and possessed of but one idea. That idea was

Duty. Severe with himself, he tolerated no weakness in his

subjects, whether they be generals or common soldiers. The

relation between himself and his son Frederick was never cordial,

to say the least. The boorish manners of the father offended

the finer spirit of the son. The son's love for French

manners, literature, philosophy and music was rejected by the

father as a manifestation of sissy-ness. There followed a terrible

outbreak between these two strange temperaments. Frederick

tried to escape to England. He was caught and court-

martialed and forced to witness the decapitation of his best

friend who had tried to help him. Thereupon as part of his

punishment, the young prince was sent to a little fortress

somewhere in the provinces to be taught the details of his future

business of being a king. It proved a blessing in disguise.

When Frederick came to the throne in 1740, he knew how his

country was managed from the birth certificate of a pauper's

son to the minutest detail of a complicated annual Budget.

As an author, especially in his book called the ``Anti-

Macchiavelli,'' Frederick had expressed his contempt for the

political creed of the ancient Florentine historian, who had

advised his princely pupils to lie and cheat whenever it was

necessary to do so for the benefit of their country. The ideal

ruler in Frederick's volume was the first servant of his people,

the enlightened despot after the example of Louis XIV. In

practice, however, Frederick, while working for his people

twenty hours a day, tolerated no one to be near him as a

counsellor. His ministers were superior clerks. Prussia was his

private possession, to be treated according to his own wishes.

And nothing was allowed to interfere with the interest of the

state.

In the year 1740 the Emperor Charles VI, of Austria,

died. He had tried to make the position of his only daughter,

Maria Theresa, secure through a solemn treaty, written black

on white, upon a large piece of parchment. But no sooner had

the old emperor been deposited in the ancestral crypt of the

Habsburg family, than the armies of Frederick were marching

towards the Austrian frontier to occupy that part of Silesia for

which (together with almost everything else in central Europe)

Prussia clamored, on account of some ancient and very

doubtful rights of claim. In a number of wars, Frederick

conquered all of Silesia, and although he was often very near

defeat, he maintained himself in his newly acquired territories

against all Austrian counter-attacks.

Europe took due notice of this sudden appearance of a

very powerful new state. In the eighteenth century, the Germans

were a people who had been ruined by the great religious

wars and who were not held in high esteem by any one. Frederick,

by an effort as sudden and quite as terrific as that of

Peter of Russia, changed this attitude of contempt into one

of fear. The internal affairs of Prussia were arranged so

skillfully that the subjects had less reason for complaint than

elsewhere. The treasury showed an annual surplus instead of a

deficit. Torture was abolished. The judiciary system was

improved. Good roads and good schools and good universities,

together with a scrupulously honest administration, made the

people feel that whatever services were demanded of them,

they (to speak the vernacular) got their money's worth.

After having been for several centuries the battle field of

the French and the Austrians and the Swedes and the Danes

and the Poles, Germany, encouraged by the example of Prussia,

began to regain self-confidence. And this was the work of

the little old man, with his hook-nose and his old uniforms covered

with snuff, who said very funny but very unpleasant things

about his neighbours, and who played the scandalous game of

eighteenth century diplomacy without any regard for the truth,

provided he could gain something by his lies. This in spite of

his book, ``Anti-Macchiavelli.'' In the year 1786 the end

came. His friends were all gone. Children he had never had.

He died alone, tended by a single servant and his faithful

dogs, whom he loved better than human beings because, as he

said, they were never ungrateful and remained true to their

friends.

THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM

HOW THE NEWLY FOUNDED NATIONAL OR

DYNASTIC STATES OF EUROPE TRIED TO

MAKE THEMSELVES RICH AND WHAT WAS

MEANT BY THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM

WE have seen how, during the sixteenth and the seventeenth

centuries, the states of our modern world began to take shape.

Their origins were different in almost every case. Some had

been the result of the deliberate effort of a single king. Others

had happened by chance. Still others had been the result of

favourable natural geographic boundaries. But once they had

been founded, they had all of them tried to strengthen their

internal administration and to exert the greatest possible influence

upon foreign affairs. All this of course had cost a great

deal of money. The mediaeval state with its lack of centralised

power did not depend upon a rich treasury. The king got his

revenues from the crown domains and his civil service paid for

itself. The modern centralised state was a more complicated

affair. The old knights disappeared and hired government

officials or bureaucrats took their place. Army, navy, and

internal administration demanded millions. The question then

became where was this money to be found?

Gold and silver had been a rare commodity in the middle

ages. The average man, as I have told you, never saw a gold

piece as long as he lived. Only the inhabitants of the large

cities were familiar with silver coin. The discovery of America

and the exploitation of the Peruvian mines changed all this.

The centre of trade was transferred from the Mediterranean to

the Atlantic seaboard. The old ``commercial cities'' of Italy lost

their financial importance. New ``commercial nations'' took

their place and gold and silver were no longer a curiosity.

Through Spain and Portugal and Holland and England,

precious metals began to find their way to Europe The sixteenth

century had its own writers on the subject of political

economy and they evolved a theory of national wealth which

seemed to them entirely sound and of the greatest possible

benefit to their respective countries. They reasoned that both

gold and silver were actual wealth. Therefore they believed

that the country with the largest supply of actual cash in the

vaults of its treasury and its banks was at the same time the

richest country. And since money meant armies, it followed

that the richest country was also the most powerful and could

rule the rest of the world.

We call this system the ``mercantile system,'' and it was

accepted with the same unquestioning faith with which the

early Christians believed in Miracles and many of the present-

day American business men believe in the Tariff. In practice,

the Mercantile system worked out as follows: To get the

largest surplus of precious metals a country must have a

favourable balance of export trade. If you can export more to

your neighbour than he exports to your own country, he will

owe you money and will be obliged to send you some of his

gold. Hence you gain and he loses. As a result of this creed,

the economic program of almost every seventeenth century

state was as follows:

Try to get possession of as many precious metals

as you can.

Encourage foreign trade in preference to domestic

trade.

Encourage those industries which change raw materials

into exportable finished products.

Encourage a large population, for you will need workmen

for your factories and an agricultural community

does not raise enough workmen.

Let the State watch this process and interfere whenever

it is necessary to do so.

Instead of regarding International Trade as something

akin to a force of nature which would always obey certain natural

laws regardless of man's interference, the people of the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tried to regulate their

commerce by the help of official decrees and royal laws and financial

help on the part of the government.

In the sixteenth century Charles V adopted this Mercantile

System (which was then something entirely new) and introduced

it into his many possessions. Elizabeth of England

flattered him by her imitation. The Bourbons, especially King

Louis XIV, were fanatical adherents of this doctrine and Colbert,

his great minister of finance, became the prophet of Mercantilism

to whom all Europe looked for guidance.

The entire foreign policy of Cromwell was a practical

application of the Mercantile System. It was invariably directed

against the rich rival Republic of Holland. For the Dutch

shippers, as the common-carriers of the merchandise of Europe,

had certain leanings towards free-trade and therefore had

to be destroyed at all cost.

It will be easily understood how such a system must affect

the colonies. A colony under the Mercantile System became

merely a reservoir of gold and silver and spices, which was

to be tapped for the benefit of the home country. The Asiatic,

American and African supply of precious metals and the raw

materials of these tropical countries became a monopoly of

the state which happened to own that particular colony. No

outsider was ever allowed within the precincts and no native

was permitted to trade with a merchant whose ship flew a

foreign flag.

Undoubtedly the Mercantile System encouraged the development

of young industries in certain countries where there

never had been any manufacturing before. It built roads

and dug canals and made for better means of transportation.

It demanded greater skill among the workmen and gave the

merchant a better social position, while it weakened the power

of the landed aristocracy.

On the other hand, it caused very great misery. It made

the natives in the colonies the victims of a most shameless

exploitation. It exposed the citizens of the home country to an

even more terrible fate. It helped in a great measure to turn

every land into an armed camp and divided the world into little

bits of territory, each working for its own direct benefit,

while striving at all times to destroy the power of its neighbours

and get hold of their treasures. It laid so much stress

upon the importance of owning wealth that ``being rich'' came

to be regarded as the sole virtue of the average citizen. Economic

systems come and go like the fashions in surgery and

in the clothes of women, and during the nineteenth century the

Mercantile System was discarded in favor of a system of free

and open competition. At least, so I have been told.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

EUROPE HEARD STRANGE REPORTS OF

SOMETHING WHICH HAD HAPPENED IN

THE WILDERNESS; OF THE NORTH AMERICAN

CONTINENT. THE DESCENDANTS

OF THE MEN WHO HAD PUNISHED KING

CHARLES FOR HIS INSISTENCE UPON HIS

``DIVINE RIGHTS'' ADDED A NEW CHAPTER

TO THE OLD STORY OF THE STRUGGLE

FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT

FOR the sake of convenience, we ought to go back a

few centuries and repeat the early history of the great

struggle for colonial possessions.

As soon as a number of European nations had been

created upon the new basis of national or dynastic interests,

that is to say, during and immediately after the Thirty

Years War, their rulers, backed up by the capital of

their merchants and the ships of their trading companies,

continued the fight for more territory in Asia, Africa and America.

The Spaniards and the Portuguese had been exploring the

Indian Sea and the Pacific Ocean for more than a century ere

Holland and England appeared upon the stage. This proved

an advantage to the latter. The first rough work had already

been done. What is more, the earliest navigators had so often

made themselves unpopular with the Asiatic and American and

African natives that both the English and the Dutch were

welcomed as friends and deliverers. We cannot claim any

superior virtues for either of these two races. But they were

merchants before everything else. They never allowed religious

considerations to interfere with their practical common sense.

During their first relations with weaker races, all European

nations have behaved with shocking brutality. The English and

the Dutch, however, knew better where to draw the dine. Provided

they got their spices and their gold and silver and their taxes,

they were willing to let the native live as it best pleased him.

It was not very difficult for them therefore to establish

themselves in the richest parts of the world. But as soon as

this had been accomplished, they began to fight each other for

still further possessions. Strangely enough, the colonial wars

were never settled in the colonies themselves. They were decided

three thousand miles away by the navies of the contending

countries. It is one of the most interesting principles of ancient

and modern warfare (one of the few reliable laws of

history) that ``the nation which commands the sea is also the

nation which commands the land.'' So far this law has never

failed to work, but the modern airplane may have changed it.

In the eighteenth century, however, there were no flying machines

and it was the British navy which gained for England

her vast American and Indian and African colonies.

The series of naval wars between England and Holland in

the seventeenth century does not interest us here. It ended as

all such encounters between hopelessly ill-matched powers will

end. But the warfare between England and France (her other

rival) is of greater importance to us, for while the superior

British fleet in the end defeated the French navy, a great deal

of the preliminary fighting was done on our own American

continent. In this vast country, both France and England

claimed everything which had been discovered and a lot more

which the eye of no white man had ever seen. In 1497 Cabot

had landed in the northern part of America and twenty-seven

years later, Giovanni Verrazano had visited these coasts. Cabot

had flown the English flag. Verrazano had sailed under the

French flag. Hence both England and France proclaimed

themselves the owners of the entire continent.

During the seventeenth century, some ten small English

colonies had been founded between Maine and the Carolinas.

They were usually a haven of refuge for some particular sect

of English dissenters, such as the Puritans, who in the year

1620 went to New England, or the Quakers, who settled in

Pennsylvania in 1681. They were small frontier communities,

nestling close to the shores of the ocean, where people had

gathered to make a new home and begin life among happier

surroundings, far away from royal supervision and interference.

The French colonies, on the other hand, always remained

a possession of the crown. No Huguenots or Protestants were

allowed in these colonies for fear that they might contaminate

the Indians with their dangerous Protestant doctrines and

would perhaps interfere with the missionary work of the Jesuit

fathers. The English colonies, therefore, had been founded

upon a much healthier basis than their French neighbours and

rivals. They were an expression of the commercial energy of

the English middle classes, while the French settlements were

inhabited by people who had crossed the ocean as servants of the

king and who expected to return to Paris at the first possible chance.

Politically, however, the position of the English colonies

was far from satisfactory. The French had discovered the

mouth of the Saint Lawrence in the sixteenth century. From

the region of the Great Lakes they had worked their way southward,

had descended the Mississippi and had built several fortifications

along the Gulf of Mexico. After a century of exploration,

a line of sixty French forts cut off the English settlements

along the Atlantic seaboard from the interior.

The English land grants, made to the different colonial

companies had given them ``all land from sea to sea.'' This

sounded well on paper, but in practice, British territory

ended where the line of French fortifications began. To break

through this barrier was possible but it took both men and

money and caused a series of horrible border wars in which

both sides murdered their white neighbours, with the help of the

Indian tribes.

As long as the Stuarts had ruled England there had been

no danger of war with France. The Stuarts needed the Bourbons

in their attempt to establish an autocratic form of government

and to break the power of Parliament. But in 1689 the

last of the Stuarts had disappeared from British soil and Dutch

William, the great enemy of Louis XIV succeeded him. From

that time on, until the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France and

England fought for the possession of India and North America.

During these wars, as I have said before, the English navies

invariably beat the French. Cut off from her colonies, France

lost most of her possessions, and when peace was declared, the

entire North American continent had fallen into British hands

and the great work of exploration of Cartier, Champlain, La

Salle, Marquette and a score of others was lost to France.

Only a very small part of this vast domain was inhabited.

From Massachusetts in the north, where the Pilgrims (a sect

of Puritans who were very intolerant and who therefore had

found no happiness either in Anglican England or Calvinist

Holland) had landed in the year 1620, to the Carolinas and

Virginia (the tobacco-raising provinces which had been founded

entirely for the sake of profit), stretched a thin line of

sparsely populated territory. But the men who lived in this

new land of fresh air and high skies were very different from

their brethren of the mother country. In the wilderness they

had learned independence and self-reliance. They were the

sons of hardy and energetic ancestors. Lazy and timourous

people did not cross the ocean in those days. The American

colonists hated the restraint and the lack of breathing space

which had made their lives in the old country so very unhappy.

They meant to be their own masters. This the ruling classes

of England did not seem to understand. The government annoyed

the colonists and the colonists, who hated to be bothered

in this way, began to annoy the British government.

Bad feeling caused more bad feeling. It is not necessary

to repeat here in detail what actually happened and what might

have been avoided if the British king had been more intelligent

than George III or less given to drowsiness and indifference

than his minister, Lord North. The British colonists,

when they understood that peaceful arguments would not

settle the difficulties, took to arms. From being loyal subjects,

they turned rebels, who exposed themselves to the punishment

of death when they were captured by the German

soldiers, whom George hired to do his fighting after the pleasant

custom of that day, when Teutonic princes sold whole

regiments to the highest bidder.

The war between England and her American colonies

lasted seven years. During most of that time, the final success

of the rebels seemed very doubtful. A great number of

the people, especially in the cities, had remained loyal to their

king. They were in favour of a compromise, and would have

been willing to sue for peace. But the great figure of Washington

stood guard over the cause of the colonists.

Ably assisted by a handful of brave men, he used his steadfast

but badly equipped armies to weaken the forces of the king.

Time and again when defeat seemed unavoidable, his strategy

turned the tide of battle. Often his men were ill-fed. During

the winter they lacked shoes and coats and were forced to live

in unhealthy dug-outs. But their trust in their great leader

was absolute and they stuck it out until the final hour of victory.

But more interesting than the campaigns of Washington

or the diplomatic triumphs of Benjamin Franklin who was

in Europe getting money from the French government and

the Amsterdam bankers, was an event which occurred early in

the revolution. The representatives of the different colonies

had gathered in Philadelphia to discuss matters of common

importance. It was the first year of the Revolution. Most

of the big towns of the sea coast were still in the hands of the

British. Reinforcements from England were arriving by the

ship load. Only men who were deeply convinced of the righteousness

of their cause would have found the courage to take

the momentous decision of the months of June and July of

the year 1776.

In June, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a motion

to the Continental Congress that ``these united colonies

are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that

they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and

that all political connection between them and the state of

Great Britain is and ought to be, totally dissolved.''

The motion was seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts.

It was carried on July the second and on July fourth,

it was followed by an official Declaration of Independence,

which was the work of Thomas Jefferson, a serious and exceedingly

capable student of both politics and government and

destined to be one of the most famous of out American presidents.

When news of this event reached Europe, and was followed

by the final victory of the colonists and the adoption of

the famous Constitution of the year 1787 (the first of all written

constitutions) it caused great interest. The dynastic system

of the highly centralised states which had been developed

after the great religious wars of the seventeenth century had

reached the height of its power. Everywhere the palace of

the king had grown to enormous proportions, while the cities

of the royal realm were being surrounded by rapidly growing

acres of slums. The inhabitants of those slums were showing

signs of restlessness. They were quite helpless. But the

higher classes, the nobles and the professional men, they too

were beginning to have certain doubts about the economic and

political conditions under which they lived. The success of

the American colonists showed them that many things were

possible which had been held impossible only a short time

before.

According to the poet, the shot which opened the battle

of Lexington was ``heard around the world.'' That was a bit

of an exaggeration. The Chinese and the Japanese and the

Russians (not to speak of the Australians, who had just been

re-discovered by Captain Cook, whom they killed for his

trouble,) never heard of it at all. But it carried across the

Atlantic Ocean. It landed in the powder house of European

discontent and in France it caused an explosion which rocked

the entire continent from Petrograd to Madrid and buried the

representatives of the old statecraft and the old diplomacy

under several tons of democratic bricks.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PROCLAIMS

THE PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY,

FRATERNITY AND EQUALITY UNTO ALL

THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH

BEFORE we talk about a revolution it is just as well that

we explain just what this word means. In the terms of a

great Russian writer (and Russians ought to know what they

are talking about in this field) a revolution is ``a swift overthrow,

in a few years, of institutions which have taken centuries

to root in the soil, and seem so fixed and immovable that

even the most ardent reformers hardly dare to attack them in

their writings. It is the fall, the crumbling away in a brief

period, of all that up to that time has composed the essence

of social, religious, political and economic life in a nation.''

Such a revolution took place in France in the eighteenth

century when the old civilisation of the country had grown

stale. The king in the days of Louis XIV had become

EVERYTHING and was the state. The Nobility, formerly

the civil servant of the federal state, found itself without any

duties and became a social ornament of the royal court.

This French state of the eighteenth century, however, cost

incredible sums of money. This money had to be produced

in the form of taxes. Unfortunately the kings of France had

not been strong enough to force the nobility and the clergy

to pay their share of these taxes. Hence the taxes were paid

entirely by the agricultural population. But the peasants

living in dreary hovels, no longer in intimate contact with their

former landlords, but victims of cruel and incompetent land

agents, were going from bad to worse. Why should they

work and exert themselves? Increased returns upon their

land merely meant more taxes and nothing for themselves

and therefore they neglected their fields as much as they dared.

Hence we have a king who wanders in empty splendour

through the vast halls of his palaces, habitually followed by

hungry office seekers, all of whom live upon the revenue obtained

from peasants who are no better than the beasts of the

fields. It is not a pleasant picture, but it is not exaggerated.

There was, however, another side to the so-called ``Ancien

Regime'' which we must keep in mind.

A wealthy middle class, closely connected with the nobility

(by the usual process of the rich banker's daughter marrying

the poor baron's son) and a court composed of all the most

entertaining people of France, had brought the polite art of

graceful living to its highest development. As the best brains

of the country were not allowed to occupy themselves with

questions of political economics, they spent their idle hours

upon the discussion of abstract ideas.

As fashions in modes of thought and personal behaviour

are quite as likely to run to extremes as fashion in dress, it

was natural that the most artificial society of that day should

take a tremendous interest in what they considered ``the simple

life.'' The king and the queen, the absolute and unquestioned

proprietors of this country galled France, together with all its

colonies and dependencies, went to live in funny little country

houses all dressed up as milk-maids and stable-boys and played

at being shepherds in a happy vale of ancient Hellas. Around

them, their courtiers danced attendance, their court-musicians

composed lovely minuets, their court barbers devised more

and more elaborate and costly headgear, until from sheer boredom

and lack of real jobs, this whole artificial world of Versailles

(the great show place which Louis XIV had built far

away from his noisy and restless city) talked of nothing but

those subjects which were furthest removed from their own

lives, just as a man who is starving will talk of nothing except

food.

When Voltaire, the courageous old philosopher, playwright,

historian and novelist, and the great enemy of all

religious and political tyranny, began to throw his bombs of

criticism at everything connected with the Established Order

of Things, the whole French world applauded him and his

theatrical pieces played to standing room only. When Jean

Jacques Rousseau waxed sentimental about primitive man

and gave his contemporaries delightful descriptions of the

happiness of the original inhabitants of this planet, (about

whom he knew as little as he did about the children, upon whose

education he was the recognised authority,) all France read

his ``Social Contract'' and this society in which the king and

the state were one, wept bitter tears when they heard Rousseau's

appeal for a return to the blessed days when the real

sovereignty had lain in the hands of the people and when the

king had been merely the servant of his people.

When Montesquieu published his ``Persian Letters'' in

which two distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole existing

society of France topsy-turvy and poke fun at everything

from the king down to the lowest of his six hundred

pastry cooks, the book immediately went through four

editions and assured the writer thousands of readers for his

famous discussion of the ``Spirit of the Laws'' in which the

noble Baron compared the excellent English system with the

backward system of France and advocated instead of an absolute

monarchy the establishment of a state in which the Executive,

the Legislative and the Judicial powers should be in

separate hands and should work independently of each other.

When Lebreton, the Parisian book-seller, announced that

Messieurs Diderot, d'Alembert, Turgot and a score of other

distinguished writers were going to publish an Encyclopaedia

which was to contain ``all the new ideas and the new science

and the new knowledge,'' the response from the side of the

public was most satisfactory, and when after twenty-two years

the last of the twenty-eight volumes had been finished, the

somewhat belated interference of the police could not repress

the enthusiasm with which French society received this most

important but very dangerous contribution to the discussions

of the day.

Here, let me give you a little warning. When you read a

novel about the French revolution or see a play or a movie,

you will easily get the impression that the Revolution was the

work of the rabble from the Paris slums. It was nothing

of the kind. The mob appears often upon the ``evolutionary

stage, but invariably at the instigation and under the

leadership of those middle-class professional men who used the

hungry multitude as an efficient ally in their warfare upon

the king and his court. But the fundamental ideas which

caused the revolution were invented by a few brilliant minds,

and they were at first introduced into the charming drawing-rooms

of the ``Ancien Regime'' to provide amiable diversion

for the much-bored ladies and gentlemen of his Majesty's court.

These pleasant but careless people played with the dangerous

fireworks of social criticism until the sparks fell through

the cracks of the floor, which was old and rotten just

like the rest of the building. Those sparks unfortunately

landed in the basement where age-old rubbish lay in great

confusion. Then there was a cry of fire. But the owner of

the house who was interested in everything except the management

of his property, did not know how to put the small blaze

out. The flame spread rapidly and the entire edifice was consumed

by the conflagration, which we call the Great French Revolution.

For the sake of convenience, we can divide the French

Revolution into two parts. From 1789 to 1791 there was a

more or less orderly attempt to introduce a constitutional

monarchy. This failed, partly through lack of good faith and

stupidity on the part of the monarch himself, partly through

circumstances over which nobody had any control.

From 1792 to 1799 there was a Republic and a first effort

to establish a democratic form of government. But the actual

outbreak of violence had been preceded by many years of

unrest and many sincere but ineffectual attempts at reform.

When France had a debt of 4000 million francs and the

treasury was always empty and there was not a single thing

upon which new taxes could be levied, even good King Louis

(who was an expert locksmith and a great hunter but a very

poor statesman) felt vaguely that something ought to be done.

Therefore he called for Turgot, to be his Minister of Finance.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne, a man in the

early sixties, a splendid representative of the fast disappearing

class of landed gentry, had been a successful governor of a

province and was an amateur political economist of great ability.

He did his best. Unfortunately, he could not perform

miracles. As it was impossible to squeeze more taxes out of

the ragged peasants, it was necessary to get the necessary funds

from the nobility and clergy who had never paid a centime.

This made Turgot the best hated man at the court of Versailles.

Furthermore he was obliged to face the enmity of Marie

Antoinette, the queen, who was against everybody who dared

to mention the word ``economy'' within her hearing. Soon

Turgot was called an unpractical visionary'' and a theoretical-

professor'' and then of course his position became untenable.

In the year 1776 he was forced to resign.

After the ``professor'' there came a man of Practical Business

Sense. He was an industrious Swiss by the name of

Necker who had made himself rich as a grain speculator and

the partner in an international banking house. His ambitious

wife had pushed him into the government service that she

might establish a position for her daughter who afterwards as

the wife of the Swedish minister in Paris, Baron de Stael,

became a famous literary figure of the early nineteenth century.

Necker set to work with a fine display of zeal just as Turgot

had done. In 1781 he published a careful review of the French

finances. The king understood nothing of this ``Compte

Rendu.'' He had just sent troops to America to help the colonists

against their common enemies, the English. This expedition

proved to be unexpectedly expensive and Necker was

asked to find the necessary funds. When instead of producing

revenue, he published more figures and made statistics

and began to use the dreary warning about ``necessary economies''

his days were numbered. In the year 1781 he was

dismissed as an incompetent servant.

After the Professor and the Practical Business Man came

the delightful type of financier who will guarantee everybody

100 per cent. per month on their money if only they will

trust his own infallible system.

He was Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a pushing official,

who had made his career both by his industry and his

complete lack of honesty and scruples. He found the country

heavily indebted, but he was a clever man, willing to oblige

everybody, and he invented a quick remedy. He paid the

old debts by contracting new ones. This method is not new.

The result since time immemorial has been disastrous. In

less than three years more than 800,000,000 francs had been

added to the French debt by this charming Minister of Finance

who never worried and smilingly signed his name to every

demand that was made by His Majesty and by his lovely

Queen, who had learned the habit of spending during the days

of her youth in Vienna.

At last even the Parliament of Paris (a high court of justice

and not a legislative body) although by no means lacking

in loyalty to their sovereign, decided that something must be

done. Calonne wanted to borrow another 80,000,000 francs.

It had been a bad year for the crops and the misery and hunger

in the country districts were terrible. Unless something sensible

were done, France would go bankrupt. The King as always

was unaware of the seriousness of the situation. Would it not

be a good idea to consult the representatives of the people?

Since 1614 no Estates General had been called together. In

view of the threatening panic there was a demand that the

Estates be convened. Louis XVI however, who never could

take a decision, refused to go as far as that.

To pacify the popular clamour he called together a meeting

of the Notables in the year 1787. This merely meant a gathering

of the best families who discussed what could and should

be done, without touching their feudal and clerical privilege

of tax-exemption. It is unreasonable to expect that a certain

class of society shall commit political and economic suicide for

the benefit of another group of fellow-citizens. The 127

Notables obstinately refused to surrender a single one of their

ancient rights. The crowd in the street, being now exceedingly

hungry, demanded that Necker, in whom they had confidence,

be reappointed. The Notables said ``No.'' The crowd

in the street began to smash windows and do other unseemly

things. The Notables fled. Calonne was dismissed.

A new colourless Minister of Finance, the Cardinal

Lomenie de Brienne, was appointed and Louis, driven by the

violent threats of his starving subjects, agreed to call together

the old Estates General as ``soon as practicable.'' This vague

promise of course satisfied no one.

No such severe winter had been experienced for almost a

century. The crops had been either destroyed by floods or had

been frozen to death in the fields. All the olive trees of the

Provence had been killed. Private charity tried to do some-

thing but could accomplish little for eighteen million starving

people. Everywhere bread riots occurred. A generation before

these would have been put down by the army. But the

work of the new philosophical school had begun to bear fruit.

People began to understand that a shotgun is no effective

remedy for a hungry stomach and even the soldiers (who came

from among the people) were no longer to be depended upon.

It was absolutely necessary that the king should do something

definite to regain the popular goodwill, but again he hesitated.

Here and there in the provinces, little independent Republics

were established by followers of the new school. The cry

of ``no taxation without representation'' (the slogan of the

American rebels a quarter of a century before) was heard

among the faithful middle classes. France was threatened with

general anarchy. To appease the people and to increase the

royal popularity, the government unexpectedly suspended the

former very strict form of censorship of books. At once a

flood of ink descended upon France. Everybody, high or

low, criticised and was criticised. More than 2000

pamphlets were published. Lomenie de Brienne was swept away

by a storm of abuse. Necker was hastily called back to placate,

as best he could, the nation-wide unrest. Immediately the stock

market went up thirty per cent. And by common consent, people

suspended judgment for a little while longer. In May of

1789 the Estates General were to assemble and then the wisdom

of the entire nation would speedily solve the difficult problem

of recreating the kingdom of France into a healthy and happy

state.

This prevailing idea, that the combined wisdom of the

people would be able to solve all difficulties, proved disastrous.

It lamed all personal effort during many important months.

Instead of keeping the government in his own hands at this

critical moment, Necker allowed everything to drift. Hence

there was a new outbreak of the acrimonious debate upon the

best ways to reform the old kingdom. Everywhere the power

of the police weakened. The people of the Paris suburbs,

under the leadership of professional agitators, gradually began

to discover their strength, and commenced to play the role

which was to be theirs all through the years of the great unrest,

when they acted as the brute force which was used by the actual

leaders of the Revolution to secure those things which could

not be obtained in a legitimate fashion.

As a sop to the peasants and the middle class, Necker de-

cided that they should be allowed a double representation in

the Estates General. Upon this subject, the Abbe Sieyes then

wrote a famous pamphlet, ``To what does the Third Estate

Amount?'' in which he came to the conclusion that the Third

Estate (a name given to the middle class) ought to amount to

everything, that it had not amounted to anything in the past,

and that it now desired to amount to something. He expressed

the sentiment of the great majority of the people who had the

best interests of the country at heart.

Finally the elections took place under the worst conditions

imaginable. When they were over, 308 clergymen, 285 noblemen

and 621 representatives of the Third Estate packed their

trunks to go to Versailles. The Third Estate was obliged to

carry additional luggage. This consisted of voluminous reports

called ``cahiers'' in which the many complaints and grievances

of their constituents had been written down. The stage

was set for the great final act that was to save France.

The Estates General came together on May 5th, 1789.

The king was in a bad humour. The Clergy and the Nobility

let it be known that they were unwilling to give up a single one

of their privileges. The king ordered the three groups of

representatives to meet in different rooms and discuss their

grievances separately. The Third Estate refused to obey the royal

command. They took a solemn oath to that effect in a squash

court (hastily put in order for the purpose of this illegal meeting)

on the 20th of June, 1789. They insisted that all three

Estates, Nobility, Clergy and Third Estate, should meet together

and so informed His Majesty. The king gave in.

As the ``National Assembly,'' the Estates General began

to discuss the state of the French kingdom. The King got

angry. Then again he hesitated. He said that he would never

surrender his absolute power. Then he went hunting, forgot

all about the cares of the state and when he returned from the

chase he gave in. For it was the royal habit to do the right

thing at the wrong time in the wrong way. When the people

clamoured for A, the king scolded them and gave them nothing.

Then, when the Palace was surrounded by a howling multitude

of poor people, the king surrendered and gave his subjects

what they had asked for. By this time, however, the people

wanted A plus B. The comedy was repeated. When the king

signed his name to the Royal Decree which granted his beloved

subjects A and B they were threatening to kill the entire royal

family unless they received A plus B plus C. And so on,

through the whole alphabet and up to the scaffold.

Unfortunately the king was always just one letter behind.

He never understood this. Even when he laid his head under

the guillotine, he felt that he was a much-abused man who had

received a most unwarrantable treatment at the hands of people

whom he had loved to the best of his limited ability.

Historical ``ifs,'' as I have often warned you, are never of

any value. It is very easy for us to say that the monarchy

might have been saved ``if'' Louis had been a man of greater

energy and less kindness of heart. But the king was not alone.

Even ``if'' he had possessed the ruthless strength of Napoleon,

his career during these difficult days might have been easily

ruined by his wife who was the daughter of Maria Theresa of

Austria and who possessed all the characteristic virtues and

vices of a young girl who had been brought up at the most

autocratic and mediaeval court of that age.

She decided that some action must be taken and planned a

counter-revolution. Necker was suddenly dismissed and loyal

troops were called to Paris. The people, when they heard of

this, stormed the fortress of the Bastille prison, and on the

fourteenth of July of the year 1789, they destroyed this

familiar but much-hated symbol of Autocratic Power

which had long since ceased to be a political prison and

was now used as the city lock-up for pickpockets and second-

story men. Many of the nobles took the hint and left the

country. But the king as usual did nothing. He had been

hunting on the day of the fall of the Bastille and he had shot

several deer and felt very much pleased.

The National Assembly now set to work and on the 4th of

August, with the noise of the Parisian multitude in their ears,

they abolished all privileges. This was followed on the 27th

of August by the ``Declaration of the Rights of Man,'' the

famous preamble to the first French constitution. So far so

good, but the court had apparently not yet learned its lesson.

There was a wide-spread suspicion that the king was again

trying to interfere with these reforms and as a result, on the

5th of October, there was a second riot in Paris. It spread to

Versailles and the people were not pacified until they had

brought the king back to his palace in Paris. They did not

trust him in Versailles. They liked to have him where they

could watch him and control his correspondence with his relatives

in Vienna and Madrid and the other courts of Europe.

In the Assembly meanwhile, Mirabeau, a nobleman who

had become leader of the Third Estate, was beginning to put

order into chaos. But before he could save the position of the

king he died, on the 2nd of April of the year 1791. The king,

who now began to fear for his own life, tried to escape on the

21st of June. He was recognised from his picture on a coin,

was stopped near the village of Varennes by members of the

National Guard, and was brought back to Paris,

In September of 1791, the first constitution of France was

accepted, and the members of the National Assembly went

home. On the first of October of 1791, the legislative assembly

came together to continue the work of the National

Assembly. In this new gathering of popular representatives

there were many extremely revolutionary elements. The

boldest among these were known as the Jacobins, after the old

Jacobin cloister in which they held their political meetings.

These young men (most of them belonging to the professional

classes) made very violent speeches and when the newspapers

carried these orations to Berlin and Vienna, the King of

Prussia and the Emperor decided that they must do something

to save their good brother and sister. They were very busy

just then dividing the kingdom of Poland, where rival political

factions had caused such a state of disorder that the country

was at the mercy of anybody who wanted to take a couple of

provinces. But they managed to send an army to invade

France and deliver the king.

Then a terrible panic of fear swept throughout the land

of France. All the pent-up hatred of years of hunger and

suffering came to a horrible climax. The mob of Paris stormed

the palace of the Tuilleries. The faithful Swiss bodyguards

tried to defend their master, but Louis, unable to make up his

mind, gave order to ``cease firing'' just when the crowd was

retiring. The people, drunk with blood and noise and cheap

wine, murdered the Swiss to the last man, then invaded the

palace, and went after Louis who had escaped into the meeting

hall of the Assembly, where he was immediately suspended of

his office, and from where he was taken as a prisoner to the

old castle of the Temple.

But the armies of Austria and Prussia continued their advance

and the panic changed into hysteria and turned men and

women into wild beasts. In the first week of September of

the year 1792, the crowd broke into the jails and murdered all

the prisoners. The government did not interfere. The Jacobins,

headed by Danton, knew that this crisis meant either the

success or the failure of the revolution, and that only the most

brutal audacity could save them. The Legislative Assembly

was closed and on the 21st of September of the year 1792, a

new National Convention came together. It was a body composed

almost entirely of extreme revolutionists. The king was

formally accused of high treason and was brought before the

Convention. He was found guilty and by a vote of 361 to 360

(the extra vote being that of his cousin the Duke of Orleans)

he was condemned to death. On the 21st of January of the

year 1793, he quietly and with much dignity suffered himself

to be taken to the scaffold. He had never understood what all

the shooting and the fuss had been about. And he had been too

proud to ask questions.

Then the Jacobins turned against the more moderate element

in the convention, the Girondists, called after their southern

district, the Gironde. A special revolutionary tribunal was

instituted and twenty-one of the leading Girondists were

condemned to death. The others committed suicide. They were

capable and honest men but too philosophical and too moderate

to survive during these frightful years.

In October of the year 1793 the Constitution was

suspended by the Jacobins ``until peace should have been

declared.'' All power was placed in the hands of a small committee

of Public Safety, with Danton and Robespierre as its

leaders. The Christian religion and the old chronology were

abolished. The ``Age of Reason'' (of which Thomas Paine had

written so eloquently during the American Revolution) had

come and with it the ``Terror'' which for more than a year killed

good and bad and indifferent people at the rate of seventy or

eighty a day.

The autocratic rule of the King had been destroyed. It

was succeeded by the tyranny of a few people who had such a

passionate love for democratic virtue that they felt compelled

to kill all those who disagreed with them. France was turned

into a slaughter house. Everybody suspected everybody else.

No one felt safe. Out of sheer fear, a few members of the old

Convention, who knew that they were the next candidates for

the scaffold, finally turned against Robespierre, who had

already decapitated most of his former colleagues. Robespierre,

``the only true and pure Democrat,'' tried to kill himself

but failed His shattered jaw was hastily bandaged and

he was dragged to the guillotine. On the 27th of July, of the

year 1794 (the 9th Thermidor of the year II, according to the

strange chronology of the revolution), the reign of Terror came

to an end, and all Paris danced with joy.

The dangerous position of France, however, made it necessary

that the government remain in the hands of a few strong

men, until the many enemies of the revolution should have been

driven from the soil of the French fatherland. While the

half-clad and half-starved revolutionary armies fought their

desperate battles of the Rhine and Italy and Belgium and

Egypt, and defeated every one of the enemies of the Great

Revolution, five Directors were appointed, and they ruled

France for four years. Then the power was vested in the hands

of a successful general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte,

who became ``First Consul'' of France in the year 1799. And

during the next fifteen years, the old European continent became

the laboratory of a number of political experiments, the

like of which the world had never seen before.

NAPOLEON

NAPOLEON was born in the year 1769, the third son

of Carlo Maria Buonaparte, an honest notary public of

the city of Ajaccio in the island of Corsica, and his good

wife, Letizia Ramolino. He therefore was not a Frenchman,

but an Italian whose native island (an old Greek, Carthaginian

and Roman colony in the Mediterranean Sea) had

for years been struggling to regain its independence,

first of all from the Genoese, and after the middle of the

eighteenth century from the French, who had kindly offered

to help the Corsicans in their struggle for freedom and had

then occupied the island for their own benefit.

During the first twenty years of his life, young Napoleon

was a professional Corsican patriot--a Corsican Sinn Feiner,

who hoped to deliver his beloved country from the yoke of the

bitterly hated French enemy. But the French revolution had

unexpectedly recognised the claims of the Corsicans and gradually

Napoleon, who had received a good training at the military

school of Brienne, drifted into the service of his adopted country.

Although he never learned to spell French correctly or

to speak it without a broad Italian accent, he became a Frenchman.

In due time he came to stand as the highest expression

of all French virtues. At present he is regarded as the symbol

of the Gallic genius.

Napoleon was what is called a fast worker. His career

does not cover more than twenty years. In that short span

of time he fought more wars and gained more victories and

marched more miles and conquered more square kilometers and

killed more people and brought about more reforms and generally

upset Europe to a greater extent than anybody (including

Alexander the Great and Jenghis Khan) had ever managed

to do.

He was a little fellow and during the first years of his life

his health was not very good. He never impressed anybody

by his good looks and he remained to the end of his days very

clumsy whenever he was obliged to appear at a social function.

He did not enjoy a single advantage of breeding or birth or

riches. For the greater part of his youth he was desperately

poor and often he had to go without a meal or was obliged

to make a few extra pennies in curious ways.

He gave little promise as a literary genius. When he competed

for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons, his essay

was found to be next to the last and he was number 15 out of

16 candidates. But he overcame all these difficulties through

his absolute and unshakable belief in his own destiny, and in

his own glorious future. Ambition was the main-spring of his

life. The thought of self, the worship of that capital letter

``N'' with which he signed all his letters, and which recurred

forever in the ornaments of his hastily constructed palaces, the

absolute will to make the name Napoleon the most important

thing in the world next to the name of God, these desires carried

Napoleon to a pinnacle of fame which no other man has

ever reached.

When he was a half-pay lieutenant, young Bonaparte was

very fond of the ``Lives of Famous Men'' which Plutarch, the

Roman historian, had written. But he never tried to live up

to the high standard of character set by these heroes of the

older days. Napoleon seems to have been devoid of all those

considerate and thoughtful sentiments which make men

different from the animals. It will be very difficult to decide

with any degree of accuracy whether he ever loved anyone

besides himself. He kept a civil tongue to his mother, but

Letizia had the air and manners of a great lady and after the

fashion of Italian mothers, she knew how to rule her brood of

children and command their respect. For a few years he was

fond of Josephine, his pretty Creole wife, who was the daughter

of a French officer of Martinique and the widow of the

Vicomte de Beauharnais, who had been executed by Robespierre

when he lost a battle against the Prussians. But

the Emperor divorced her when she failed to give him a son

and heir and married the daughter of the Austrian Emperor,

because it seemed good policy.

During the siege of Toulon, where he gained great fame

as commander of a battery, Napoleon studied Macchiavelli

with industrious care. He followed the advice of the Florentine

statesman and never kept his word when it was to his

advantage to break it. The word ``gratitude'' did not occur in

his personal dictionary. Neither, to be quite fair, did he expect

it from others. He was totally indifferent to human suffering.

He executed prisoners of war (in Egypt in 1798) who had

been promised their lives, and he quietly allowed his wounded

in Syria to be chloroformed when he found it impossible to

transport them to his ships. He ordered the Duke of Enghien

to be condemned to death by a prejudiced court-martial and to

be shot contrary to all law on the sole ground that the

``Bourbons needed a warning.'' He decreed that those German

officers who were made prisoner while fighting for their

country's independence should be shot against the nearest wall,

and when Andreas Hofer, the Tyrolese hero, fell into his hands

after a most heroic resistance, he was executed like a common

traitor.

In short, when we study the character of the Emperor, we

begin to understand those anxious British mothers who used

to drive their children to bed with the threat that ``Bonaparte,

who ate little boys and girls for breakfast, would come and get

them if they were not very good.'' And yet, having said these

many unpleasant things about this strange tyrant, who looked

after every other department of his army with the utmost care,

but neglected the medical service, and who ruined his uniforms

with Eau de Cologne because he could not stand the smell of

his poor sweating soldiers; having said all these unpleasant

things and being fully prepared to add many more, I must

confess to a certain lurking feeling of doubt.

Here I am sitting at a comfortable table loaded heavily

with books, with one eye on my typewriter and the other on

Licorice the cat, who has a great fondness for carbon paper,

and I am telling you that the Emperor Napoleon was a most

contemptible person. But should I happen to look out of

the window, down upon Seventh Avenue, and should the endless

procession of trucks and carts come to a sudden halt, and

should I hear the sound of the heavy drums and see the little

man on his white horse in his old and much-worn green uniform,

then I don't know, but I am afraid that I would leave

my books and the kitten and my home and everything else to

follow him wherever he cared to lead. My own grandfather

did this and Heaven knows he was not born to be a hero.

Millions of other people's grandfathers did it. They received

no reward, but they expected none. They cheerfully

gave legs and arms and lives to serve this foreigner, who took

them a thousand miles away from their homes and marched

them into a barrage of Russian or English or Spanish or

Italian or Austrian cannon and stared quietly into space while

they were rolling in the agony of death.

If you ask me for an explanation, I must answer that I

have none. I can only guess at one of the reasons. Napoleon

was the greatest of actors and the whole European continent

was his stage. At all times and under all circumstances

he knew the precise attitude that would impress the spectators

most and he understood what words would make the deepest

impression. Whether he spoke in the Egyptian desert, before

the backdrop of the Sphinx and the pyramids, or addressed

his shivering men on the dew-soaked plains of Italy, made no

difference. At all times he was master of the situation. Even

at the end, an exile on a little rock in the middle of the Atlantic,

a sick man at the mercy of a dull and intolerable British governor,

he held the centre of the stage.

After the defeat of Waterloo, no one outside of a few

trusted friends ever saw the great Emperor. The people of

Europe knew that he was living on the island of St. Helena--

they knew that a British garrison guarded him day and night

--they knew that the British fleet guarded the garrison which

guarded the Emperor on his farm at Longwood. But he was

never out of the mind of either friend or enemy. When illness

and despair had at last taken him away, his silent eyes continued

to haunt the world. Even to-day he is as much of a force

in the life of France as a hundred years ago when people

fainted at the mere sight of this sallow-faced man who stabled

his horses in the holiest temples of the Russian Kremlin, and

who treated the Pope and the mighty ones of this earth as if

they were his lackeys.

To give you a mere outline of his life would demand

couple of volumes. To tell you of his great political reform

of the French state, of his new codes of laws which were

adopted in most European countries, of his activities in every

field of public activity, would take thousands of pages. But

I can explain in a few words why he was so successful during

the first part of his career and why he failed during the last

ten years. From the year 1789 until the year 1804, Napoleon

was the great leader of the French revolution. He was not

merely fighting for the glory of his own name. He defeated

Austria and Italy and England and Russia because he, himself,

and his soldiers were the apostles of the new creed of

``Liberty, Fraternity and Equality'' and were the enemies of

the courts while they were the friends of the people.

But in the year 1804, Napoleon made himself Hereditary

Emperor of the French and sent for Pope Pius VII to come

and crown him, even as Leo III, in the year 800 had crowned

that other great King of the Franks, Charlemagne, whose example

was constantly before Napoleon's eyes.

Once upon the throne, the old revolutionary chieftain became

an unsuccessful imitation of a Habsburg monarch. He

forgot his spiritual Mother, the Political Club of the Jacobins.

He ceased to be the defender of the oppressed. He became the

chief of all the oppressors and kept his shooting squads ready

to execute those who dared to oppose his imperial will. No

one had shed a tear when in the year 1806 the sad remains of

the Holy Roman Empire were carted to the historical dustbin

and when the last relic of ancient Roman glory was destroyed

by the grandson of an Italian peasant. But when the Napoleonic

armies had invaded Spain, had forced the Spaniards to

recognise a king whom they detested, had massacred the poor

Madrilenes who remained faithful to their old rulers, then

public opinion turned against the former hero of Marengo and

Austerlitz and a hundred other revolutionary battles. Then

and only then, when Napoleon was no longer the hero of the

revolution but the personification of all the bad traits of the

Old Regime, was it possible for England to give direction to

the fast-spreading sentiment of hatred which was turning all

honest men into enemies of the French Emperor.

The English people from the very beginning had felt

deeply disgusted when their newspapers told them the gruesome

details of the Terror. They had staged their own great

revolution (during the reign of Charles I) a century before.

It had been a very simple affair compared to the upheaval of

Paris. In the eyes of the average Englishman a Jacobin was

a monster to be shot at sight and Napoleon was the Chief Devil.

The British fleet had blockaded France ever since the year

It had spoiled Napoleon's plan to invade India by way

of Egypt and had forced him to beat an ignominious retreat,

after his victories along the banks of the Nile. And finally,

in the year 1805, England got the chance it had waited for so

long.

Near Cape Trafalgar on the southwestern coast of Spain,

Nelson annihilated the Napoleonic fleet, beyond a possible

chance of recovery. From that moment on, the Emperor was

landlocked. Even so, he would have been able to maintain

himself as the recognised ruler of the continent had he understood

the signs of the times and accepted the honourable peace

which the powers offered him. But Napoleon had been blinded

by the blaze of his own glory. He would recognise no equals.

He could tolerate no rivals. And his hatred turned against

Russia, the mysterious land of the endless plains with its

inexhaustible supply of cannon-fodder.

As long as Russia was ruled by Paul I, the half-witted son

of Catherine the Great, Napoleon had known how to deal with

the situation. But Paul grew more and more irresponsible

until his exasperated subjects were obliged to murder him

(lest they all be sent to the Siberian lead-mines) and the son of

Paul, the Emperor Alexander, did not share his father's affection

for the usurper whom he regarded as the enemy of mankind,

the eternal disturber of the peace. He was a pious man

who believed that he had been chosen by God to deliver the

world from the Corsican curse. He joined Prussia and England

and Austria and he was defeated. He tried five times

and five times he failed. In the year 1812 he once more taunted

Napoleon until the French Emperor, in a blind rage, vowed

that he would dictate peace in Moscow. Then, from far and

wide, from Spain and Germany and Holland and Italy and

Portugal, unwilling regiments were driven northward, that the

wounded pride of the great Emperor might be duly avenged.

The rest of the story is common knowledge. After a march

of two months, Napoleon reached the Russian capital and

established his headquarters in the holy Kremlin. On the night

of September 15 of the year 1812, Moscow caught fire. The

town burned four days. When the evening of the fifth day

came, Napoleon gave the order for the retreat. Two weeks

later it began to snow. The army trudged through mud and

sleet until November the 26th when the river Berezina was

reached. Then the Russian attacks began in all seriousness.

The Cossacks swarmed around the ``Grande Armee'' which

was no longer an army but a mob. In the middle of December

the first of the survivors began to be seen in the German cities

of the East.

Then there were many rumours of an impending revolt.

The time has come,'' the people of Europe said, to free ourselves

from this insufferable yoke.'' And they began to look

for old shotguns which had escaped the eye of the ever-present

French spies. But ere they knew what had happened, Napoleon

was back with a new army. He had left his defeated soldiers

and in his little sleigh had rushed ahead to Paris, making

a final appeal for more troops that he might defend the sacred

soil of France against foreign invasion.

Children of sixteen and seventeen followed him when he

moved eastward to meet the allied powers. On October 16,

18, and 19 of the year 1813, the terrible battle of Leipzig took

place where for three days boys in green and boys in blue

fought each other until the Elbe ran red with blood. On the

afternoon of the 17th of October, the massed reserves of Russian

infantry broke through the French lines and Napoleon

fled.

Back to Paris he went. He abdicated in favour of his small

son, but the allied powers insisted that Louis XVIII, the

brother of the late king Louis XVI, should occupy the French

throne, and surrounded by Cossacks and Uhlans, the dull-eyed

Bourbon prince made his triumphal entry into Paris.

As for Napoleon he was made the sovereign ruler of the

little island of Elba in the Mediterranean where he organised

his stable boys into a miniature army and fought battles on a

chess board.

But no sooner had he left France than the people began

to realise what they had lost. The last twenty years, however

costly, had been a period of great glory. Paris had been the

capital of the world. The fat Bourbon king who had learned

nothing and had forgotten nothing during the days of his

exile disgusted everybody by his indolence.

On the first of March of the year 1815, when the representatives

of the allies were ready to begin the work of unscrambling

the map of Europe, Napoleon suddenly landed near

Cannes. In less than a week the French army had deserted

the Bourbons and had rushed southward to offer their swords

and bayonets to the ``little Corporal.'' Napoleon marched

straight to Paris where he arrived on the twentieth of March.

This time he was more cautious. He offered peace, but the

allies insisted upon war. The whole of Europe arose against

the ``perfidious Corsican.'' Rapidly the Emperor marched

northward that he might crush his enemies before they should

be able to unite their forces. But Napoleon was no longer his

old self. He felt sick. He got tired easily. He slept when he

ought to have been up directing the attack of his advance-

guard. Besides, he missed many of his faithful old generals.

They were dead.

Early in June his armies entered Belgium. On the 16th

of that month he defeated the Prussians under Blucher. But

a subordinate commander failed to destroy the retreating army

as he had been ordered to do.

Two days later, Napoleon met Wellington near Waterloo.

It was the 18th of June, a Sunday. At two o'clock of the

afternoon, the battle seemed won for the French. At three a

speck of dust appeared upon the eastern horizon. Napoleon

believed that this meant the approach of his own cavalry who

would now turn the English defeat into a rout. At four o'clock

he knew better. Cursing and swearing, old Blucher drove

his deathly tired troops into the heart of the fray. The shock

broke the ranks of the guards. Napoleon had no further reserves.

He told his men to save themselves as best they could,

and he fled.

For a second time, he abdicated in favor of his son. Just

one hundred days after his escape from Elba, he was making

for the coast. He intended to go to America. In the year

1803, for a mere song, he had sold the French colony of

Louisiana (which was in great danger of being captured by

the English) to the young American Republic. ``The Americans,''

so he said, ``will be grateful and will give me a little bit

of land and a house where I may spend the last days of my life

in peace and quiet.'' But the English fleet was watching all

French harbours. Caught between the armies of the Allies

and the ships of the British, Napoleon had no choice. The

Prussians intended to shoot him. The English might be more

generous. At Rochefort he waited in the hope that something

might turn up. One month after Waterloo, he received orders

from the new French government to leave French soil inside

of twenty-four hours. Always the tragedian, he wrote a letter

to the Prince Regent of England (George IV, the king, was

in an insane asylum) informing His Royal Highness of his

intention to ``throw himself upon the mercy of his enemies and

like Themistocles, to look for a welcome at the fireside of his

foes . . .

On the 15th of July he went on board the ``Bellerophon,''

and surrendered his sword to Admiral Hotham. At Plymouth

he was transferred to the ``Northumberland'' which carried him

to St. Helena. There he spent the last seven years of his

life. He tried to write his memoirs, he quarrelled with his

keepers and he dreamed of past times. Curiously enough he

returned (at least in his imagination) to his original point of

departure. He remembered the days when he had fought the

battles of the Revolution. He tried to convince himself that

he had always been the true friend of those great principles of

``Liberty, Fraternity and Equality'' which the ragged soldiers

of the convention had carried to the ends of the earth. He

liked to dwell upon his career as Commander-in-Chief and

Consul. He rarely spoke of the Empire. Sometimes he

thought of his son, the Duke of Reichstadt, the little eagle,

who lived in Vienna, where he was treated as a ``poor relation''

by his young Habsburg cousins, whose fathers had trembled at

the very mention of the name of Him. When the end came,

he was leading his troops to victory. He ordered Ney to attack

with the guards. Then he died.

But if you want an explanation of this strange career, if

you really wish to know how one man could possibly rule so

many people for so many years by the sheer force of his will,

do not read the books that have been written about him. Their

authors either hated the Emperor or loved him. You will

learn many facts, but it is more important to ``feel history''

than to know it. Don't read, but wait until you have a chance

to hear a good artist sing the song called ``The Two Grenadiers.''

The words were written by Heine, the great German

poet who lived through the Napoleonic era. The music was

composed by Schumann, a German who saw the Emperor,

the enemy of his country, whenever he came to visit his imperial

father-in-law. The song therefore is the work of two

men who had every reason to hate the tyrant.

Go and hear it. Then you will understand what a thousand

volumes could not possibly tell you.

THE HOLY ALLIANCE

AS SOON AS NAPOLEON HAD BEEN SENT TO

ST. HELENA THE RULERS WHO SO OFTEN

HAD BEEN DEFEATED BY THE HATED

``CORSICAN'' MET AT VIENNA AND TRIED

TO UNDO THE MANY CHANGES THAT HAD

BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE FRENCH

REVOLUTION

THE Imperial Highnesses, the Royal Highnesses, their

Graces the Dukes, the Ministers Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary,

together with the plain Excellencies and their army

of secretaries, servants and hangers-on, whose labours had

been so rudely interrupted by the sudden return of the terrible

Corsican (now sweltering under the hot sun of St. Helena)

went back to their jobs. The victory was duly celebrated with

dinners, garden parties and balls at which the new and very

shocking ``waltz'' was danced to the great scandal of the ladies

and gentlemen who remembered the minuet of the old Regime.

For almost a generation they had lived in retirement. At

last the danger was over. They were very eloquent upon the

subject of the terrible hardships which they had suffered.

And they expected to be recompensed for every penny they

had lost at the hands of the unspeakable Jacobins who had

dared to kill their anointed king, who had abolished wigs and

who had discarded the short trousers of the court of Versailles

for the ragged pantaloons of the Parisian slums.

You may think it absurd that I should mention such a

detail. But, if you please, the Congress of Vienna was one

long succession of such absurdities and for many months the

question of ``short trousers vs. long trousers'' interested the

delegates more than the future settlement of the Saxon or

Spanish problems. His Majesty the King of Prussia went so

far as to order a pair of short ones, that he might give public

evidence of his contempt for everything revolutionary.

Another German potentate, not to be outdone in this noble

hatred for the revolution, decreed that all taxes which his subjects

had paid to the French usurper should be paid a second

time to the legitimate ruler who had loved his people from afar

while they were at the mercy of the Corsican ogre. And so on.

From one blunder to another, until one gasps and exclaims

``but why in the name of High Heaven did not the people

object?'' Why not indeed? Because the people were utterly

exhausted, were desperate, did not care what happened or how

or where or by whom they were ruled, provided there was

peace. They were sick and tired of war and revolution and

reform.

In the eighties of the previous century they had all danced

around the tree of liberty. Princes had embraced their cooks

and Duchesses had danced the Carmagnole with their lackeys

in the honest belief that the Millennium of Equality and

Fraternity had at last dawned upon this wicked world. Instead of

the Millennium they had been visited by the Revolutionary

commissary who had lodged a dozen dirty soldiers in their parlor

and had stolen the family plate when he returned to Paris to

report to his government upon the enthusiasm with which the

``liberated country'' had received the Constitution, which the

French people had presented to their good neighbours.

When they had heard how the last outbreak of revolutionary

disorder in Paris had been suppressed by a young officer, called

Bonaparte, or Buonaparte, who had turned his guns upon the

mob, they gave a sigh of relief. A little less liberty, fraternity

and equality seemed a very desirable thing. But ere long, the

young officer called Buonaparte or Bonaparte became one of

the three consuls of the French Republic, then sole consul and

finally Emperor. As he was much more efficient than any

ruler that had ever been seen before, his hand pressed heavily

upon his poor subjects. He showed them no mercy. He impressed

their sons into his armies, he married their daughters

to his generals and he took their pictures and their statues to

enrich his own museums. He turned the whole of Europe

into an armed camp and killed almost an entire generation of

men.

Now he was gone, and the people (except a few professional

military men) had but one wish. They wanted to be let alone.

For awhile they had been allowed to rule themselves, to vote

for mayors and aldermen and judges. The system had been a

terrible failure. The new rulers had been inexperienced and

extravagant. From sheer despair the people turned to the

representative men of the old Regime. ``You rule us,'' they

said, ``as you used to do. Tell us what we owe you for taxes

and leave us alone. We are busy repairing the damage of the

age of liberty.''

The men who stage-managed the famous congress certainly

did their best to satisfy this longing for rest and quiet.

The Holy Alliance, the main result of the Congress, made the

policeman the most important dignitary of the State and held

out the most terrible punishment to those who dared criticise a

single official act.

Europe had peace, but it was the peace of the cemetery.

The three most important men at Vienna were the Emperor

Alexander of Russia, Metternich, who represented the

interests of the Austrian house of Habsburg, and Talleyrand,

the erstwhile bishop of Autun, who had managed to live

through the different changes in the French government by

the sheer force of his cunning and his intelligence and who

now travelled to the Austrian capital to save for his country

whatever could be saved from the Napoleonic ruin. Like the

gay young man of the limerick, who never knew when he was

slighted, this unbidden guest came to the party and ate just as

heartily as if he had been really invited. Indeed, before long,

he was sitting at the head of the table entertaining everybody

with his amusing stories and gaining the company's good will

by the charm of his manner.

Before he had been in Vienna twenty-four hours he knew

that the allies were divided into two hostile camps. On the

one side were Russia, who wanted to take Poland, and Prussia,

who wanted to annex Saxony; and on the other side were

Austria and England, who were trying to prevent this grab

because it was against their own interest that either Prussia or

Russia should be able to dominate Europe. Talleyrand played

the two sides against each other with great skill and it was due

to his efforts that the French people were not made to suffer

for the ten years of oppression which Europe had endured at

the hands of the Imperial officials. He argued that the French

people had been given no choice in the matter. Napoleon had

forced them to act at his bidding. But Napoleon was gone and

Louis XVIII was on the throne. ``Give him a chance,'' Talleyrand

pleaded. And the Allies, glad to see a legitimate king

upon the throne of a revolutionary country, obligingly yielded

and the Bourbons were given their chance, of which they

made such use that they were driven out after fifteen years.

The second man of the triumvirate of Vienna was Metternich,

the Austrian prime minister, the leader of the foreign

policy of the house of Habsburg. Wenzel Lothar, Prince of

Metternich-Winneburg, was exactly what the name suggests.

He was a Grand Seigneur, a very handsome gentleman with

very fine manners, immensely rich, and very able, but the

product of a society which lived a thousand miles away from

the sweating multitudes who worked and slaved in the cities

and on the farms. As a young man, Metternich had been

studying at the University of Strassburg when the French

Revolution broke out. Strassburg, the city which gave birth

to the Marseillaise, had been a centre of Jacobin activities.

Metternich remembered that his pleasant social life had been

sadly interrupted, that a lot of incompetent citizens had suddenly

been called forth to perform tasks for which they were

not fit, that the mob had celebrated the dawn of the new liberty

by the murder of perfectly innocent persons. He had failed to

see the honest enthusiasm of the masses, the ray of hope in the

eyes of women and children who carried bread and water to

the ragged troops of the Convention, marching through the

city on their way to the front and a glorious death for the

French Fatherland.

The whole thing had filled the young Austrian with disgust.

It was uncivilised. If there were any fighting to be done it

must be done by dashing young men in lovely uniforms, charging

across the green fields on well-groomed horses. But to

turn an entire country into an evil-smelling armed camp where

tramps were overnight promoted to be generals, that was both

wicked and senseless. ``See what came of all your fine ideas,''

he would say to the French diplomats whom he met at a quiet

little dinner given by one of the innumerable Austrian grand-

dukes. ``You wanted liberty, equality and fraternity and you

got Napoleon. How much better it would have been if you

had been contented with the existing order of things.'' And

he would explain his system of ``stability.'' He would advocate

a return to the normalcy of the good old days before the

war, when everybody was happy and nobody talked nonsense

about ``everybody being as good as everybody else.'' In this

attitude he was entirely sincere and as he was an able man of

great strength of will and a tremendous power of persuasion,

he was one of the most dangerous enemies of the Revolutionary

ideas. He did not die until the year 1859, and he therefore

lived long enough to see the complete failure of all his policies

when they were swept aside by the revolution of the year 1848.

He then found himself the most hated man of Europe and

more than once ran the risk of being lynched by angry crowds

of outraged citizens. But until the very last, he remained steadfast

in his belief that he had done the right thing.

He had always been convinced that people preferred peace

to liberty and he had tried to give them what was best for them.

And in all fairness, it ought to be said that his efforts to

establish universal peace were fairly successful. The great powers

did not fly at each other's throat for almost forty years, indeed

not until the Crimean war between Russia and England,

France and Italy and Turkey, in the year 1854. That means

a record for the European continent.

The third hero of this waltzing congress was the Emperor

Alexander. He had been brought up at the court of his grand-

mother, the famous Catherine the Great. Between the lessons

of this shrewd old woman, who taught him to regard the glory

of Russia as the most important thing in life, and those of his

private tutor, a Swiss admirer of Voltaire and Rousseau, who

filled his mind with a general love of humanity, the boy grew

up to be a strange mixture of a selfish tyrant and a sentimental

revolutionist. He had suffered great indignities during the

life of his crazy father, Paul I. He had been obliged to wit-

ness the wholesale slaughter of the Napoleonic battle-fields.

Then the tide had turned. His armies had won the day for the

Allies. Russia had become the saviour of Europe and the Tsar

of this mighty people was acclaimed as a half-god who would

cure the world of its many ills.

But Alexander was not very clever. He did not know

men and women as Talleyrand and Metternich knew them.

He did not understand the strange game of diplomacy. He

was vain (who would not be under the circumstances?) and

loved to hear the applause of the multitude and soon he had

become the main ``attraction'' of the Congress while Metternich

and Talleyrand and Castlereagh (the very able British

representative) sat around a table and drank a bottle of Tokay

and decided what was actually going to be done. They needed

Russia and therefore they were very polite to Alexander, but

the less he had personally to do with the actual work of the

Congress, the better they were pleased. They even encouraged

his plans for a Holy Alliance that he might be fully occupied

while they were engaged upon the work at hand.

Alexander was a sociable person who liked to go to parties

and meet people. Upon such occasions he was happy and gay

but there was a very different element in his character. He

tried to forget something which he could not forget. On the

night of the 23rd of March of the year 1801 he had been sitting

in a room of the St. Michael Palace in Petersburg, waiting for

the news of his father's abdication. But Paul had refused to

sign the document which the drunken officers had placed before

him on the table, and in their rage they had put a scarf

around his neck and had strangled him to death. Then they

had gone downstairs to tell Alexander that he was Emperor of

all the Russian lands.

The memory of this terrible night stayed with the Tsar

who was a very sensitive person. He had been educated in

the school of the great French philosophers who did not believe

in God but in Human Reason. But Reason alone could

not satisfy the Emperor in his predicament. He began to

hear voices and see things. He tried to find a way by which

he could square himself with his conscience. He became very

pious and began to take an interest in mysticism, that strange

love of the mysterious and the unknown which is as old as the

temples of Thebes and Babylon.

The tremendous emotion of the great revolutionary era

had influenced the character of the people of that day in a

strange way. Men and women who had lived through twenty

years of anxiety and fear were no longer quite normal. They

jumped whenever the door-bell rang. It might mean the news

of the ``death on the field of honour'' of an only son. The

phrases about brotherly love'' and liberty'' of the Revolution

were hollow words in the ears of sorely stricken peasants.

They clung to anything that might give them a new hold on

the terrible problems of life. In their grief and misery they

were easily imposed upon by a large number of imposters

who posed as prophets and preached a strange new doctrine

which they dug out of the more obscure passages of the Book

of Revelations.

In the year 1814, Alexander, who had already consulted a

large number of wonder-doctors, heard of a new seeress who

was foretelling the coming doom of the world and was exhorting

people to repent ere it be too late. The Baroness von

Krudener, the lady in question, was a Russian woman of uncertain

age and similar reputation who had been the wife of a

Russian diplomat in the days of the Emperor Paul. She had

squandered her husband's money and had disgraced him by

her strange love affairs. She had lived a very dissolute life

until her nerves had given way and for a while she was not in

her right mind. Then she had been converted by the sight of

the sudden death of a friend. Thereafter she despised all

gaiety. She confessed her former sins to her shoemaker, a

pious Moravian brother, a follower of the old reformer John

Huss, who had been burned for his heresies by the Council of

Constance in the year 1415.

The next ten years the Baroness spent in Germany making

a specialty of the ``conversion'' of kings and princes. To convince

Alexander, the Saviour of Europe, of the error of his

ways was the greatest ambition of her life. And as Alexander,

in his misery, was willing to listen to anybody who brought him

a ray of hope, the interview was easily arranged. On the evening

of the fourth of June of the year 1815, she was admitted

to the tent of the Emperor. She found him reading his Bible.

We do not know what she said to Alexander, but when she

left him three hours later, he was bathed in tears, and vowed

that ``at last his soul had found peace.'' From that day on the

Baroness was his faithful companion and his spiritual adviser.

She followed him to Paris and then to Vienna and the time

which Alexander did not spend dancing he spent at the

Krudener prayer-meetings.

You may ask why I tell you this story in such great detail?

Are not the social changes of the nineteenth century of greater

importance than the career of an ill-balanced woman who had

better be forgotten? Of course they are, but there exist any

number of books which will tell you of these other things with

great accuracy and in great detail. I want you to learn something

more from this history than a mere succession of facts.

I want you to approach all historical events in a frame of mind

that will take nothing for granted. Don't be satisfied with

the mere statement that ``such and such a thing happened then

and there.'' Try to discover the hidden motives behind every

action and then you will understand the world around you

much better and you will have a greater chance to help others,

which (when all is said and done) is the only truly satisfactory

way of living.

I do not want you to think of the Holy Alliance as a piece

of paper which was signed in the year 1815 and lies dead and

forgotten somewhere in the archives of state. It may be forgotten

but it is by no means dead. The Holy Alliance was

directly responsible for the promulgation of the Monroe

Doctrine, and the Monroe Doctrine of America for the Americans

has a very distinct bearing upon your own life. That is

the reason why I want you to know exactly how this document

happened to come into existence and what the real motives were

underlying this outward manifestation of piety and Christian

devotion to duty.

The Holy Alliance was the joint labour of an unfortunate

man who had suffered a terrible mental shock and who was

trying to pacify his much-disturbed soul, and of an ambitious

woman who after a wasted life had lost her beauty and her

attraction and who satisfied her vanity and her desire for

notoriety by assuming the role of self-appointed Messiah of a

new and strange creed. I am not giving away any secrets

when I tell you these details. Such sober minded people as

Castlereagh, Metternich and Talleyrand fully understood

the limited abilities of the sentimental Baroness. It would have

been easy for Metternich to send her back to her German

estates. A few lines to the almighty commander of the imperial

police and the thing was done.

But France and England and Austria depended upon the

good-will of Russia. They could not afford to offend Alexander.

And they tolerated the silly old Baroness because they

had to. And while they regarded the Holy Alliance as utter

rubbish and not worth the paper upon which it was written,

they listened patiently to the Tsar when he read them the first

rough draft of this attempt to create the Brotherhood of Men

upon a basis of the Holy Scriptures. For this is what the

Holy Alliance tried to do, and the signers of the document

solemnly declared that they would ``in the administration of

their respective states and in their political relations with every

other government take for their sole guide the precepts of that

Holy Religion, namely the precepts of Justice, Christian

Charity and Peace, which far from being applicable only to

private concerns must have an immediate influence on the

councils of princes, and must guide all their steps as being the

only means of consolidating human institutions and remedying

their imperfections.'' They then proceeded to promise each

other that they would remain united ``by the bonds of a true

and indissoluble fraternity, and considering each other as

fellow-countrymen, they would on all occasions and in all places

lend each other aid and assistance.'' And more words to the

same effect.

Eventually the Holy Alliance was signed by the Emperor

of Austria, who did not understand a word of it. It was signed

by the Bourbons who needed the friendship of Napoleon's old

enemies. It was signed by the King of Prussia, who hoped to

gain Alexander for his plans for a ``greater Prussia,'' and by

all the little nations of Europe who were at the mercy of Russia.

England never signed, because Castlereagh thought the

whole thing buncombe. The Pope did not sign because he

resented this interference in his business by a Greek-Orthodox

and a Protestant. And the Sultan did not sign because he

never heard of it.

The general mass of the European people, however, soon

were forced to take notice. Behind the hollow phrases of the

Holy Alliance stood the armies of the Quintuple Alliance

which Metternich had created among the great powers. These

armies meant business. They let it be known that the peace

of Europe must not be disturbed by the so-called liberals who

were in reality nothing but disguised Jacobins, and hoped for

a return of the revolutionary days. The enthusiasm for the

great wars of liberation of the years 1812, 1818, 1814 and

1815 had begun to wear off. It had been followed by a sincere

belief in the coming of a happier day. The soldiers who had

borne the brunt of the battle wanted peace and they said so.

But they did not want the sort of peace which the Holy

Alliance and the Council of the European powers had now

bestowed upon them. They cried that they had been betrayed.

But they were careful lest they be heard by a secret-police spy.

The reaction was victorious. It was a reaction caused by men

who sincerely believed that their methods were necessary for

the good of humanity. But it was just as hard to bear as if

their intentions had been less kind. And it caused a great deal

of unnecessary suffering and greatly retarded the orderly

progress of political development.

THE GREAT REACTION

THEY TRIED TO ASSURE THE WORLD AN ERA

OF UNDISTURBED PEACE BY SUPPRESSING

ALL NEW IDEAS. THEY MADE THE

POLICE-SPY THE HIGHEST FUNCTIONARY

IN THE STATE AND SOON THE PRISONS

OF ALL COUNTRIES WERE FILLED WITH

THOSE WHO CLAIMED THAT PEOPLE

HAVE THE RIGHT TO GOVERN THEMSELVES

AS THEY SEE FIT

To undo the damage done by the great Napoleonic flood

was almost impossible. Age-old fences had been washed away.

The palaces of two score dynasties had been damaged to such

an extent that they had to be condemned as uninhabitable.

Other royal residences had been greatly enlarged at the expense

of less fortunate neighbours. Strange odds and ends

of revolutionary doctrine had been left behind by the receding

waters and could not be dislodged without danger to the entire

community. But the political engineers of the Congress did

the best they could and this is what they accomplished.

France had disturbed the peace of the world for so many

years that people had come to fear that country almost

instinctively. The Bourbons, through the mouth of Talleyrand,

had promised to be good, but the Hundred Days had taught

Europe what to expect should Napoleon manage to escape for

a second time. The Dutch Republic, therefore, was changed

into a Kingdom, and Belgium (which had not joined the Dutch

struggle for independence in the sixteenth century and since

then had been part of the Habsburg domains, firs t under Spanish

rule and thereafter under Austrian rule) was made part

of this new kingdom of the Netherlands. Nobody wanted this

union either in the Protestant North or in the Catholic South,

but no questions were asked. It seemed good for the peace

of Europe and that was the main consideration.

Poland had hoped for great things because a Pole, Prince

Adam Czartoryski, was one of the most intimate friends of

Tsar Alexander and had been his constant advisor during the

war and at the Congress of Vienna. But Poland was made a

semi-independent part of Russia with Alexander as her king.

This solution pleased no one and caused much bitter feeling

and three revolutions.

Denmark, which had remained a faithful ally of Napoleon

until the end, was severely punished. Seven years before, an

English fleet had sailed down the Kattegat and without a

declaration of war or any warning had bombarded Copenhagen

and had taken away the Danish fleet, lest it be of value to

Napoleon. The Congress of Vienna went one step further.

It took Norway (which since the union of Calmar of the year

1397 had been united with Denmark) away from Denmark

and gave it to Charles XIV of Sweden as a reward for his betrayal

of Napoleon, who had set him up in the king business.

This Swedish king, curiously enough, was a former French general

by the name of Bernadotte, who had come to Sweden as one

of Napolean's{sic} adjutants, and had been invited to the throne of

that good country when the last of the rulers of the house of

Hollstein-Gottorp had died without leaving either son or

daughter. From 1815 until 1844 he ruled his adopted country

(the language of which he never learned) width great ability. He

was a clever man and enjoyed the respect of both his Swedish

and his Norwegian subjects, but he did not succeed in joining

two countries which nature and history had put asunder. The

dual Scandinavian state was never a success and in 1905,

Norway, in a most peaceful and orderly manner, set up as an

independent kingdom and the Swedes bade her ``good speed''

and very wisely let her go her own way.

The Italians, who since the days of the Renaissance had

been at the mercy of a long series of invaders, also had put

great hopes in General Bonaparte. The Emperor Napoleon,

however, had grievously disappointed them. Instead of the

United Italy which the people wanted, they had been divided

into a number of little principalities, duchies, republics and

the Papal State, which (next to Naples) was the worst governed

and most miserable region of the entire peninsula. The

Congress of Vienna abolished a few of the Napoleonic republics

and in their place resurrected several old principalities

which were given to deserving members, both male and female,

of the Habsburg family.

The poor Spaniards, who had started the great nationalistic

revolt against Napoleon, and who had sacrificed the best blood

of the country for their king, were punished severely when the

Congress allowed His Majesty to return to his domains. This

vicious creature, known as Ferdinand VII, had spent the last

four years of his life as a prisoner of Napoleon. He had improved

his days by knitting garments for the statues of his

favourite patron saints. He celebrated his return by re-introducing

the Inquisition and the torture-chamber, both of which

had been abolished by the Revolution. He was a disgusting

person, despised as much by his subjects as by his four wives,

but the Holy Alliance maintained him upon his legitimate

throne and all efforts of the decent Spaniards to get rid of this

curse and make Spain a constitutional kingdom ended in

bloodshed and executions.

Portugal had been without a king since the year 1807 when

the royal family had fled to the colonies in Brazil. The country

had been used as a base of supply for the armies of

Wellington during the Peninsula war, which lasted from 1808

until 1814. After 1815 Portugal continued to be a sort of

British province until the house of Braganza returned to the

throne, leaving one of its members behind in Rio de Janeiro

as Emperor of Brazil, the only American Empire which lasted

for more than a few years, and which came to an end in 1889

when the country became a republic.

In the east, nothing was done to improve the terrible conditions

of both the Slavs and the Greeks who were still subjects

of the Sultan. In the year 1804 Black George, a Servian

swineherd, (the founder of the Karageorgevich dynasty) had

started a revolt against the Turks, but he had been defeated

by his enemies and had been murdered by one of his supposed

friends, the rival Servian leader, called Milosh Obrenovich,

(who became the founder of the Obrenovich dynasty) and the

Turks had continued to be the undisputed masters of the

Balkans.

The Greeks, who since the loss of their independence, two

thousand years before, had been subjects of the Macedonians,

the Romans, the Venetians and the Turks, had hoped that their

countryman, Capo d'Istria, a native of Corfu and together

with Czartoryski, the most intimate personal friends of

Alexander, would do something for them. But the Congress

of Vienna was not interested in Greeks, but was very much

interested in keeping all ``legitimate'' monarchs, Christian,

Moslem and otherwise, upon their respective thrones. Therefore

nothing was done.

The last, but perhaps the greatest blunder of the Congress

was the treatment of Germany. The Reformation and the

Thirty Years War had not only destroyed the prosperity of the

country, but had turned it into a hopeless political rubbish

heap, consisting of a couple of kingdoms, a few grand-duchies,

a large number of duchies and hundreds of margravates, principalities,

baronies, electorates, free cities and free villages,

ruled by the strangest assortment of potentates that was ever

seen off the comic opera stage. Frederick the Great had

changed this when he created a strong Prussia, but this state

had not survived him by many years.

Napoleon had blue-penciled the demand for independence

of most of these little countries, and only fifty-two out of a

total of more than three hundred had survived the year 1806.

During the years of the great struggle for independence, many

a young soldier had dreamed of a new Fatherland that should

be strong and united. But there can be no union without a

strong leadership, and who was to be this leader?

There were five kingdoms in the German speaking lands.

The rulers of two of these, Austria and Prussia, were kings by

the Grace of God. The rulers of three others, Bavaria, Saxony

and Wurtemberg, were kings by the Grace of Napoleon, and

as they had been the faithful henchmen of the Emperor, their

patriotic credit with the other Germans was therefore not very

good.

The Congress had established a new German Confederation,

a league of thirty-eight sovereign states, under the chairmanship

of the King of Austria, who was now known as the

Emperor of Austria. It was the sort of make-shift arrangement

which satisfied no one. It is true that a German Diet,

which met in the old coronation city of Frankfort. had been

created to discuss matters of ``common policy and importance.''

But in this Diet, thirty-eight delegates represented thirty-eight

different interests and as no decision could be taken without a

unanimous vote (a parliamentary rule which had in previous

centuries ruined the mighty kingdom of Poland), the famous

German Confederation became very soon the laughing stock

of Europe and the politics of the old Empire began to resemble

those of our Central American neighbours in the forties and

the fifties of the last century.

It was terribly humiliating to the people who had sacrificed

everything for a national ideal. But the Congress was not

interested in the private feelings of ``subjects,'' and the debate

was closed.

Did anybody object? Most assuredly. As soon as the first

feeling of hatred against Napoleon had quieted down--as soon

as the enthusiasm of the great war had subsided--as soon as

the people came to a full realisation of the crime that had been

committed in the name of ``peace and stability'' they began to

murmur. They even made threats of open revolt. But what

could they do? They were powerless. They were at the mercy

of the most pitiless and efficient police system the world had

ever seen.

The members of the Congress of Vienna honestly and sincerely

believed that ``the Revolutionary Principle had led to

the criminal usurpation of the throne by the former emperor

Napoleon.'' They felt that they were called upon to eradicate

the adherents of the so-called ``French ideas'' just as Philip II

had only followed the voice of his conscience when he burned

Protestants or hanged Moors. In the beginning of the sixteenth

century a man who did not believe in the divine right

of the Pope to rule his subjects as he saw fit was a ``heretic''

and it was the duty of all loyal citizens to kill him. In the

beginning of the nineteenth century, on the continent of Europe,

a man who did not believe in the divine right of his king to

rule him as he or his Prime Minister saw fit, was a ``heretic,'' and

it was the duty of all loyal citizens to denounce him to the nearest

policeman and see that he got punished.

But the rulers of the year 1815 had learned efficiency in

the school of Napoleon and they performed their task much

better than it had been done in the year 1517. The period

between the year 1815 and the year 1860 was the great era of

the political spy. Spies were everywhere. They lived in palaces

and they were to be found in the lowest gin-shops. They

peeped through the key-holes of the ministerial cabinet and

they listened to the conversations of the people who were taking

the air on the benches of the Municipal Park. They guarded

the frontier so that no one might leave without a duly viseed

passport and they inspected all packages, that no books with

dangerous ``French ideas'' should enter the realm of their

Royal masters. They sat among the students in the lecture

hall and woe to the Professor who uttered a word against the

existing order of things. They followed the little boys and

girls on their way to church lest they play hookey.

In many of these tasks they were assisted by the clergy.

The church had suffered greatly during the days of the

revolution. The church property had been confiscated. Several

priests had been killed and the generation that had learned its

cathechism from Voltaire and Rousseau and the other French

philosophers had danced around the Altar of Reason when

the Committee of Public Safety had abolished the worship of

God in October of the year 1793. The priests had followed the

``emigres'' into their long exile. Now they returned in the

wake of the allied armies and they set to work with a vengeance.

Even the Jesuits came back in 1814 and resumed their

former labours of educating the young. Their order had been

a little too successful in its fight against the enemies of the

church. It had established ``provinces'' in every part of the

world, to teach the natives the blessings of Christianity, but

soon it had developed into a regular trading company which

was for ever interfering with the civil authorities. During the

reign of the Marquis de Pombal, the great reforming minister

of Portugal, they had been driven out of the Portuguese lands

and in the year 1773 at the request of most of the Catholic

powers of Europe, the order had been suppressed by Pope

Clement XIV. Now they were back on the job, and preached

the principles of obedience'' and love for the legitimate

dynasty'' to children whose parents had hired shopwindows that

they might laugh at Marie Antoinette driving to the scaffold

which was to end her misery.

But in the Protestant countries like Prussia, things were

not a whit better. The great patriotic leaders of the year 1812,

the poets and the writers who had preached a holy war upon the

usurper, were now branded as dangerous ``demagogues.'' Their

houses were searched. Their letters were read. They were

obliged to report to the police at regular intervals and give an

account of themselves. The Prussian drill master was let loose

in all his fury upon the younger generation. When a party of

students celebrated the tercentenary of the Reformation with

noisy but harmless festivities on the old Wartburg, the Prussian

bureaucrats had visions of an imminent revolution. When

a theological student, more honest than intelligent, killed a

Russian government spy who was operating in Germany, the

universities were placed under police-supervision and professors

were jailed or dismissed without any form of trial.

Russia, of course, was even more absurd in these anti-

revolutionary activities. Alexander had recovered from his attack

of piety. He was gradually drifting toward melancholia. He

well knew his own limited abilities and understood how at

Vienna he had been the victim both of Metternich and the

Krudener woman. More and more he turned his back upon the

west and became a truly Russian ruler whose interests lay in

Constantinople, the old holy city that had been the first teacher

of the Slavs. The older he grew, the harder he worked and the

less he was able to accomplish. And while he sat in his study,

his ministers turned the whole of Russia into a land of military

barracks.

It is not a pretty picture. Perhaps I might have shortened

this description of the Great Reaction. But it is just as well

that you should have a thorough knowledge of this era. It was

not the first time that an attempt had been made to set the

clock of history back. The result was the usual one.

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE

THE LOVE OF NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE,

HOWEVER WAS TOO STRONG TO BE

DESTROYED IN THIS WAY. THE SOUTH

AMERICANS WERE THE FIRST TO REBEL

AGAINST THE REACTIONARY MEASURES

OF THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA, GREECE

AND BELGIUM AND SPAIN AND A LARGE

NUMBER OF OTHER COUNTRIES OF THE

EUROPEAN CONTINENT FOLLOWED SUIT

AND THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS

FILLED WITH THE RUMOUR OF MANY

WARS OF INDEPENDENCE

IT will serve no good purpose to say ``if only the Congress

of Vienna had done such and such a thing instead of taking

such and such a course, the history of Europe in the nineteenth

century would have been different.'' The Congress of Vienna

was a gathering of men who had just passed through a great

revolution and through twenty years of terrible and almost

continuous warfare. They came together for the purpose of

giving Europe that ``peace and stability'' which they thought

that the people needed and wanted. They were what we call

reactionaries. They sincerely believed in the inability of the

mass of the people to rule themselves. They re-arranged the

map of Europe in such a way as seemed to promise the greatest

possibility of a lasting success. They failed, but not through

any premeditated wickedness on their part. They were, for the

greater part, men of the old school who remembered the happier

days of their quiet youth and ardently wished a return of that

blessed period. They failed to recognise the strong hold which

many of the revolutionary principles had gained upon the people

of the European continent. That was a misfortune but

hardly a sin. But one of the things which the French Revolution

had taught not only Europe but America as well, was the

right of people to their own ``nationality.''

Napoleon, who respected nothing and nobody, was utterly

ruthless in his dealing with national and patriotic aspirations.

But the early revolutionary generals had proclaimed the new

doctrine that ``nationality was not a matter of political

frontiers or round skulls and broad noses, but a matter of the

heart and soul.'' While they were teaching the French children

the greatness of the French nation, they encouraged Spaniards

and Hollanders and Italians to do the same thing. Soon

these people, who all shared Rousseau's belief in the superior

virtues of Original Man, began to dig into their past and found,

buried beneath the ruins of the feudal system, the bones of the

mighty races of which they supposed themselves the feeble

descendants.

The first half of the nineteenth century was the era of the

great historical discoveries. Everywhere historians were busy

publishing mediaeval charters and early mediaeval chronicles

and in every country the result was a new pride in the old

fatherland. A great deal of this sentiment was based upon the

wrong interpretation of historical facts. But in practical politics,

it does not matter what is true, but everything depends

upon what the people believe to be true. And in most countries

both the kings and their subjects firmly believed in the glory

and fame of their ancestors.

The Congress of Vienna was not inclined to be sentimental.

Their Excellencies divided the map of Europe according to the

best interests of half a dozen dynasties and put ``national

aspirations'' upon the Index, or list of forbidden books, together

with all other dangerous ``French doctrines.''

But history is no respecter of Congresses. For some reason

or other (it may be an historical law, which thus far has

escaped the attention of the scholars) ``nations'' seemed to be

necessary for the orderly development of human society and

the attempt to stem this tide was quite as unsuccessful as the

Metternichian effort to prevent people from thinking.

Curiously enough the first trouble began in a very distant

part of the world, in South America. The Spanish colonies

of that continent had been enjoying a period of relative independence

during the many years of the great Napoleonic wars.

They had even remained faithful to their king when he was

taken prisoner by the French Emperor and they had refused

to recognise Joseph Bonaparte, who had in the year 1808 been

made King of Spain by order of his brother.

Indeed, the only part of America to get very much upset

by the Revolution was the island of Haiti, the Espagnola of

Columbus' first trip. Here in the year 1791 the French Convention,

in a sudden outburst of love and human brotherhood,

had bestowed upon their black brethren all the privileges hitherto

enjoyed by their white masters. Just as suddenly they had

repented of this step, but the attempt to undo the original

promise led to many years of terrible warfare between General

Leclerc, the brother-in-law of Napoleon, and Toussaint l'Ouverture,

the negro chieftain. In the year 1801, Toussaint was

asked to visit Leclerc and discuss terms of peace. He received

the solemn promise that he would not be molested. He trusted

his white adversaries, was put on board a ship and shortly

afterwards died in a French prison. But the negroes gained

their independence all the same and founded a Republic.

Incidentally they were of great help to the first great South

American patriot in his efforts to deliver his native country

from the Spanish yoke.

Simon Bolivar, a native of Caracas in Venezuela, born in

the year 1783, had been educated in Spain, had visited Paris

where he had seen the Revolutionary government at work, had

lived for a while in the United States and had returned to his

native land where the widespread discontent against Spain,

the mother country, was beginning to take a definite form.

In the year 1811, Venezuela declared its independence and

Bolivar became one of the revolutionary generals. Within

two months, the rebels were defeated and Bolivar fled.

For the next five years he was the leader of an apparently

lost cause. He sacrificed all his wealth and he would not have

been able to begin his final and successful expedition without

the support of the President of Haiti. Thereafter the revolt

spread all over South America and soon it appeared that Spain

was not able to suppress the rebellion unaided. She asked for

the support of the Holy Alliance.

This step greatly worried England. The British shippers

had succeeded the Dutch as the Common Carriers of the world

and they expected to reap heavy profits from a declaration of

independence on the part of all South America. They had

hopes that the United States o?America would interfere but

the Senate had no such plans and in the House, too, there were

many voices which declared that Spain ought to be given a

free hand.

Just then, there was a change of ministers in England.

The Whigs went out and the Tories came in. George Canning

became secretary of State. He dropped a hint that England

would gladly back up the American government with all the

might of her fleet, if said government would declare its

disapproval of the plans of the Holy Alliance in regard to the

rebellious colonies of the southern continent. President Monroe

thereupon, on the 2nd of December of the year 1823, addressed

Congress and stated that: ``America would consider

any attempt on the part of the allied powers to extend their

system to any portion of this western hemisphere as dangerous

to our peace and safety,'' and gave warning that ``the American

government would consider such action on the part of the

Holy Alliance as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition

toward the United States.'' Four weeks later, the text of the

``Monroe Doctrine'' was printed in the English newspapers and

the members of the Holy Alliance were forced to make their

choice.

Metternich hesitated. Personally he would have been willing

to risk the displeasure of the United States (which had

allowed both its army and navy to fall into neglect since the end

of the Anglo-American war of the year 1812.) But Canning's

threatening attitude and trouble on the continent forced him

to be careful. The expedition never took place and South

America and Mexico gained their independence.

As for the troubles on the continent of Europe, they were

coming fast and furious. The Holy Alliance had sent French

troops to Spain to act as guardians of the peace in the year

Austrian troops had been used for a similar purpose in

Italy when the ``Carbonari'' (the secret society of the Charcoal

Burners) were making propaganda for a united Italy and had

caused a rebellion against the unspeakable Ferdinand of

Naples.

Bad news also came from Russia where the death of Alexander

had been the sign for a revolutionary outbreak in St.

Petersburg, a short but bloody upheaval, the so-called Dekaberist

revolt (because it took place in December,) which ended

with the hanging of a large number of good patriots who had

been disgusted by the reaction of Alexander's last years and

had tried to give Russia a constitutional form of government.

But worse was to follow. Metternich had tried to assure

himself of the continued support of the European courts by a

series of conferences at Aix-la-Chapelle at Troppau at

Laibach and finally at Verona. The delegates from the

different powers duly travelled to these agreeable watering

places where the Austrian prime minister used to spend

his summers. They always promised to do their best

to suppress revolt but they were none too certain of their

success. The spirit of the people was beginning to be ugly and

especially in France the position of the king was by no means

satisfactory.

The real trouble however began in the Balkans, the gateway

to western Europe through which the invaders of that

continent had passed since the beginning of time. The first

outbreak was in Moldavia, the ancient Roman province of

Dacia which had been cut off from the Empire in the third

century. Since then, it had been a lost land, a sort of Atlantis,

where the people had continued to speak the old Roman tongue

and still called themselves Romans and their country Roumania.

Here in the year 1821, a young Greek, Prince Alexander

Ypsilanti, began a revolt against the Turks. He told his followers

that they could count upon the support of Russia. But

Metternich's fast couriers were soon on their way to St Petersburg

and the Tsar, entirely persuaded by the Austrian arguments

in favor of ``peace and stability,'' refused to help. Ypsilanti

was forced to flee to Austria where he spent the next seven

years in prison.

In the same year, 1821, trouble began in Greece. Since

1815 a secret society of Greek patriots had been preparing

the way for a revolt. Suddenly they hoisted the flag of

independence in the Morea (the ancient Peloponnesus) and drove

the Turkish garrisons away. The Turks answered in the usual

fashion. They took the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople,

who was regarded as their Pope both by the Greeks and by

many Russians, and they hanged him on Easter Sunday of the

year 1821, together with a number of his bishops. The Greeks

came back with a massacre of all the Mohammedans in

Tripolitsa, the capital of the Morea and the Turks retaliated

by an attack upon the island of Chios, where they murdered

25,000 Christians and sold 45,000 others as slaves into Asia and

Egypt.

Then the Greeks appealed to the European courts, but

Metternich told them in so many words that they could ``stew

in their own grease,'' (I am not trying to make a pun, but I

am quoting His Serene Highness who informed the Tsar that

this ``fire of revolt ought to burn itself out beyond the pale

of civilisation) and the frontiers were closed to those volunteers

who wished to go to the rescue of the patriotic Hellenes.

Their cause seemed lost. At the request of Turkey, an Egyptian

army was landed in the Morea and soon the Turkish flag

was again flying from the Acropolis, the ancient stronghold of

Athens. The Egyptian army then pacified the country ``a la

Turque,'' and Metternich followed the proceedings with quiet

interest, awaiting the day when this ``attempt against the peace

of Europe'' should be a thing of the past.

Once more it was England which upset his plans. The

greatest glory of England does not lie in her vast colonial

possessions, in her wealth or her navy, but in the quiet heroism

and independence of her average citizen. The Englishman

obeys the law because he knows that respect for the rights of

others marks the difference between a dog-kennel and civilised

society. But he does not recognize the right of others to interfere

with his freedom of thought. If his country does something

which he believes to be wrong, he gets up and says so

and the government which he attacks will respect him and will

give him full protection against the mob which to-day, as in

the time of Socrates, often loves to destroy those who surpass

it in courage or intelligence. There never has been a good

cause, however unpopular or however distant, which has not

counted a number of Englishmen among its staunchest adherents.

The mass of the English people are not different from

those in other lands. They stick to the business at hand and

have no time for unpractical ``sporting ventures.'' But they

rather admire their eccentric neighbour who drops everything

to go and fight for some obscure people in Asia or Africa and

when he has been killed they give him a fine public funeral and

hold him up to their children as an example of valor and chivalry.

Even the police spies of the Holy Alliance were powerless

against this national characteristic. In the year 1824, Lord

Byron, a rich young Englishman who wrote the poetry over

which all Europe wept, hoisted the sails of his yacht and started

south to help the Greeks. Three months later the news spread

through Europe that their hero lay dead in Missolonghi,

the last of the Greek strongholds. His lonely death

caught the imagination of the people. In all countries, societies

were formed to help the Greeks. Lafayette, the grand old

man of the American revolution, pleaded their cause in France.

The king of Bavaria sent hundreds of his officers. Money and

supplies poured in upon the starving men of Missolonghi.

In England, George Canning, who had defeated the plans

of the Holy Alliance in South America, was now prime minis-

ter. He saw his chance to checkmate Metternich for a second

time. The English and Russian fleets were already in the

Mediterranean. They were sent by governments which dared

no longer suppress the popular enthusiasm for the cause of the

Greek patriots. The French navy appeared because France,

since the end of the Crusades, had assumed the role of the

defender of the Christian faith in Mohammedan lands. On October

20 of the year 1827, the ships of the three nations attacked

the Turkish fleet in the bay of Navarino and destroyed it.

Rarely has the news of a battle been received with such general

rejoicing. The people of western Europe and Russia who

enjoyed no freedom at home consoled themselves by fighting

an imaginary war of liberty on behalf of the oppressed Greeks.

In the year 1829 they had their reward. Greece became an

independent nation and the policy of reaction and stability

suffered its second great defeat.

It would be absurd were I to try, in this short volume, to

give you a detailed account of the struggle for national

independence in all other countries. There are a large number of

excellent books devoted to such subjects. I have described the

struggle for the independence of Greece because it was the first

successful attack upon the bulwark of reaction which the Congress

of Vienna had erected to ``maintain the stability of Europe.''

That mighty fortress of suppression still held out and

Metternich continued to be in command. But the end was

near.

In France the Bourbons had established an almost unbearable

rule of police officials who were trying to undo the work

of the French revolution, with an absolute disregard of the

regulations and laws of civilised warfare. When Louis

XVIII died in the year 1824, the people had enjoyed nine

years of ``peace'' which had proved even more unhappy than

the ten years of war of the Empire. Louis was succeeded by

his brother, Charles X.

Louis had belonged to that famous Bourbon family which,

although it never learned anything, never forgot anything.

The recollection of that morning in the town of Hamm, when

news had reached him of the decapitation of his brother,

remained a constant warning of what might happen to those

kings who did not read the signs of the times aright. Charles,

on the other hand, who had managed to run up private debts of

fifty million francs before he was twenty years of age, knew

nothing, remembered nothing and firmly intended to learn

nothing. As soon as he had succeeded his brother, he established

a government ``by priests, through priests and for

priests,'' and while the Duke of Wellington, who made this remark,

cannot be called a violent liberal, Charles ruled in such

a way that he disgusted even that trusted friend of law and

order. When he tried to suppress the newspapers which dared

to criticise his government, and dismissed the Parliament because

it supported the Press, his days were numbered.

On the night of the 27th of July of the year 1830, a revolution

took place in Paris. On the 30th of the same month, the

king fled to the coast and set sail for England. In this way

the ``famous farce of fifteen years'' came to an end and the

Bourbons were at last removed from the throne of France.

They were too hopelessly incompetent. France then might

have returned to a Republican form of government, but such

a step would not have been tolerated by Metternich.

The situation was dangerous enough. The spark of rebellion

had leaped beyond the French frontier and had set fire to

another powder house filled with national grievances. The new

kingdom of the Netherlands had not been a success. The Belgian

and the Dutch people had nothing in common and their

king, William of Orange (the descendant of an uncle of William

the Silent), while a hard worker and a good business man,

was too much lacking in tact and pliability to keep the peace

among his uncongenial subjects. Besides, the horde of priests

which had descended upon France, had at once found its way

into Belgium and whatever Protestant William tried to do was

howled down by large crowds of excited citizens as a fresh attempt

upon the ``freedom of the Catholic church.'' On the 25th

of August there was a popular outbreak against the Dutch

authorities in Brussels. Two months later, the Belgians

declared themselves independent and elected Leopold of Coburg,

the uncle of Queen Victoria of England, to the throne.

That was an excellent solution of the difficulty. The two

countries, which never ought to have been united, parted their

ways and thereafter lived in peace and harmony and behaved

like decent neighbours.

News in those days when there were only a few short railroads,

travelled slowly, but when the success of the French

and the Belgian revolutionists became known in Poland there

was an immediate clash between the Poles and their Russian

rulers which led to a year of terrible warfare and ended with a

complete victory for the Russians who ``established order along

the banks of the Vistula'' in the well-known Russian fashion

Nicholas the first, who had succeeded his brother Alexander in

1825, firmly believed in the Divine Right of his own family,

and the thousands of Polish refugees who had found shelter

in western Europe bore witness to the fact that the principles

of the Holy Alliance were still more than a hollow phrase in

Holy Russia.

In Italy too there was a moment of unrest. Marie Louise

Duchess of Parma and wife of the former Emperor Napoleon,

whom she had deserted after the defeat of Waterloo, was

driven away from her country, and in the Papal state the

exasperated people tried to establish an independent Republic.

But the armies of Austria marched to Rome and soon every

thing was as of old. Metternich continued to reside at the Ball

Platz, the home of the foreign minister of the Habsburg

dynasty, the police spies returned to their job, and peace

reigned supreme. Eighteen more years were to pass before a

second and more successful attempt could be made to deliver

Europe from the terrible inheritance of the Vienna Congress.

Again it was France, the revolutionary weather-cock of

Europe, which gave the signal of revolt. Charles X had been

succeeded by Louis Philippe, the son of that famous Duke of

Orleans who had turned Jacobin, had voted for the death of his

cousin the king, and had played a role during the early days

of the revolution under the name of ``Philippe Egalite'' or

``Equality Philip.'' Eventually he had been killed when

Robespierre tried to purge the nation of all ``traitors,'' (by

which name he indicated those people who did not share his own

views) and his son had been forced to run away from the

revolutionary army. Young Louis Philippe thereupon had

wandered far and wide. He had taught school in Switzerland

and had spent a couple of years exploring the unknown ``far

west'' of America. After the fall of Napoleon he had returned

to Paris. He was much more intelligent than his Bourbon

cousins. He was a simple man who went about in the public

parks with a red cotton umbrella under his arm, followed by a

brood of children like any good housefather. But France had

outgrown the king business and Louis did not know this until

the morning of the 24th of February, of the year 1848, when

a crowd stormed the Tuilleries and drove his Majesty away and

proclaimed the Republic.

When the news of this event reached Vienna, Metternich

expressed the casual opinion that this was only a repetition

of the year 1793 and that the Allies would once more be obliged

to march upon Paris and make an end to this very unseemly

democratic row. But two weeks later his own Austrian capital

was in open revolt. Metternich escaped from the mob through

the back door of his palace, and the Emperor Ferdinand was

forced to give his subjects a constitution which embodied most

of the revolutionary principles which his Prime Minister had

tried to suppress for the last thirty-three years.

This time all Europe felt the shock. Hungary declared itself

independent, and commenced a war against the Habsburgs

under the leadership of Louis Kossuth. The unequal

struggle lasted more than a year. It was finally suppressed by

the armies of Tsar Nicholas who marched across the Carpathian

mountains and made Hungary once more safe for autocracy.

The Habsburgs thereupon established extraordinary

court-martials and hanged the greater part of the Hungarian

patriots whom they had not been able to defeat in open battle.

As for Italy, the island of Sicily declared itself independent

from Naples and drove its Bourbon king away. In the Papal

states the prime minister, Rossi, was murdered and the Pope

was forced to flee. He returned the next year at the head of a

French army which remained in Rome to protect His Holiness

against his subjects until the year 1870. Then it was

called back to defend France against the Prussians, and

Rome became the capital of Italy. In the north, Milan and

Venice rose against their Austrian masters. They were supported

by king Albert of Sardinia, but a strong Austrian army

under old Radetzky marched into the valley of the Po, defeated

the Sardinians near Custozza and Novara and forced

Albert to abdicate in favour of his son, Victor Emanuel, who

a few years later was to be the first king of a united Italy.

In Germany the unrest of the year 1848 took the form of a

great national demonstration in favour of political unity and a

representative form of government. In Bavaria, the king who

had wasted his time and money upon an Irish lady who posed as

a Spanish dancer--(she was called Lola Montez and lies buried

in New York's Potter's Field)--was driven away by the enraged

students of the university. In Prussia, the king was

forced to stand with uncovered head before the coffins of those

who had been killed during the street fighting and to promise a

constitutional form of government. And in March of the year

1849, a German parliament, consisting of 550 delegates from

all parts of the country came together in Frankfort and proposed

that king Frederick William of Prussia should be the

Emperor of a United Germany.

Then, however, the tide began to turn. Incompetent Ferdinand

had abdicated in favour of his nephew Francis Joseph.

The well-drilled Austrian army had remained faithful to their

war-lord. The hangman was given plenty of work and the

Habsburgs, after the nature of that strangely cat-like family,

once more landed upon their feet and rapidly strengthened

their position as the masters of eastern and western Europe.

They played the game of politics very adroitly and used the

jealousies of the other German states to prevent the elevation

of the Prussian king to the Imperial dignity. Their long train-

ing in the art of suffering defeat had taught them the value of

patience. They knew how to wait. They bided their time

and while the liberals, utterly untrained in practical politics,

talked and talked and talked and got intoxicated by their own

fine speeches, the Austrians quietly gathered their forces, dismissed

the Parliament of Frankfort and re-established the old

and impossible German confederation which the Congress of

Vienna had wished upon an unsuspecting world.

But among the men who had attended this strange Parliament

of unpractical enthusiasts, there was a Prussian country

squire by the name of Bismarck, who had made good use of his

eyes and ears. He had a deep contempt for oratory. He knew

(what every man of action has always known) that nothing

is ever accomplished by talk. In his own way he was a sincere

patriot. He had been trained in the old school of diplomacy

and he could outlie his opponents just as he could outwalk

them and outdrink them and outride them.

Bismarck felt convinced that the loose confederation

of little states must be changed into a strong united country

if it would hold its own against the other European powers.

Brought up amidst feudal ideas of loyalty, he decided that

the house of Hohenzollern, of which he was the most faithful

servant, should rule the new state, rather than the incompetent

Habsburgs. For this purpose he must first get rid of the

Austrian influence, and he began to make the necessary

preparations for this painful operation.

Italy in the meantime had solved her own problem, and had

rid herself of her hated Austrian master. The unity of Italy

was the work of three men, Cavour, Mazzini and Garibaldi.

Of these three, Cavour, the civil-engineer with the short-sighted

eyes and the steel-rimmed glasses, played the part of the careful

political pilot. Mazzini, who had spent most of his days

in different European garrets, hiding from the Austrian police,

was the public agitator, while Garibaldi, with his band of red-

shirted rough-riders, appealed to the popular imagination.

Mazzini and Garibaldi were both believers in the Republican

form of government. Cavour, however, was a monarch-

ist, and the others who recognised his superior ability in such

matters of practical statecraft, accepted his decision and sacrificed

their own ambitions for the greater good of their beloved

Fatherland.

Cavour felt towards the House of Sardinia as Bismarck

did towards the Hohenzollern family. With infinite care and

great shrewdness he set to work to jockey the Sardinian King

into a position from which His Majesty would be able to assume

the leadership of the entire Italian people. The unsettled

political conditions in the rest of Europe greatly helped him in

his plans and no country contributed more to the independence

of Italy than her old and trusted (and often distrusted)

neighbour, France.

In that turbulent country, in November of the year 1852,

the Republic had come to a sudden but not unexpected end.

Napoleon III the son of Louis Bonaparte the former King of

Holland, and the small nephew of a great uncle, had re-

established an Empire and had made himself Emperor ``by the

Grace of God and the Will of the People.''

This young man, who had been educated in Germany and

who mixed his French with harsh Teutonic gutturals (just

as the first Napoleon had always spoken the language of his

adopted country with a strong Italian accent) was trying very

hard to use the Napoleonic tradition for his own benefit. But

he had many enemies and did not feel very certain of his hold

upon his ready-made throne. He had gained the friendship

of Queen Victoria but this had not been a difficult task, as the

good Queen was not particularly brilliant and was very susceptible

to flattery. As for the other European sovereigns,

they treated the French Emperor with insulting haughtiness

and sat up nights devising new ways in which they could show

their upstart ``Good Brother'' how sincerely they despised him.

Napoleon was obliged to find a way in which he could break

this opposition, either through love or through fear. He well

knew the fascination which the word ``glory'' still held for his

subjects. Since he was forced to gamble for his throne he

decided to play the game of Empire for high stakes. He used

an attack of Russia upon Turkey as an excuse for bringing

about the Crimean war in which England and France combined

against the Tsar on behalf of the Sultan. It was a very

costly and exceedingly unprofitable enterprise. Neither

France nor England nor Russia reaped much glory.

But the Crimean war did one good thing. It gave Sardinia

a chance to volunteer on the winning side and when peace was

declared it gave Cavour the opportunity to lay claim to the

gratitude of both England and France.

Having made use of the international situation to get Sardinia

recognised as one of the more important powers of Europe,

the clever Italian then provoked a war between Sardinia

and Austria in June of the year 1859. He assured himself of

the support of Napoleon in exchange for the provinces of

Savoy and the city of Nice, which was really an Italian town.

The Franco-Italian armies defeated the Austrians at Magenta

and Solferino, and the former Austrian provinces and duchies

were united into a single Italian kingdom. Florence became

the capital of this new Italy until the year 1870 when the

French recalled their troops from Home to defend France

against the Germans. As soon as they were gone, the Italian

troops entered the eternal city and the House of Sardinia took

up its residence in the old Palace of the Quirinal which an

ancient Pope had built on the ruins of the baths of the Emperor

Constantine.

The Pope, however, moved across the river Tiber and hid

behind the walls of the Vatican, which had been the home of

many of his predecessors since their return from the exile of

Avignon in the year 1377. He protested loudly against this

high-handed theft of his domains and addressed letters of appeal

to those faithful Catholics who were inclined to sympathise

with him in his loss. Their number, however, was small,

and it has been steadily decreasing. For, once delivered from

the cares of state, the Pope was able to devote all his time to

questions of a spiritual nature. Standing high above the petty

quarrels of the European politicians, the Papacy assumed a new

dignity which proved of great benefit to the church and made

it an international power for social and religious progress

which has shown a much more intelligent appreciation of modern

economic problems than most Protestant sects.

In this way, the attempt of the Congress of Vienna to

settle the Italian question by making the peninsula an

Austrian province was at last undone.

The German problem however remained as yet unsolved.

It proved the most difficult of all. The failure of the revolution

of the year 1848 had led to the wholesale migration of the more

energetic and liberal elements among the German people.

These young fellows had moved to the United States of America,

to Brazil, to the new colonies in Asia and America. Their

work was continued in Germany but by a different sort of men.

In the new Diet which met at Frankfort, after the collapse

of the German Parliament and the failure of the Liberals to

establish a united country, the Kingdom of Prussia was represented

by that same Otto von Bismarck from whom we parted

a few pages ago. Bismarck by now had managed to gain the

complete confidence of the king of Prussia. That was all he

asked for. The opinion of the Prussian parliament or of the

Prussian people interested him not at all. With his own eyes

he had seen the defeat of the Liberals. He knew that he

would not be able to get rid of Austria without a war and he

began by strengthening the Prussian army. The Landtag, exasperated

at his high-handed methods, refused to give him the

necessary credits. Bismarck did not even bother to discuss

the matter. He went ahead and increased his army with the

help of funds which the Prussian house of Peers and the king

placed at his disposal. Then he looked for a national cause

which could be used for the purpose of creating a great wave

of patriotism among all the German people.

In the north of Germany there were the Duchies of Schleswig

and Holstein which ever since the middle ages had been a

source of trouble. Both countries were inhabited by a certain

number of Danes and a certain number of Germans, but although

they were governed by the King of Denmark, they

were not an integral part of the Danish State and this led to

endless difficulties. Heaven forbid that I should revive this

forgotten question which now seems settled by the acts of the

recent Congress of Versailles. But the Germans in Holstein

were very loud in their abuse of the Danes and the Danes in

Schleswig made a great ado of their Danishness, and all Europe

was discussing the problem and German Mannerchors

and Turnvereins listened to sentimental speeches about the

``lost brethren'' and the different chancelleries were trying to

discover what it was all about, when Prussia mobilised her

armies to ``save the lost provinces.'' As Austria, the official

head of the German Confederation, could not allow Prussia

to act alone in such an important matter, the Habsburg troops

were mobilised too and the combined armies of the two great

powers crossed the Danish frontiers and after a very brave

resistance on the part of the Danes, occupied the two duchies.

The Danes appealed to Europe, but Europe was otherwise

engaged and the poor Danes were left to their fate.

Bismarck then prepared the scene for the second number

upon his Imperial programme. He used the division of the

spoils to pick a quarrel with Austria. The Habsburgs fell into

the trap. The new Prussian army, the creation of Bismarck and

his faithful generals, invaded Bohemia and in less than six

weeks, the last of the Austrian troops had been destroyed at

Koniggratz and Sadowa and the road to Vienna lay open. But

Bismarck did not want to go too far. He knew that he would

need a few friends in Europe. He offered the defeated

Habsburgs very decent terms of peace, provided they would

resign their chairmanship of the Confederation. He was less

merciful to many of the smaller German states who had taken

the side of the Austrians, and annexed them to Prussia. The

greater part of the northern states then formed a new organisation,

the so-called North German Confederacy, and victorious

Prussia assumed the unofficial leadership of the German

people.

Europe stood aghast at the rapidity with which the work of

consolidation had been done. England was quite indifferent

but France showed signs of disapproval. Napoleon's hold

upon the French people was steadily diminishing. The Crimean

war had been costly and had accomplished nothing.

A second adventure in the year 1863, when a French army

had tried to force an Austrian Grand-Duke by the name of

Maximilian upon the Mexican people as their Emperor, had

come to a disastrous end as soon as the American Civil War had

been won by the North. For the Government at Washington

had forced the French to withdraw their troops and this had

given the Mexicans a chance to clear their country of the enemy

and shoot the unwelcome Emperor.

It was necessary to give the Napoleonic throne a new

coat of glory-paint. Within a few years the North German

Confederation would be a serious rival of France. Napoleon

decided that a war with Germany would be a good thing for his

dynasty. He looked for an excuse and Spain, the poor victim

of endless revolutions, gave him one.

Just then the Spanish throne happened to be vacant. It

had been offered to the Catholic branch of the house of Hohenzollern.

The French government had objected and the Hohenzollerns

had politely refused to accept the crown. But

Napoleon, who was showing signs of illness, was very much

under the influence of his beautiful wife, Eugenie de Montijo,

the daughter of a Spanish gentleman and the grand-daughter

of William Kirkpatrick, an American consul at Malaga, where

the grapes come from. Eugenie, although shrewd enough, was

as badly educated as most Spanish women of that day. She

was at the mercy of her spiritual advisers and these worthy

gentlemen felt no love for the Protestant King of Prussia. ``Be

bold,'' was the advice of the Empress to her husband, but she

omitted to add the second half of that famous Persian proverb

which admonishes the hero to ``be bold but not too bold.''

Napoleon, convinced of the strength of his army, addressed

himself to the king of Prussia and insisted that the king give

him assurances that ``he would never permit another candidature

of a Hohenzollern prince to the Spanish crown.'' As

the Hohenzollerns had just declined the honour, the demand

was superfluous, and Bismarck so informed the French government.

But Napoleon was not satisfied.

It was the year 1870 and King William was taking the

waters at Ems. There one day he was approached by the

French minister who tried to re-open the discussion. The king

answered very pleasantly that it was a fine day and that the

Spanish question was now closed and that nothing more

remained to be said upon the subject. As a matter of

routine, a report of this interview was telegraphed to

Bismarck, who handled all foreign affairs. Bismarck edited

the dispatch for the benefit of the Prussian and French

press. Many people have called him names for doing

this. Bismarck however could plead the excuse that the doctoring

of official news, since time immemorial, had been one

of the privileges of all civilised governments. When the ``edited''

telegram was printed, the good people in Berlin felt that

their old and venerable king with his nice white whiskers had

been insulted by an arrogant little Frenchman and the equally

good people of Paris flew into a rage because their perfectly

courteous minister had been shown the door by a Royal Prussian

flunkey.

And so they both went to war and in less than two months,

Napoleon and the greater part of his army were prisoners of

the Germans. The Second Empire had come to an end and the

Third Republic was making ready to defend Paris against the

German invaders. Paris held out for five long months. Ten

days before the surrender of the city, in the nearby palace of

Versailles, built by that same King Louis XIV who had been

such a dangerous enemy to the Germans, the King of Prussia

was publicly proclaimed German Emperor and a loud booming

of guns told the hungry Parisians that a new German Empire

had taken the place of the old harmless Confederation of Teutonic

states and stateless.

In this rough way, the German question was finally settled.

By the end of the year 1871, fifty-six years after the memorable

gathering at Vienna, the work of the Congress had been entirely

undone. Metternich and Alexander and Talleyrand had tried

to give the people of Europe a lasting peace. The methods

they had employed had caused endless wars and revolutions and

the feeling of a common brotherhood of the eighteenth century

was followed by an era of exaggerated nationalism which has

not yet come to an end.

THE AGE OF THE ENGINE

BUT WHILE THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE WERE

FIGHTING FOR THEIR NATIONAL

INDEPENDENCE, THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY

LIVED HAD BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED

BY A SERIES OF INVENTIONS, WHICH HAD

MADE THE CLUMSY OLD STEAM ENGINE

OF THE 18TH CENTURY THE MOST FAITHFUL

AND EFFICIENT SLAVE OF MAN

THE greatest benefactor of the human race died more than

half a million years ago. He was a hairy creature with a low

brow and sunken eyes, a heavy jaw and strong tiger-like teeth.

He would not have looked well in a gathering of modern scientists,

but they would have honoured him as their master. For

he had used a stone to break a nut and a stick to lift up a heavy

boulder. He was the inventor of the hammer and the lever, our

first tools, and he did more than any human being who came

after him to give man his enormous advantage over the other

animals with whom he shares this planet.

Ever since, man has tried to make his life easier by the use

of a greater number of tools. The first wheel (a round disc

made out of an old tree) created as much stir in the communities

of 100,000 B.C. as the flying machine did only a few years

ago.

In Washington, the story is told of a director of the Patent

Office who in the early thirties of the last century suggested

that the Patent Office be abolished, because ``everything that

possibly could be invented had been invented.'' A similar

feeling must have spread through the prehistoric world when

the first sail was hoisted on a raft and the people were able

to move from place to place without rowing or punting or

pulling from the shore.

Indeed one of the most interesting chapters of history is

the effort of man to let some one else or something else do his

work for him, while he enjoyed his leisure, sitting in the sun

or painting pictures on rocks, or training young wolves and

little tigers to behave like peaceful domestic animals.

Of course in the very olden days; it was always possible

to enslave a weaker neighbour and force him to do the unpleasant

tasks of life. One of the reasons why the Greeks and

Romans, who were quite as intelligent as we are, failed to

devise more interesting machinery, was to be found in the wide-

spread existence of slavery. Why should a great mathematician

waste his time upon wires and pulleys and cogs and fill

the air with noise and smoke when he could go to the marketplace

and buy all the slaves he needed at a very small expense?

And during the middle-ages, although slavery had been

abolished and only a mild form of serfdom survived, the guilds

discouraged the idea of using machinery because they thought

this would throw a large number of their brethren out of

work. Besides, the Middle-Ages were not at all interested

in producing large quantities of goods. Their tailors and butchers

and carpenters worked for the immediate needs of the small

community in which they lived and had no desire to compete

with their neighbours, or to produce more than was strictly

necessary.

During the Renaissance, when the prejudices of the Church

against scientific investigations could no longer be enforced as

rigidly as before, a large number of men began to devote their

lives to mathematics and astronomy and physics and chemistry.

Two years before the beginning of the Thirty Years War,

John Napier, a Scotchman, had published his little book which

described the new invention of logarithms. During the war it-

self, Gottfried Leibnitz of Leipzig had perfected the system of

infinitesimal calculus. Eight years before the peace of Westphalia,

Newton, the great English natural philosopher, was

born, and in that same year Galileo, the Italian astronomer,

died. Meanwhile the Thirty Years War had destroyed the prosperity

of central Europe and there was a sudden but very general

interest in ``alchemy,'' the strange pseudo-science of the

middle-ages by which people hoped to turn base metals into

gold. This proved to be impossible but the alchemists in their

laboratories stumbled upon many new ideas and greatly helped

the work of the chemists who were their successors.

The work of all these men provided the world with a solid

scientific foundation upon which it was possible to build even

the most complicated of engines, and a number of practical

men made good use of it. The Middle-Ages had used wood for

the few bits of necessary machinery. But wood wore out

easily. Iron was a much better material but iron was scarce

except in England. In England therefore most of the smelting

was done. To smelt iron, huge fires were needed. In the

beginning, these fires had been made of wood, but gradually

the forests had been used up. Then ``stone coal'' (the petrified

trees of prehistoric times) was used. But coal as you

know has to be dug out of the ground and it has to be transported

to the smelting ovens and the mines have to be kept

dry from the ever invading waters.

These were two problems which had to be solved at once.

For the time being, horses could still be used to haul the coal-

wagons, but the pumping question demanded the application

of special machinery. Several inventors were busy trying to

solve the difficulty. They all knew that steam would have to

be used in their new engine. The idea of the steam engine was

very old. Hero of Alexandria, who lived in the first century

before Christ, has described to us several bits of machinery

which were driven by steam. The people of the Renaissance

had played with the notion of steam-driven war chariots. The

Marquis of Worcester, a contemporary of Newton, in his book

of inventions, tells of a steam engine. A little later, in the year

1698, Thomas Savery of London applied for a patent for a

pumping engine. At the same time, a Hollander, Christian

Huygens, was trying to perfect an engine in which gun-powder

was used to cause regular explosions in much the same way as

we use gasoline in our motors.

All over Europe, people were busy with the idea. Denis

Papin, a Frenchman, friend and assistant of Huygens, was

making experiments with steam engines in several countries.

He invented a little wagon that was driven by steam, and a

paddle-wheel boat. But when he tried to take a trip in his

vessel, it was confiscated by the authorities on a complaint of

the boatmen's union, who feared that such a craft would deprive

them of their livelihood. Papin finally died in London in

great poverty, having wasted all his money on his inventions.

But at the time of his death, another mechanical enthusiast,

Thomas Newcomen, was working on the problem of a new

steam-pump. Fifty years later his engine was improved upon

by James Watt, a Glasgow instrument maker. In the year

1777, he gave the world the first steam engine that proved of

real practical value.

But during the centuries of experiments with a ``heat-engine,''

the political world had greatly changed. The British

people had succeeded the Dutch as the common-carriers of the

world's trade. They had opened up new colonies. They took

the raw materials which the colonies produced to England,

and there they turned them into finished products, and then

they exported the finished goods to the four corners of the

world. During the seventeenth century, the people of Georgia

and the Carolinas had begun to grow a new shrub which gave

a strange sort of woolly substance, the so-called ``cotton wool.''

After this had been plucked, it was sent to England and there

the people of Lancastershire wove it into cloth. This weaving

was done by hand and in the homes of the workmen. Very soon

a number of improvements were made in the process of weaving.

In the year 1730, John Kay invented the ``fly shuttle.''

In 1770, James Hargreaves got a patent on his ``spinning

jenny.'' Eli Whitney, an American, invented the cotton-gin,

which separated the cotton from its seeds, a job which had

previously been done by hand at the rate of only a pound a day.

Finally Richard Arkwright and the Reverend Edmund Cartwright

invented large weaving machines, which were driven by

water power. And then, in the eighties of the eighteenth

century, just when the Estates General of France had begun

those famous meetings which were to revolutionise the political

system of Europe, the engines of Watt were arranged in such

a way that they could drive the weaving machines of Arkwright,

and this created an economic and social revolution

which has changed human relationship in almost every part

of the world.

As soon as the stationary engine had proved a success, the

inventors turned their attention to the problem of propelling

boats and carts with the help of a mechanical contrivance.

Watt himself designed plans for a ``steam locomotive,'' but

ere he had perfected his ideas, in the year 1804, a locomotive

made by Richard Trevithick carried a load of twenty tons at

Pen-y-darran in the Wales mining district.

At the same time an American jeweller and portrait-painter

by the name of Robert Fulton was in Paris, trying to convince

Napoleon that with the use of his submarine boat, the

Nautilus,'' and his steam-boat,'' the French might be able to

destroy the naval supremacy of England.

Fulton's idea of a steamboat was not original. He had

undoubtedly copied it from John Fitch, a mechanical genius of

Connecticut whose cleverly constructed steamer had first navigated

the Delaware river as early as the year 1787. But Napoleon

and his scientific advisers did not believe in the practical

possibility of a self-propelled boat, and although the Scotch-

built engine of the little craft puffed merrily on the Seine, the

great Emperor neglected to avail himself of this formidable

weapon which might have given him his revenge for Trafalgar.

As for Fulton, he returned to the United States and, being

a practical man of business, he organised a successful steamboat

company together with Robert R. Livingston, a signer of

the Declaration of Independence, who was American Minister

to France when Fulton was in Paris, trying to sell his invention.

The first steamer of this new company, the ``Clermont,''

which was given a monopoly of all the waters of New York

State, equipped with an engine built by Boulton and Watt of

Birmingham in England, began a regular service between New

York and Albany in the year 1807.

As for poor John Fitch, the man who long before any one

else had used the ``steam-boat'' for commercial purposes, he

came to a sad death. Broken in health and empty of purse, he

had come to the end of his resources when his fifth boat, which

was propelled by means of a screw-propeller, had been destroyed.

His neighbours jeered at him as they were to laugh a

hundred years later when Professor Langley constructed his

funny flying machines. Fitch had hoped to give his country

an easy access to the broad rivers of the west and his countrymen

preferred to travel in flat-boats or go on foot. In the year

1798, in utter despair and misery, Fitch killed himself by taking

poison.

But twenty years later, the ``Savannah,'' a steamer of 1850

tons and making six knots an hour, (the Mauretania goes just

four times as fast,) crossed the ocean from Savannah to Liverpool

in the record time of twenty-five days. Then there was

an end to the derision of the multitude and in their enthusiasm

the people gave the credit for the invention to the wrong man.

Six years later, George Stephenson, a Scotchman, who had

been building locomotives for the purpose of hauling coal from

the mine-pit to smelting ovens and cotton factories, built his

famous ``travelling engine'' which reduced the price of coal by

almost seventy per cent and which made it possible to establish

the first regular passenger service between Manchester and

Liverpool, when people were whisked from city to city at the

unheard-of speed of fifteen miles per hour. A dozen years

later, this speed had been increased to twenty miles per hour.

At the present time, any well-behaved flivver (the direct descendant

of the puny little motor-driven machines of Daimler

and Levassor of the eighties of the last century) can do better

than these early ``Puffing Billies.''

But while these practically-minded engineers were improving

upon their rattling heat engines,'' a group of pure''

scientists (men who devote fourteen hours of each day to the

study of those ``theoretical'' scientific phenomena without which

no mechanical progress would be possible) were following a

new scent which promised to lead them into the most secret and

hidden domains of Nature.

Two thousand years ago, a number of Greek and Roman

philosophers (notably Thales of Miletus and Pliny who was

killed while trying to study the eruption of Vesuvius of the

year 79 when Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried beneath

the ashes) had noticed the strange antics of bits of straw and of

feather which were held near a piece of amber which was being

rubbed with a bit of wool. The schoolmen of the Middle Ages

had not been interested in this mysterious ``electric'' power.

But immediately after the Renaissance, William Gilbert, the

private physician of Queen Elizabeth, wrote his famous treatise

on the character and behaviour of Magnets. During the

Thirty Years War Otto von Guericke, the burgomaster of

Magdeburg and the inventor of the air-pump, constructed the

first electrical machine. During the next century a large number

of scientists devoted themselves to the study of electricity.

Not less than three professors invented the famous Leyden

Jar in the year 1795. At the same time, Benjamin Franklin,

the most universal genius of America next to Benjamin Thomson

(who after his flight from New Hampshire on account of

his pro-British sympathies became known as Count Rumford)

was devoting his attention to this subject. He discovered that

lightning and the electric spark were manifestations of the same

electric power and continued his electric studies until the end of

his busy and useful life. Then came Volta with his famous

``electric pile'' and Galvani and Day and the Danish professor

Hans Christian Oersted and Ampere and Arago and Faraday,

all of them diligent searchers after the true nature of the electric

forces.

They freely gave their discoveries to the world and Samuel

Morse (who like Fulton began his career as an artist) thought

that he could use this new electric current to transmit messages

from one city to another. He intended to use copper

wire and a little machine which he had invented. People

laughed at him. Morse therefore was obliged to finance his

own experiments and soon he had spent all his money and

then he was very poor and people laughed even louder. He

then asked Congress to help him and a special Committee on

Commerce promised him their support. But the members of

Congress were not at all interested and Morse had to wait

twelve years before he was given a small congressional appropriation.

He then built a ``telegraph'' between Baltimore and

Washington. In the year 1887 he had shown his first successful

``telegraph'' in one of the lecture halls of New York

University. Finally, on the 24th of May of the year 1844 the

first long-distance message was sent from Washington to

Baltimore and to-day the whole world is covered with telegraph

wires and we can send news from Europe to Asia in a few

seconds. Twenty-three years later Alexander Graham Bell used

the electric current for his telephone. And half a century

afterwards Marconi improved upon these ideas by inventing a

system of sending messages which did away entirely with the old-

fashioned wires.

While Morse, the New Englander, was working on his

``telegraph,'' Michael Faraday, the Yorkshire-man, had constructed

the first ``dynamo.'' This tiny little machine was completed

in the year 1881 when Europe was still trembling as a

result of the great July revolutions which had so severely upset

the plans of the Congress of Vienna. The first dynamo grew

and grew and grew and to-day it provides us with heat and

with light (you know the little incandescent bulbs which Edison,

building upon French and English experiments of the forties

and fifties, first made in 1878) and with power for all sorts

of machines. If I am not mistaken the electric-engine will

soon entirely drive out the ``heat engine'' just as in the olden

days the more highly-organised prehistoric animals drove out

their less efficient neighbours.

Personally (but I know nothing about machinery) this will

make me very happy. For the electric engine which can be run

by waterpower is a clean and companionable servant of mankind

but the ``heat-engine,'' the marvel of the eighteenth century,

is a noisy and dirty creature for ever filling the world with

ridiculous smoke-stacks and with dust and soot and asking

that it be fed with coal which has to be dug out of mines at

great inconvenience and risk to thousands of people.

And if I were a novelist and not a historian, who must stick

to facts and may not use his imagination, I would describe the

happy day when the last steam locomotive shall be taken to the

Museum of Natural History to be placed next to the skeleton

of the Dynosaur and the Pteredactyl and the other extinct

creatures of a by-gone age.

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION

BUT THE NEW ENGINES WERE VERY

EXPENSIVE AND ONLY PEOPLE OF WEALTH

COULD AFFORD THEM. THE OLD CARPENTER

OR SHOEMAKER WHO HAD BEEN HIS

OWN MASTER IN HIS LITTLE WORKSHOP

WAS OBLIGED TO HIRE HIMSELF OUT TO

THE OWNERS OF THE BIG MECHANICAL

TOOLS, AND WHILE HE MADE MORE

MONEY THAN BEFORE, HE LOST HIS

FORMER INDEPENDENCE AND HE DID NOT

LIKE THAT

IN the olden days the work of the world had been done by

independent workmen who sat in their own little workshops in

the front of their houses, who owned their tools, who boxed the

ears of their own apprentices and who, within the limits prescribed

by their guilds, conducted their business as it pleased

them. They lived simple lives, and were obliged to work very

long hours, but they were their own masters. If they got up

and saw that it was a fine day to go fishing, they went fishing

and there was no one to say ``no.''

But the introduction of machinery changed this. A machine

is really nothing but a greatly enlarged tool. A railroad

train which carries you at the speed of a mile a minute is

in reality a pair of very fast legs, and a steam hammer which

flattens heavy plates of iron is just a terrible big fist, made of

steel.

But whereas we can all afford a pair of good legs and a

good strong fist, a railroad train and a steam hammer and a

cotton factory are very expensive pieces of machinery and they

are not owned by a single man, but usually by a company of

people who all contribute a certain sum and then divide the

profits of their railroad or cotton mill according to the amount

of money which they have invested.

Therefore, when machines had been improved until they

were really practicable and profitable, the builders of those

large tools, the machine manufacturers, began to look for customers

who could afford to pay for them in cash.

During the early middle ages, when land had been almost

the only form of wealth, the nobility were the only people

who were considered wealthy. But as I have told you in a

previous chapter, the gold and silver which they possessed

was quite insignificant and they used the old system of barter,

exchanging cows for horses and eggs for honey. During

the crusades, the burghers of the cities had been able to gather

riches from the reviving trade between the east and the west,

and they had been serious rivals of the lords and the knights.

The French revolution had entirely destroyed the wealth

of the nobility and had enormously increased that of the middle

class or ``bourgeoisie.'' The years of unrest which followed the

Great Revolution had offered many middle-class people a

chance to get more than their share of this world's goods. The

estates of the church had been confiscated by the French Convention

and had been sold at auction. There had been a terrific

amount of graft. Land speculators had stolen thousands

of square miles of valuable land, and during the Napoleonic

wars, they had used their capital to ``profiteer'' in grain and

gun-powder, and now they possessed more wealth than they

needed for the actual expenses of their households, and they

could afford to build themselves factories and to hire men and

women to work the machines.

This caused a very abrupt change in the lives of hundreds

of thousands of people. Within a few years, many cities

doubled the number of their inhabitants and the old civic centre

which had been the real ``home'' of the citizens was surrounded

with ugly and cheaply built suburbs where the workmen slept

after their eleven or twelve hours, or thirteen hours, spent in the

factories and from where they returned to the factory as soon

as the whistle blew.

Far and wide through the countryside there was talk of the

fabulous sums of money that could be made in the towns. The

peasant boy, accustomed to a life in the open, went to the city.

He rapidly lost his old health amidst the smoke and dust and

dirt of those early and badly ventilated workshops, and the

end, very often, was death in the poor-house or in the hospital.

Of course the change from the farm to the factory on the

part of so many people was not accomplished without a certain

amount of opposition. Since one engine could do as much

work as a hundred men, the ninety-nine others who were

thrown out of employment did not like it. Frequently they attacked

the factory-buildings and set fire to the machines, but

Insurance Companies had been organised as early as the 17th

century and as a rule the owners were well protected against loss.

Soon, newer and better machines were installed, the factory

was surrounded with a high wall and then there was an

end to the rioting. The ancient guilds could not possibly survive

in this new world of steam and iron. They went out of

existence and then the workmen tried to organise regular labour

unions. But the factory-owners, who through their wealth

could exercise great influence upon the politicians of the different

countries, went to the Legislature and had laws passed

which forbade the forming of such trade unions because they

interfered with the ``liberty of action'' of the working man.

Please do not think that the good members of Parliament

who passed these laws were wicked tyrants. They were

the true sons of the revolutionary period when everybody

talked of ``liberty'' and when people often killed their neighbours

because they were not quite as liberty-loving as they

ought to have been. Since ``liberty'' was the foremost virtue

of man, it was not right that labour-unions should dictate to

their members the hours during which they could work and

the wages which they must demand. The workman must at

all times, be ``free to sell his services in the open market,'' and

the employer must be equally ``free'' to conduct his business

as he saw fit. The days of the Mercantile System, when

the state had regulated the industrial life of the entire

community, were coming to an end. The new idea of ``freedom''

insisted that the state stand entirely aside and let commerce

take its course.

The last half of the 18th century had not merely been a

time of intellectual and political doubt, but the old economic

ideas, too, had been replaced by new ones which better suited the

need of the hour. Several years before the French revolution,

Turgot, who had been one of the unsuccessful ministers of

finance of Louis XVI, had preached the novel doctrine of

``economic liberty.'' Turgot lived in a country which had

suffered from too much red-tape, too many regulations, too

many officials trying to enforce too many laws. ``Remove this

official supervision,'' he wrote, ``let the people do as they please,

and everything will be all right.'' Soon his famous advice of

``laissez faire'' became the battle-cry around which the economists

of that period rallied,

At the same time in England, Adam Smith was working

on his mighty volumes on the ``Wealth of Nations,'' which made

another plea for liberty'' and the natural rights of trade.''

Thirty years later, after the fall of Napoleon, when the reactionary

powers of Europe had gained their victory at Vienna,

that same freedom which was denied to the people in their

political relations was forced upon them in their industrial

life.

The general use of machinery, as I have said at the beginning

of this chapter, proved to be of great advantage to the

state. Wealth increased rapidly. The machine made it possible

for a single country, like England, to carry all the burdens

of the great Napoleonic wars. The capitalists (the people

who provided the money with which machines were bought)

reaped enormous profits. They became ambitious and began

to take an interest in politics. They tried to compete with the

landed aristocracy which still exercised great influence upon

the government of most European countries.

In England, where the members of Parliament were still

elected according to a Royal Decree of the year 1265, and

where a large number of recently created industrial centres were

without representation, they brought about the passing of the

Reform Bill of the year 1882, which changed the electoral

system and gave the class of the factory-owners more influence

upon the legislative body. This however caused great

discontent among the millions of factory workers, who were

left without any voice in the government. They too began

an agitation for the right to vote. They put their demands

down in a document which came to be known as the ``People's

Charter.'' The debates about this charter grew more and

more violent. They had not yet come to an end when the revolutions

of the year 1848 broke out. Frightened by the threat

of a new outbreak or Jacobinism and violence, the English

government placed the Duke of Wellington, who was now in

his eightieth year, at the head of the army, and called for

Volunteers. London was placed in a state of siege and

preparations were made to suppress the coming revolution.

But the Chartist movement killed itself through bad leadership

and no acts of violence took place. The new class of

wealthy factory owners, (I dislike the word ``bourgeoisie''

which has been used to death by the apostles of a new social

order,) slowly increased its hold upon the government, and

the conditions of industrial life in the large cities continued to

transform vast acres of pasture and wheat-land into dreary

slums, which guard the approach of every modern European

town.

EMANCIPATION

THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF MACHINERY

DID NOT BRING ABOUT THE ERA OF

HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY WHICH

HAD BEEN PREDICTED BY THE GENERATION

WHICH SAW THE STAGE COACH REPLACED

BY THE RAILROAD. SEVERAL

REMEDIES WERE SUGGESTED BUT NONE

OF THESE QUITE SOLVED THE PROBLEM

IN the year 1831, just before the passing of the first Reform

Bill Jeremy Bentham, the great English student of legislative

methods and the most practical political reformer of that

day, wrote to a friend: ``The way to be comfortable is to

make others comfortable. The way to make others comfortable

is to appear to love them. The way to appear to love them

is to love them in reality.'' Jeremy was an honest man. He

said what he believed to be true. His opinions were shared by

thousands of his countrymen. They felt responsible for the

happiness of their less fortunate neighbours and they tried

their very best to help them. And Heaven knows it was time

that something be done!

The ideal of economic freedom'' (the laissez faire'' of

Turgot) had been necessary in the old society where mediaeval

restrictions lamed all industrial effort. But this ``liberty of

action'' which had been the highest law of the land had led to

a terrible, yea, a frightful condition. The hours in the fac-

tory were limited only by the physical strength of the workers.

As long as a woman could sit before her loom, without

fainting from fatigue, she was supposed to work. Children of

five and six were taken to the cotton mills, to save them from

the dangers of the street and a life of idleness. A law had

been passed which forced the children of paupers to go to work

or be punished by being chained to their machines. In return

for their services they got enough bad food to keep them alive

and a sort of pigsty in which they could rest at night. Often

they were so tired that they fell asleep at their job. To keep

them awake a foreman with a whip made the rounds and beat

them on the knuckles when it was necessary to bring them back

to their duties. Of course, under these circumstances thousands

of little children died. This was regrettable and the employers,

who after all were human beings and not without a heart, sincerely

wished that they could abolish ``child labour.'' But since

man was free'' it followed that children were free'' too.

Besides, if Mr. Jones had tried to work his factory without the

use of children of five and six, his rival, Mr. Stone, would have

hired an extra supply of little boys and Jones would have been

forced into bankruptcy. It was therefore impossible for Jones

to do without child labour until such time as an act of Parliament

should forbid it for all employers.

But as Parliament was no longer dominated by the old

landed aristocracy (which had despised the upstart factory-

owners with their money bags and had treated them with open

contempt), but was under control of the representatives from

the industrial centres, and as long as the law did not allow

workmen to combine in labour-unions, very little was accomplished.

Of course the intelligent and decent people of that

time were not blind to these terrible conditions. They were

just helpless. Machinery had conquered the world by surprise

and it took a great many years and the efforts of thousands

of noble men and women to make the machine what it

ought to be, man's servant, and not his master.

Curiously enough, the first attack upon the outrageous

system of employment which was then common in all parts of

the world, was made on behalf of the black slaves of Africa

and America. Slavery had been introduced into the American

continent by the Spaniards. They had tried to use the

Indians as labourers in the fields and in the mines, but the

Indians, when taken away from a life in the open, had lain down

and died and to save them from extinction a kind-hearted priest

had suggested that negroes be brought from Africa to do the

work. The negroes were strong and could stand rough treatment.

Besides, association with the white man would give

them a chance to learn Christianity and in this way, they would

be able to save their souls, and so from every possible point of

view, it would be an excellent arrangement both for the kindly

white man and for his ignorant black brother. But with the

introduction of machinery there had been a greater demand for

cotton and the negroes were forced to work harder than ever

before, and they too, like the Indians, began to die under the

treatment which they received at the hands of the overseers.

Stories of incredible cruelty constantly found their way to

Europe and in all countries men and women began to agitate

for the abolition of slavery. In England, William Wilberforce

and Zachary Macaulay, (the father of the great historian whose

history of England you must read if you want to know how

wonderfully interesting a history-book can be,) organised a

society for the suppression of slavery. First of all they got a

law passed which made ``slave trading'' illegal. And after the

year 1840 there was not a single slave in any of the British

colonies. The revolution of 1848 put an end to slavery in the

French possessions. The Portuguese passed a law in the year

1858 which promised all slaves their liberty in twenty years

from date. The Dutch abolished slavery in 1863 and in the

same year Tsar Alexander II returned to his serfs that liberty

which had been taken away from them more than two centuries

before.

In the United States of America the question led to grave

difficulties and a prolonged war. Although the Declaration

of Independence had laid down the principle that ``all men

were created free and equal,'' an exception had been made for

those men and women whose skins were dark and who worked

on the plantations of the southern states. As time went on, the

dislike of the people of the North for the institution of slavery

increased and they made no secret of their feelings. The southerners

however claimed that they could not grow their cotton

without slave-labour, and for almost fifty years a mighty debate

raged in both the Congress and the Senate.

The North remained obdurate and the South would not give

in. When it appeared impossible to reach a compromise, the

southern states threatened to leave the Union. It was a most

dangerous point in the history of the Union. Many things

``might'' have happened. That they did not happen was the

work of a very great and very good man.

On the sixth of November of the year 1860, Abraham Lincoln,

an Illinois lawyer, and a man who had made his own intellectual

fortune, had been elected president by the Republicans

who were very strong in the anti-slavery states. He

knew the evils of human bondage at first hand and his shrewd

common-sense told him that there was no room on the northern

continent for two rival nations. When a number of southern

states seceded and formed the ``Confederate States of America,''

Lincoln accepted the challenge. The Northern states

were called upon for volunteers. Hundreds of thousands of

young men responded with eager enthusiasm and there followed

four years of bitter civil war. The South, better prepared

and following the brilliant leadership of Lee and Jackson,

repeatedly defeated the armies of the North. Then the

economic strength of New England and the West began to

tell. An unknown officer by the name of Grant arose from obscurity

and became the Charles Martel of the great slave war.

Without interruption he hammered his mighty blows upon the

crumbling defences of the South. Early in the year 1863,

President Lincoln issued his ``Emancipation Proclamation''

which set all slaves free. In April of the year 1865 Lee

surrendered the last of his brave armies at Appomattox. A few

days later, President Lincoln was murdered by a lunatic. But

his work was done. With the exception of Cuba which was

still under Spanish domination, slavery had come to an end in

every part of the civilised world.

But while the black man was enjoying an increasing amount

of liberty, the ``free'' workmen of Europe did not fare quite so

well. Indeed, it is a matter of surprise to many contemporary

writers and observers that the masses of workmen (the so-

called proletariat) did not die out from sheer misery. They

lived in dirty houses situated in miserable parts of the slums.

They ate bad food. They received just enough schooling to

fit them for their tasks. In case of death or an accident, their

families were not provided for. But the brewery and distillery

interests, (who could exercise great influence upon the Legislature,)

encouraged them to forget their woes by offering them

unlimited quantities of whisky and gin at very cheap rates.

The enormous improvement which has taken place since the

thirties and the forties of the last century is not due to the efforts

of a single man. The best brains of two generations devoted

themselves to the task of saving the world from the disastrous

results of the all-too-sudden introduction of machinery.

They did not try to destroy the capitalistic system. This would

have been very foolish, for the accumulated wealth of other

people, when intelligently used, may be of very great benefit

to all mankind. But they tried to combat the notion that true

equality can exist between the man who has wealth and owns

the factories and can close their doors at will without the risk

of going hungry, and the labourer who must take whatever job

is offered, at whatever wage he can get, or face the risk of

starvation for himself, his wife and his children.

They endeavoured to introduce a number of laws which regulated

the relations between the factory owners and the factory

workers. In this, the reformers have been increasingly

successful in all countries. To-day, the majority of the labourers

are well protected; their hours are being reduced to the

excellent average of eight, and their children are sent to the

schools instead of to the mine pit and to the carding-room of

the cotton mills.

But there were other men who also contemplated the sight

of all the belching smoke-stacks, who heard the rattle of the

railroad trains, who saw the store-houses filled with a surplus

of all sorts of materials, and who wondered to what ultimate

goal this tremendous activity would lead in the years to come.

They remembered that the human race had lived for hundreds

of thousands of years without commercial and industrial competition.

Could they change the existing order of things and

do away with a system of rivalry which so often sacrificed human

happiness to profits?

This idea--this vague hope for a better day--was not restricted

to a single country. In England, Robert Owen, the

owner of many cotton mills, established a so-called ``socialistic

community'' which was a success. But when he died, the prosperity

of New Lanark came to an end and an attempt of Louis

Blanc, a French journalist, to establish ``social workshops''

all over France fared no better. Indeed, the increasing number

of socialistic writers soon began to see that little individual

communities which remained outside of the regular industrial

life, would never be able to accomplish anything at all. It

was necessary to study the fundamental principles underlying

the whole industrial and capitalistic society before useful remedies

could be suggested.

The practical socialists like Robert Owen and Louis

Blanc and Francois Fournier were succeeded by theoretical

students of socialism like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Of

these two, Marx is the best known. He was a very brilliant

Jew whose family had for a long time lived in Germany. He

had heard of the experiments of Owen and Blanc and he began

to interest himself in questions of labour and wages and

unemployment. But his liberal views made him very unpopular

with the police authorities of Germany, and he was forced to

flee to Brussels and then to London, where he lived a poor and

shabby life as the correspondent of the New York Tribune.

No one, thus far, had paid much attention to his books on

economic subjects. But in the year 1864 he organised the first

international association of working men and three years later

in 1867, he published the first volume of his well-known trea-

tise called ``Capital.'' Marx believed that all history was a

long struggle between those who have'' and those who don't

have.'' The introduction and general use of machinery had

created a new class in society, that of the capitalists who used

their surplus wealth to buy the tools which were then used by

the labourers to produce still more wealth, which was again used

to build more factories and so on, until the end of time. Meanwhile,

according to Marx, the third estate (the bourgeoisie)

was growing richer and richer and the fourth estate (the proletariat)

was growing poorer and poorer, and he predicted that

in the end, one man would possess all the wealth of the world

while the others would be his employees and dependent upon

his good will.

To prevent such a state of affairs, Marx advised working

men of all countries to unite and to fight for a number of political

and economic measures which he had enumerated in a Manifesto

in the year 1848, the year of the last great European

revolution.

These views of course were very unpopular with the governments

of Europe, many countries, especially Prussia, passed

severe laws against the Socialists and policemen were ordered

to break up the Socialist meetings and to arrest the speakers.

But that sort of persecution never does any good. Martyrs

are the best possible advertisements for an unpopular cause.

In Europe the number of socialists steadily increased and it

was soon clear that the Socialists did not contemplate a violent

revolution but were using their increasing power in the different

Parliaments to promote the interests of the labouring

classes. Socialists were even called upon to act as Cabinet

Ministers, and they co-operated with progressive Catholics and

Protestants to undo the damage that had been caused by the

Industrial Revolution and to bring about a fairer division of

the many benefits which had followed the introduction of machinery

and the increased production of wealth.

THE AGE OF SCIENCE

BUT THE WORLD HAD UNDERGONE ANOTHER

CHANGE WHICH WAS OF GREATER

IMPORTANCE THAN EITHER THE POLITICAL

OR THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS.

AFTER GENERATIONS OF OPPRESSION

AND PERSECUTION, THE SCIENTIST HAD

AT LAST GAINED LIBERTY OF ACTION

AND HE WAS NOW TRYING TO DISCOVER

THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS WHICH GOVERN

THE UNIVERSE

THE Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, the Greeks

and the Romans, had all contributed something to the first

vague notions of science and scientific investigation. But the

great migrations of the fourth century had destroyed the classical

world of the Mediterranean, and the Christian Church, which

was more interested in the life of the soul than in the life of the

body, had regarded science as a manifestation of that human arrogance

which wanted to pry into divine affairs which belonged

to the realm of Almighty God, and which therefore was closely

related to the seven deadly sins.

The Renaissance to a certain but limited extent had broken

through this wall of Mediaeval prejudices. The Reformation,

however, which had overtaken the Renaissance in the early 16th

century, had been hostile to the ideals of the ``new civilisation,''

and once more the men of science were threatened with severe

punishment, should they try to pass beyond the narrow limits

of knowledge which had been laid down in Holy Writ.

Our world is filled with the statues of great generals, atop

of prancing horses, leading their cheering soldiers to glorious

victory. Here and there, a modest slab of marble announces

that a man of science has found his final resting place. A thousand

years from now we shall probably do these things differently,

and the children of that happy generation shall know

of the splendid courage and the almost inconceivable devotion

to duty of the men who were the pioneers of that abstract

knowledge, which alone has made our modern world a practical

possibility.

Many of these scientific pioneers suffered poverty and contempt

and humiliation. They lived in garrets and died in dungeons.

They dared not print their names on the title-pages of

their books and they dared not print their conclusions in the

land of their birth, but smuggled the manuscripts to some secret

printing shop in Amsterdam or Haarlem. They were exposed

to the bitter enmity of the Church, both Protestant and Catholic,

and were the subjects of endless sermons, inciting the parishioners

to violence against the ``heretics.''

Here and there they found an asylum. In Holland, where

the spirit of tolerance was strongest, the authorities, while

regarding these scientific investigations with little favour, yet

refused to interfere with people's freedom of thought. It became

a little asylum for intellectual liberty where French and

English and German philosophers and mathematicians and

physicians could go to enjoy a short spell of rest and get a

breath of free air.

In another chapter I have told you how Roger Bacon, the

great genius of the thirteenth century, was prevented for years

from writing a single word, lest he get into new troubles with

the authorities of the church. And five hundred years later, the

contributors to the great philosophic ``Encyclopaedia'' were under

the constant supervision of the French gendarmerie. Half

a century afterwards, Darwin, who dared to question the story

of the creation of man, as revealed in the Bible, was denounced

from every pulpit as an enemy of the human race.

Even to-day, the persecution of those who venture into the

unknown realm of science has not entirely come to an end.

And while I am writing this Mr. Bryan is addressing a vast

multitude on the ``Menace of Darwinism,'' warning his hearers

against the errors of the great English naturalist.

All this, however, is a mere detail. The work that has to

be done invariably gets done, and the ultimate profit of the

discoveries and the inventions goes to the mass of those same people

who have always decried the man of vision as an unpractical idealist.

The seventeenth century had still preferred to investigate

the far off heavens and to study the position of our

planet in relation to the solar system. Even so, the Church had

disapproved of this unseemly curiosity, and Copernicus who

first of all had proved that the sun was the centre of the universe,

did not publish his work until the day of his death. Galileo

spent the greater part of his life under the supervision of the

clerical authorities, but he continued to use his telescope and

provided Isaac Newton with a mass of practical observations,

which greatly helped the English mathematician when he dis-

covered the existence of that interesting habit of falling objects

which came to be known as the Law of Gravitation.

That, for the moment at least, exhausted the interest in the

Heavens, and man began to study the earth. The invention

of a workable microscope, (a strange and clumsy little thing,)

by Anthony van Leeuwenhoek during the last half of the 17th

century, gave man a chance to study the ``microscopic'' creatures

who are responsible for so many of his ailments. It laid

the foundations of the science of ``bacteriology'' which in the

last forty years has delivered the world from a great number of

diseases by discovering the tiny organisms which cause the

complaint. It also allowed the geologists to make a more

careful study of different rocks and of the fossils (the petrified

prehistoric plants) which they found deep below the surface of

the earth. These investigations convinced them that the earth

must be a great deal older than was stated in the book of

Genesis and in the year 1830, Sir Charles Lyell published his

``Principles of Geology'' which denied the story of creation as

related in the Bible and gave a far more wonderful description

of slow growth and gradual development.

At the same time, the Marquis de Laplace was working on

a new theory of creation, which made the earth a little blotch

in the nebulous sea out of which the planetary system had

been formed and Bunsen and Kirchhoff, by the use of the

spectroscope, were investigating the chemical composition of the

stars and of our good neighbour, the sun, whose curious spots

had first been noticed by Galileo.

Meanwhile after a most bitter and relentless warfare with

the clerical authorities of Catholic and Protestant lands, the

anatomists and physiologists had at last obtained permission

to dissect bodies and to substitute a positive knowledge of our

organs and their habits for the guesswork of the mediaeval

quack.

Within a single generation (between 1810 and 1840) more

progress was made in every branch of science than in all the

hundreds of thousands of years that had passed since man first

looked at the stars and wondered why they were there. It

must have been a very sad age for the people who had been

educated under the old system. And we can understand their

feeling of hatred for such men as Lamarck and Darwin, who

did not exactly tell them that they were ``descended from

monkeys,'' (an accusation which our grandfathers seemed to

regard as a personal insult,) but who suggested that the proud

human race had evolved from a long series of ancestors who

could trace the family-tree back to the little jelly-fishes who

were the first inhabitants of our planet.

The dignified world of the well-to-do middle class, which

dominated the nineteenth century, was willing to make use

of the gas or the electric light, of all the many practical applications

of the great scientific discoveries, but the mere investigator,

the man of the ``scientific theory'' without whom no

progress would be possible, continued to be distrusted until

very recently. Then, at last, his services were recognised. Today

the rich people who in past ages donated their wealth for

the building of a cathedral, construct vast laboratories where

silent men do battle upon the hidden enemies of mankind and

often sacrifice their lives that coming generations may enjoy

greater happiness and health.

Indeed it has come to pass that many of the ills of this

world, which our ancestors regarded as inevitable ``acts of

God,'' have been exposed as manifestations of our own ignorance

and neglect. Every child nowadays knows that he can

keep from getting typhoid fever by a little care in the choice of

his drinking water. But it took years and years of hard

work before the doctors could convince the people of this fact.

Few of us now fear the dentist chair. A study of the microbes

that live in our mouth has made it possible to keep our

teeth from decay. Must perchance a tooth be pulled, then we

take a sniff of gas, and go our way rejoicing. When the newspapers

of the year 1846 brought the story of the ``painless

operation'' which had been performed in America with the help

of ether, the good people of Europe shook their heads. To

them it seemed against the will of God that man should escape

the pain which was the share of all mortals, and it took a long

time before the practice of taking ether and chloroform for

operations became general.

But the battle of progress had been won. The breach in the

old walls of prejudice was growing larger and larger, and as

time went by, the ancient stones of ignorance came crumbling

down. The eager crusaders of a new and happier social order

rushed forward. Suddenly they found themselves facing a new

obstacle. Out of the ruins of a long-gone past, another citadel

of reaction had been erected, and millions of men had to give

their lives before this last bulwark was destroyed.

ART

A CHAPTER OF ART

WHEN a baby is perfectly healthy and has had enough to eat

and has slept all it wants, then it hums a little tune to show how

happy it is. To grown-ups this humming means nothing. It

sounds like ``goo-zum, goo-zum, goo-o-o-o-o,'' but to the baby

it is perfect music. It is his first contribution to art.

As soon as he (or she) gets a little older and is able to sit

up, the period of mud-pie making begins. These mud-pies do

not interest the outside world. There are too many million

babies, making too many million mud-pies at the same time.

But to the small infant they represent another expedition into

the pleasant realm of art. The baby is now a sculptor.

At the age of three or four, when the hands begin to obey

the brain, the child becomes a painter. His fond mother gives

him a box of coloured chalks and every loose bit of paper is

rapidly covered with strange pothooks and scrawls which represent

houses and horses and terrible naval battles.

Soon however this happiness of just ``making things''

comes to an end. School begins and the greater part of the

day is filled up with work. The business of living, or rather

the business of ``making a living,'' becomes the most important

event in the life of every boy and girl. There is little time left

for ``art'' between learning the tables of multiplication and the

past participles of the irregular French verbs. And unless

the desire for making certain things for the mere pleasure of

creating them without any hope of a practical return be very

strong, the child grows into manhood and forgets that the

first five years of his life were mainly devoted to art.

Nations are not different from children. As soon as the

cave-man had escaped the threatening dangers of the long and

shivering ice-period, and had put his house in order, he began

to make certain things which he thought beautiful, although

they were of no earthly use to him in his fight with the wild

animals of the jungle. He covered the walls of his grotto with

pictures of the elephants and the deer which he hunted, and

out of a piece of stone, he hacked the rough figures of those

women he thought most attractive.

As soon as the Egyptians and the Babylonians and the

Persians and all the other people of the east had founded

their little countries along the Nile and the Euphrates, they

began to build magnificent palaces for their kings, invented

bright pieces of jewellery for their women and planted gardens

which sang happy songs of colour with their many bright flowers.

Our own ancestors, the wandering nomads from the distant

Asiatic prairies, enjoying a free and easy existence as

fighters and hunters, composed songs which celebrated the

mighty deeds of their great leaders and invented a form of

poetry which has survived until our own day. A thousand years

later, when they had established themselves on the Greek mainland,

and had built their ``city-states,'' they expressed their

joy (and their sorrows) in magnificent temples, in statues, in

comedies and in tragedies, and in every conceivable form of

art.

The Romans, like their Carthaginian rivals, were too busy

administering other people and making money to have much

love for ``useless and unprofitable'' adventures of the spirit.

They conquered the world and built roads and bridges but they

borrowed their art wholesale from the Greeks. They invented

certain practical forms of architecture which answered the

demands of their day and age. But their statues and their histories

and their mosaics and their poems were mere Latin imi-

tations of Greek originals. Without that vague and hard-to-

define something which the world calls ``personality,'' there can

be no art and the Roman world distrusted that particular sort

of personality. The Empire needed efficient soldiers and

tradesmen. The business of writing poetry or making pictures

was left to foreigners.

Then came the Dark Ages. The barbarian was the proverbial

bull in the china-shop of western Europe. He had no use

for what he did not understand. Speaking in terms of the year

1921, he liked the magazine covers of pretty ladies, but threw

the Rembrandt etchings which he had inherited into the ash-

can. Soon he came to learn better. Then he tried to undo the

damage which he had created a few years before. But the ash-

cans were gone and so were the pictures.

But by this time, his own art, which he had brought with

him from the east, had developed into something very beautiful

and he made up for his past neglect and indifference by the so-

called ``art of the Middle Ages'' which as far as northern Europe

is concerned was a product of the Germanic mind and had

borrowed but little from the Greeks and the Latins and nothing

at all from the older forms of art of Egypt and Assyria, not

to speak of India and China, which simply did not exist, as far

as the people of that time were concerned. Indeed, so little

had the northern races been influenced by their southern neighbours

that their own architectural products were completely

misunderstood by the people of Italy and were treated by

them with downright and unmitigated contempt.

You have all heard the word Gothic. You probably associate

it with the picture of a lovely old cathedral, lifting its slender

spires towards high heaven. But what does the word really

mean?

It means something uncouth'' and barbaric''--something

which one might expect from an ``uncivilised Goth,'' a rough

backwoods-man who had no respect for the established rules of

classical art and who built his ``modern horrors'' to please his

own low tastes without a decent regard for the examples of

the Forum and the Acropolis.

And yet for several centuries this form of Gothic architecture

was the highest expression of the sincere feeling for art

which inspired the whole northern continent. From a previous

chapter, you will remember how the people of the late Middle

Ages lived. Unless they were peasants and dwelt in villages,

they were citizens of a city'' or civitas,'' the old Latin name

for a tribe. And indeed, behind their high walls and their deep

moats, these good burghers were true tribesmen who shared

the common dangers and enjoyed the common safety and prosperity

which they derived from their system of mutual protection.

In the old Greek and Roman cities the market-place, where

the temple stood, had been the centre of civic life. During

the Middle Ages, the Church, the House of God, became such a

centre. We modern Protestant people, who go to our church

only once a week, and then for a few hours only, hardly know

what a mediaeval church meant to the community. Then, before

you were a week old, you were taken to the Church to be

baptised. As a child, you visited the Church to learn the holy

stories of the Scriptures. Later on you became a member

of the congregation, and if you were rich enough you built

yourself a separate little chapel sacred to the memory of the

Patron Saint of your own family. As for the sacred edifice,

it was open at all hours of the day and many of the night. In

a certain sense it resembled a modern club, dedicated to all the

inhabitants of the town. In the church you very likely caught

a first glimpse of the girl who was to become your bride at a

great ceremony before the High Altar. And finally, when the

end of the journey had come, you were buried beneath the

stones of this familiar building, that all your children and their

grandchildren might pass over your grave until the Day of

Judgement.

Because the Church was not only the House of God but

also the true centre of all common life, the building had to be

different from anything that had ever been constructed by

the hands of man. The temples of the Egyptians and the

Greeks and the Romans had been merely the shrine of a local

divinity. As no sermons were preached before the images of

Osiris or Zeus or Jupiter, it was not necessary that the interior

offer space for a great multitude. All the religious processions

of the old Mediterranean peoples took place in the open. But

in the north, where the weather was usually bad,

most functions were held under the roof of the church.

During many centuries the architects struggled with

this problem of constructing a building that was large

enough. The Roman tradition taught them how to build heavy

stone walls with very small windows lest the walls lose

their strength. On the top of this they then placed a

heavy stone roof. But in the twelfth century, after the

beginning of the Crusades, when the architects had seen the

pointed arches of the Mohammedan builders, the western builders

discovered a new style which gave them their first chance to make

the sort of building which those days of an intense religious

life demanded. And then they developed this strange style upon

which the Italians bestowed the contemptuous name of ``Gothic''or barbaric.

They achieved their purpose by inventing a vaulted roof which

was supported by ``ribs.'' But such a roof, if it became

too heavy, was apt to break the walls, just as a man

of three hundred pounds sitting down upon a child's chair

will force it to collapse. To overcome this difficulty, certain

French architects then began to re-enforce the walls with

``buttresses'' which were merely heavy masses of stone against

which the walls could lean while they supported the roof. And

to assure the further safety of the roof they supported the ribs

of the roof by so-called ``flying buttresses,'' a very simple

method of construction which you will understand at once when

you look at our picture.

This new method of construction allowed the introduction

of enormous windows. In the twelfth century, glass was still

an expensive curiosity, and very few private buildings possessed

glass windows. Even the castles of the nobles were

without protection and this accounts for the eternal drafts

and explains why people of that day wore furs in-doors as

well as out.

Fortunately, the art of making coloured glass, with which

the ancient people of the Mediterranean had been familiar,

had not been entirely lost. There was a revival of stained

glass-making and soon the windows of the Gothic churches

told the stories of the Holy Book in little bits of brilliantly

coloured window-pane, which were caught in a long framework

of lead.

Behold, therefore, the new and glorious house of God,

filled with an eager multitude, ``living'' its religion as no people

have ever done either before or since! Nothing is considered

too good or too costly or too wondrous for this House of God

and Home of Man. The sculptors, who since the destruction

of the Roman Empire have been out of employment, haltingly

return to their noble art. Portals and pillars and buttresses

and cornices are all covered with carven images of Our Lord

and the blessed Saints. The embroiderers too are set to work

to make tapestries for the walls. The jewellers offer their

highest art that the shrine of the altar may be worthy of complete

adoration. Even the painter does his best. Poor man,

he is greatly handicapped by lack of a suitable medium.

And thereby hangs a story.

The Romans of the early Christian period had covered the

floors and the walls of their temples and houses with mosaics;

pictures made of coloured bits of glass. But this art had been

exceedingly difficult. It gave the painter no chance to express

all he wanted to say, as all children know who have ever tried to

make figures out of coloured blocks of wood. The art of

mosaic painting therefore died out during the late Middle

Ages except in Russia, where the Byzantine mosaic painters

had found a refuge after the fall of Constantinople and continued

to ornament the walls of the orthodox churches until

the day of the Bolsheviki, when there was an end to the building

of churches.

Of course, the mediaeval painter could mix his colours with

the water of the wet plaster which was put upon the walls of

the churches. This method of painting upon ``fresh plaster''

(which was generally called fresco'' or fresh'' painting)

was very popular for many centuries. To-day, it is as rare

as the art of painting miniatures in manuscripts and among

the hundreds of artists of our modern cities there is perhaps

one who can handle this medium successfully. But during the

Middle Ages there was no other way and the artists were

``fresco'' workers for lack of something better. The method

however had certain great disadvantages. Very often the

plaster came off the walls after only a few years, or dampness

spoiled the pictures, just as dampness will spoil the pattern

of our wall paper. People tried every imaginable expedient

to get away from this plaster background. They tried to mix

their colours with wine and vinegar and with honey and with

the sticky white of egg, but none of these methods were satisfactory.

For more than a thousand years these experiments

continued. In painting pictures upon the parchment leaves

of manuscripts the mediaeval artists were very successful. But

when it came to covering large spaces of wood or stone with

paint which would stick, they did not succeed very well.

At last, during the first half of the fifteenth century, the

problem was solved in the southern Netherlands by Jan and

Hubert van Eyck. The famous Flemish brothers mixed their

paint with specially prepared oils and this allowed them to use

wood and canvas or stone or anything else as a background for

their pictures.

But by this time the religious ardour of the early Middle

Ages was a thing of the past. The rich burghers of the cities

were succeeding the bishops as patrons of the arts. And as

art invariably follows the full dinner-pail, the artists now began

to work for these worldly employers and painted pictures for

kings, for grand-dukes and for rich bankers. Within a very

short time, the new method of painting with oil spread through

Europe and in every country there developed a school of

special painting which showed the characteristic tastes of the

people for whom these portraits and landscapes were made.

In Spain, for example, Velasquez painted court-dwarfs

and the weavers of the royal tapestry-factories, and all sorts

of persons and subjects connected with the king and his court.

But in Holland, Rembrandt and Frans Hals and Vermeer

painted the barnyard of the merchant's house, and they painted

his rather dowdy wife and his healthy but bumptious children

and the ships which had brought him his wealth. In Italy on

the other hand, where the Pope remained the largest patron

of the arts, Michelangelo and Correggio continued to paint

Madonnas and Saints, while in England, where the aristocracy

was very rich and powerful and in France where the

kings had become uppermost in the state, the artists painted

distinguished gentlemen who were members of the government,

and very lovely ladies who were friends of His Majesty.

The great change in painting, which came about with the

neglect of the old church and the rise of a new class in society,

was reflected in all other forms of art. The invention of printing

had made it possible for authors to win fame and reputation

by writing books for the multitudes. In this way arose

the profession of the novelist and the illustrator. But the

people who had money enough to buy the new books were not

the sort who liked to sit at home of nights, looking at the ceiling

or just sitting. They wanted to be amused. The few minstrels

of the Middle Ages were not sufficient to cover the demand for

entertainment. For the first time since the early Greek city-

states of two thousand years before, the professional playwright

had a chance to ply his trade. The Middle Ages had

known the theatre merely as part of certain church celebrations.

The tragedies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

had told the story of the suffering of our Lord. But

during the sixteenth century the worldly theatre made its

reappearance. It is true that, at first, the position of the

professional playwright and actor was not a very high one.

William Shakespeare was regarded as a sort of circus-fellow

who amused his neighbours with his tragedies and comedies.

But when he died in the year 1616 he had begun to enjoy the

respect of his neighbours and actors were no longer subjects

of police supervision.

William's contemporary, Lope de Vega, the incredible

Spaniard who wrote no less than 1800 worldly and 400 religious

plays, was a person of rank who received the papal approval

upon his work. A century later, Moliere, the Frenchman,

was deemed worthy of the companionship of none less

than King Louis XIV.

Since then, the theatre has enjoyed an ever increasing

affection on the part of the people. To-day a ``theatre'' is part

of every well-regulated city, and the ``silent drama'' of the

movies has penetrated to the tiniest of our prairie hamlets.

Another art, however, was to become the most popular of

all. That was music. Most of the old art-forms demanded a

great deal of technical skill. It takes years and years of practice

before our clumsy hand is able to follow the commands of

the brain and reproduce our vision upon canvas or in marble.

It takes a life-time to learn how to act or how to write a good

novel. And it takes a great deal of training on the part of the

public to appreciate the best in painting and writing and

sculpture. But almost any one, not entirely tone-deaf, can

follow a tune and almost everybody can get enjoyment out of

some sort of music. The Middle Ages had heard a little music

but it had been entirely the music of the church. The holy

chants were subject to very severe laws of rhythm and harmony

and soon these became monotonous. Besides, they could not

well be sung in the street or in the market-place.

The Renaissance changed this. Music once more came

into its own as the best friend of man, both in his happiness and

in his sorrows.

The Egyptians and the Babylonians and the ancient Jews

had all been great lovers of music. They had even combined

different instruments into regular orchestras. But the Greeks

had frowned upon this barbaric foreign noise. They liked to

hear a man recite the stately poetry of Homer and Pindar.

They allowed him to accompany himself upon the lyre (the

poorest of all stringed instruments). That was as far as any

one could go without incurring the risk of popular disapproval.

The Romans on the other hand had loved orchestral music at

their dinners and parties and they had invented most of the

instruments which (in VERY modified form) we use to-day.

The early church had despised this music which smacked too

much of the wicked pagan world which had just been destroyed.

A few songs rendered by the entire congregation were

all the bishops of the third and fourth centuries would tolerate.

As the congregation was apt to sing dreadfully out of key without

the guidance of an instrument, the church had afterwards allowed

the use of an organ, an invention of the second century of our era

which consisted of a combination of the old pipes of Pan and

a pair of bellows.

Then came the great migrations. The last of the Roman

musicians were either killed or became tramp-fiddlers going

from city to city and playing in the street, and begging for

pennies like the harpist on a modern ferry-boat.

But the revival of a more worldly civilisation in the cities

of the late Middle Ages had created a new demand for musicians.

Instruments like the horn, which had been used only

as signal-instruments for hunting and fighting, were remodelled

until they could reproduce sounds which were agreeable in the

dance-hall and in the banqueting room. A bow strung with

horse-hair was used to play the old-fashioned guitar and before

the end of the Middle Ages this six-stringed instrument

(the most ancient of all string-instruments which dates back

to Egypt and Assyria) had grown into our modern four-

stringed fiddle which Stradivarius and the other Italian violin-

makers of the eighteenth century brought to the height of perfection.

And finally the modern piano was invented, the most wide-

spread of all musical instruments, which has followed man into

the wilderness of the jungle and the ice-fields of Greenland.

The organ had been the first of all keyed instruments but the

performer always depended upon the co-operation of some one

who worked the bellows, a job which nowadays is done by electricity.

The musicians therefore looked for a handier and less

circumstantial instrument to assist them in training the pupils

of the many church choirs. During the great eleventh century,

Guido, a Benedictine monk of the town of Arezzo (the

birthplace of the poet Petrarch) gave us our modern system

of musical annotation. Some time during that century, when

there was a great deal of popular interest in music, the first

instrument with both keys and strings was built. It must

have sounded as tinkly as one of those tiny children's pianos

which you can buy at every toy-shop. In the city of Vienna,

the town where the strolling musicians of the Middle Ages

(who had been classed with jugglers and card sharps) had

formed the first separate Guild of Musicians in the year 1288,

the little monochord was developed into something which we

can recognise as the direct ancestor of our modern Steinway.

From Austria the ``clavichord'' as it was usually called in those

days (because it had ``craves'' or keys) went to Italy. There

it was perfected into the ``spinet'' which was so called after

the inventor, Giovanni Spinetti of Venice. At last during

the eighteenth century, some time between 1709 and 1720,

Bartolomeo Cristofori made a ``clavier'' which allowed the

performer to play both loudly and softly or as it was said in

Italian, piano'' and forte.'' This instrument with certain

changes became our ``pianoforte'' or piano.

Then for the first time the world possessed an easy and convenient

instrument which could be mastered in a couple of years

and did not need the eternal tuning of harps and fiddles and

was much pleasanter to the ears than the mediaeval tubas, clarinets,

trombones and oboes. Just as the phonograph has given

millions of modern people their first love of music so did the

early ``pianoforte'' carry the knowledge of music into much

wider circles. Music became part of the education of every well-

bred man and woman. Princes and rich merchants maintained

private orchestras. The musician ceased to be a wandering

``jongleur'' and became a highly valued member of the community.

Music was added to the dramatic performances of

the theatre and out of this practice, grew our modern Opera.

Originally only a few very rich princes could afford the expenses

of an ``opera troupe.'' But as the taste for this sort of

entertainment grew, many cities built their own theatres where

Italian and afterwards German operas were given to the unlimited

joy of the whole community with the exception of a few

sects of very strict Christians who still regarded music with

deep suspicion as something which was too lovely to be entirely

good for the soul.

By the middle of the eighteenth century the musical life

of Europe was in full swing. Then there came forward a

man who was greater than all others, a simple organist of the

Thomas Church of Leipzig, by the name of Johann Sebastian

Bach. In his compositions for every known instrument, from

comic songs and popular dances to the most stately of sacred

hymns and oratorios, he laid the foundation for all our modern

music. When he died in the year 1750 he was succeeded by

Mozart, who created musical fabrics of sheer loveliness which

remind us of lace that has been woven out of harmony and

rhythm. Then came Ludwig van Beethoven, the most tragic

of men, who gave us our modern orchestra, yet heard none of

his greatest compositions because he was deaf, as the result of a

cold contracted during his years of poverty.

Beethoven lived through the period of the great French

Revolution. Full of hope for a new and glorious day, he had

dedicated one of his symphonies to Napoleon. But he lived

to regret the hour. When he died in the year 1827, Napoleon

was gone and the French Revolution was gone, but the steam

engine had come and was filling the world with a sound that

had nothing in common with the dreams of the Third Symphony.

Indeed, the new order of steam and iron and coal and large

factories had little use for art, for painting and sculpture and

poetry and music. The old protectors of the arts, the Church

and the princes and the merchants of the Middle Ages and the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no longer existed. The

leaders of the new industrial world were too busy and had too

little education to bother about etchings and sonatas and bits

of carved ivory, not to speak of the men who created those

things, and who were of no practical use to the community in

which they lived. And the workmen in the factories listened

to the drone of their engines until they too had lost all taste

for the melody of the flute or fiddle of their peasant ancestry.

The arts became the step-children of the new industrial era.

Art and Life became entirely separated. Whatever paintings

had been left, were dying a slow death in the museums. And

music became a monopoly of a few ``virtuosi'' who took the

music away from the home and carried it to the concert-hall.

But steadily, although slowly, the arts are coming back into

their own. People begin to understand that Rembrandt and

Beethoven and Rodin are the true prophets and leaders of

their race and that a world without art and happiness resembles

a nursery without laughter.

COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR

A CHAPTER WHICH OUGHT TO GIVE YOU A

GREAT DEAL OF POLITICAL INFORMATION

ABOUT THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, BUT

WHICH REALLY CONTAINS SEVERAL EXPLANATIONS

AND A FEW APOLOGIES

IF I had known how difficult it was to write a History of

the World, I should never have undertaken the task. Of course,

any one possessed of enough industry to lose himself for half

a dozen years in the musty stacks of a library, can compile a

ponderous tome which gives an account of the events in every

land during every century. But that was not the purpose of

the present book. The publishers wanted to print a history

that should have rhythm--a story which galloped rather than

walked. And now that I have almost finished I discover that

certain chapters gallop, that others wade slowly through the

dreary sands of long forgotten ages--that a few parts do not

make any progress at all, while still others indulge in a veritable

jazz of action and romance. I did not like this and I suggested

that we destroy the whole manuscript and begin once

more from the beginning. This, however, the publishers would

not allow.

As the next best solution of my difficulties, I took the type-

written pages to a number of charitable friends and asked them

to read what I had said, and give me the benefit of their advice.

The experience was rather disheartening. Each and every

man had his own prejudices and his own hobbies and preferences.

They all wanted to know why, where and how I dared

to omit their pet nation, their pet statesman, or even their most

beloved criminal. With some of them, Napoleon and Jenghiz

Khan were candidates for high honours. I explained that I

had tried very hard to be fair to Napoleon, but that in my

estimation he was greatly inferior to such men as George

Washington, Gustavus Wasa, Augustus, Hammurabi or

Lincoln, and a score of others all of whom were obliged to

content themselves with a few paragraphs, from sheer lack of

space. As for Jenghiz Khan, I only recognise his superior

ability in the field of wholesale murder and I did not intend to

give him any more publicity than I could help.

``This is very well as far as it goes,'' said the next critic,

``but how about the Puritans? We are celebrating the tercentenary

of their arrival at Plymouth. They ought to have

more space.'' My answer was that if I were writing a history

of America, the Puritans would get fully one half of the first

twelve chapters; that however this was a history of mankind

and that the event on Plymouth rock was not a matter of far-

reaching international importance until many centuries later;

that the United States had been founded by thirteen colonies

and not by a single one; that the most prominent leaders of the

first twenty years of our history had been from Virginia, from

Pennsylvania, and from the island of Nevis, rather than from

Massachusetts; and that therefore the Puritans ought to content

themselves with a page of print and a special map.

Next came the prehistoric specialist. Why in the name of

the great Tyrannosaur had I not devoted more space to the

wonderful race of Cro-Magnon men, who had developed such

a high stage of civilisation 10,000 years ago?

Indeed, and why not? The reason is simple. I do not take

as much stock in the perfection of these early races as some of

our most noted anthropologists seem to do. Rousseau and

the philosophers of the eighteenth century created the ``noble

savage'' who was supposed to have dwelt in a state of perfect

happiness during the beginning of time. Our modern scientists

have discarded the ``noble savage,'' so dearly beloved by

our grandfathers, and they have replaced him by the ``splendid

savage'' of the French Valleys who 35,000 years ago made an

end to the universal rule of the low-browed and low-living

brutes of the Neanderthal and other Germanic neighbourhoods.

They have shown us the elephants the Cro-Magnon painted

and the statues he carved and they have surrounded him with

much glory.

I do not mean to say that they are wrong. But I hold that

we know by far too little of this entire period to re-construct

that early west-European society with any degree (however

humble) of accuracy. And I would rather not state certain

things than run the risk of stating certain things that were not

so.

Then there were other critics, who accused me of direct

unfairness. Why did I leave out such countries as Ireland

and Bulgaria and Siam while I dragged in such other countries

as Holland and Iceland and Switzerland? My answer

was that I did not drag in any countries. They pushed themselves

in by main force of circumstances, and I simply could

not keep them out. And in order that my point may be understood,

let me state the basis upon which active membership to

this book of history was considered.

There was but one rule. ``Did the country or the person

in question produce a new idea or perform an original act

without which the history of the entire human race would have

been different?'' It was not a question of personal taste. It

was a matter of cool, almost mathematical judgment. No race

ever played a more picturesque role in history than the Mongolians,

and no race, from the point of view of achievement or

intelligent progress, was of less value to the rest of mankind.

The career of Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian, is full of

dramatic episodes. But as far as we are concerned, he might just

as well never have existed at all. In the same way, the history

of the Dutch Republic is not interesting because once upon a

time the sailors of de Ruyter went fishing in the river Thames,

but rather because of the fact that this small mud-bank along

the shores of the North Sea offered a hospitable asylum to all

sorts of strange people who had all sorts of queer ideas upon

all sorts of very unpopular subjects.

It is quite true that Athens or Florence, during the hey-day

of their glory, had only one tenth of the population of Kansas

City. But our present civilisation would be very different

had neither of these two little cities of the Mediterranean basin

existed. And the same (with due apologies to the good people

of Wyandotte County) can hardly be said of this busy metropolis

on the Missouri River.

And since I am being very personal, allow me to state one

other fact.

When we visit a doctor, we find out before hand whether

he is a surgeon or a diagnostician or a homeopath or a faith

healer, for we want to know from what angle he will look at

our complaint. We ought to be as careful in the choice of our

historians as we are in the selection of our physicians. We

think, ``Oh well, history is history,'' and let it go at that. But

the writer who was educated in a strictly Presbyterian household

somewhere in the backwoods of Scotland will look differ-

ently upon every question of human relationships from his

neighbour who as a child, was dragged to listen to the brilliant

exhortations of Robert Ingersoll, the enemy of all revealed

Devils. In due course of time, both men may forget their

early training and never again visit either church or lecture

hall. But the influence of these impressionable years stays

with them and they cannot escape showing it in whatever they

write or say or do.

In the preface to this book, I told you that I should not be

an infallible guide and now that we have almost reached the

end, I repeat the warning. I was born and educated in an

atmosphere of the old-fashioned liberalism which had followed

the discoveries of Darwin and the other pioneers of the nineteenth

century. As a child, I happened to spend most of my

waking hours with an uncle who was a great collector of the

books written by Montaigne, the great French essayist of the

sixteenth century. Because I was born in Rotterdam and

educated in the city of Gouda, I ran continually across

Erasmus and for some unknown reason this great exponent

of tolerance took hold of my intolerant self. Later I discovered

Anatole France and my first experience with the English

language came about through an accidental encounter with

Thackeray's ``Henry Esmond,'' a story which made more impression

upon me than any other book in the English language.

If I had been born in a pleasant middle western city I probably

should have a certain affection for the hymns which I had

heard in my childhood. But my earliest recollection of music

goes back to the afternoon when my Mother took me to hear

nothing less than a Bach fugue. And the mathematical perfection

of the great Protestant master influenced me to such

an extent that I cannot hear the usual hymns of our prayer-

meetings without a feeling of intense agony and direct pain.

Again, if I had been born in Italy and had been warmed

by the sunshine of the happy valley of the Arno, I might love

many colourful and sunny pictures which now leave me indifferent

because I got my first artistic impressions in a country

where the rare sun beats down upon the rain-soaked land with

almost cruel brutality and throws everything into violent contrasts

of dark and light.

I state these few facts deliberately that you may know

the personal bias of the man who wrote this history and may

understand his point-of-view. The bibliography at the end of

this book, which represents all sorts of opinions and views, will

allow you to compare my ideas with those of other people.

And in this way, you will be able to reach your own final

conclusions with a greater degree of fairness than would

otherwise be possible.

After this short but necessary excursion, we return to the

history of the last fifty years. Many things happened during

this period but very little occurred which at the time seemed

to be of paramount importance. The majority of the greater

powers ceased to be mere political agencies and became large

business enterprises. They built railroads. They founded and

subsidized steam-ship lines to all parts of the world. They

connected their different possessions with telegraph wires.

And they steadily increased their holdings in other continents.

Every available bit of African or Asiatic territory was claimed

by one of the rival powers. France became a colonial nation

with interests in Algiers and Madagascar and Annam and

Tonkin (in eastern Asia). Germany claimed parts of southwest

and east Africa, built settlements in Kameroon on the

west coast of Africa and in New Guinea and many of the

islands of the Pacific, and used the murder of a few missionaries

as a welcome excuse to take the harbour of Kisochau on the

Yellow Sea in China. Italy tried her luck in Abyssinia, was

disastrously defeated by the soldiers of the Negus, and consoled

herself by occupying the Turkish possessions in Tripoli

in northern Africa. Russia, having occupied all of Siberia,

took Port Arthur away from China. Japan, having defeated

China in the war of 1895, occupied the island of Formosa and

in the year 1905 began to lay claim to the entire empire of

Corea. In the year 1883 England, the largest colonial empire

the world has ever seen, undertook to ``protect'' Egypt. She

performed this task most efficiently and to the great material

benefit of that much neglected country, which ever since the

opening of the Suez canal in 1868 had been threatened with a

foreign invasion. During the next thirty years she fought a

number of colonial wars in different parts of the world and in

1902 (after three years of bitter fighting) she conquered the

independent Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange

Free State. Meanwhile she had encouraged Cecil Rhodes to

lay the foundations for a great African state, which reached

from the Cape almost to the mouth of the Nile, and had faithfully

picked up such islands or provinces as had been left without

a European owner.

The shrewd king of Belgium, by name Leopold, used

the discoveries of Henry Stanley to found the Congo Free

State in the year 1885. Originally this gigantic tropical empire

was an ``absolute monarchy.'' But after many years of

scandalous mismanagement, it was annexed by the Belgian

people who made it a colony (in the year 1908) and abolished

the terrible abuses which had been tolerated by this very

unscrupulous Majesty, who cared nothing for the fate of the

natives as long as he got his ivory and rubber.

As for the United States, they had so much land that they

desired no further territory. But the terrible misrule of

Cuba, one of the last of the Spanish possessions in the western

hemisphere, practically forced the Washington government to

take action. After a short and rather uneventful war, the

Spaniards were driven out of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the

Philippines, and the two latter became colonies of the United

States.

This economic development of the world was perfectly

natural. The increasing number of factories in England and

France and Germany needed an ever increasing amount of raw

materials and the equally increasing number of European

workers needed an ever increasing amount of food. Everywhere

the cry was for more and for richer markets, for more

easily accessible coal mines and iron mines and rubber plantations

and oil-wells, for greater supplies of wheat and grain.

The purely political events of the European continent

dwindled to mere insignificance in the eyes of men who were

making plans for steamboat lines on Victoria Nyanza or

for railroads through the interior of Shantung. They knew

that many European questions still remained to be settled, but

they did not bother, and through sheer indifference and carelessness

they bestowed upon their descendants a terrible inheritance

of hate and misery. For untold centuries the south-eastern

corner of Europe had been the scene of rebellion and bloodshed.

During the seventies of the last century the people of

Serbia and Bulgaria and Montenegro and Roumania were once

more trying to gain their freedom and the Turks (with the

support of many of the western powers), were trying to prevent

this.

After a period of particularly atrocious massacres in Bulgaria

in the year 1876, the Russian people lost all patience.

The Government was forced to intervene just as President McKinley

was obliged to go to Cuba and stop the shooting-squads

of General Weyler in Havana. In April of the year 1877 the

Russian armies crossed the Danube, stormed the Shipka pass,

and after the capture of Plevna, marched southward until they

reached the gates of Constantinople. Turkey appealed for

help to England. There were many English people who denounced

their government when it took the side of the Sultan.

But Disraeli (who had just made Queen Victoria Empress of

India and who loved the picturesque Turks while he hated the

Russians who were brutally cruel to the Jewish people within

their frontiers) decided to interfere. Russia was forced to

conclude the peace of San Stefano (1878) and the question of

the Balkans was left to a Congress which convened at Berlin

in June and July of the same year.

This famous conference was entirely dominated by the personality

of Disraeli. Even Bismarck feared the clever old

man with his well-oiled curly hair and his supreme arrogance,

tempered by a cynical sense of humor and a marvellous gift

for flattery. At Berlin the British prime-minister carefully

watched over the fate of his friends the Turks. Montenegro,

Serbia and Roumania were recognised as independent kingdoms.

The principality of Bulgaria was given a semi-independent

status under Prince Alexander of Battenberg, a

nephew of Tsar Alexander II. But none of those countries

were given the chance to develop their powers and their resources

as they would have been able to do, had England been

less anxious about the fate of the Sultan, whose domains were

necessary to the safety of the British Empire as a bulwark

against further Russian aggression.

To make matters worse, the congress allowed Austria to

take Bosnia and Herzegovina away from the Turks to be

``administered'' as part of the Habsburg domains. It is true

that Austria made an excellent job of it. The neglected provinces

were as well managed as the best of the British colonies,

and that is saying a great deal. But they were inhabited by

many Serbians. In older days they had been part of the great

Serbian empire of Stephan Dushan, who early in the fourteenth

century had defended western Europe against the invasions

of the Turks and whose capital of Uskub had been a

centre of civilisation one hundred and fifty years before Columbus

discovered the new lands of the west. The Serbians remem-

bered their ancient glory as who would not? They resented

the presence of the Austrians in two provinces, which, so they

felt, were theirs by every right of tradition.

And it was in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, that the

archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, was murdered

on June 28 of the year 1914. The assassin was a Serbian

student who had acted from purely patriotic motives.

But the blame for this terrible catastrophe which was the

immediate, though not the only cause of the Great World War

did not lie with the half-crazy Serbian boy or his Austrian

victim. It must be traced back to the days of the famous

Berlin Conference when Europe was too busy building a material

civilisation to care about the aspirations and the dreams

of a forgotten race in a dreary corner of the old Balkan

peninsula.

A NEW WORLD

THE GREAT WAR WHICH WAS REALLY THE

STRUGGLE FOR A NEW AND

BETTER WORLD

THE Marquis de Condorcet was one of the noblest characters

among the small group of honest enthusiasts who were

responsible for the outbreak of the great French Revolution.

He had devoted his life to the cause of the poor and the unfortunate.

He had been one of the assistants of d'Alembert and

Diderot when they wrote their famous Encyclopedie. During

the first years of the Revolution he had been the leader of the

Moderate wing of the Convention.

His tolerance, his kindliness, his stout common sense, had

made him an object of suspicion when the treason of the king

and the court clique had given the extreme radicals their chance

to get hold of the government and kill their opponents.

Condorcet was declared ``hors de loi,'' or outlawed, an outcast

who was henceforth at the mercy of every true patriot. His

friends offered to hide him at their own peril. Condorcet

refused to accept their sacrifice. He escaped and tried to reach

his home, where he might be safe. After three nights in the

open, torn and bleeding, he entered an inn and asked for some

food. The suspicious yokels searched him and in his pockets

they found a copy of Horace, the Latin poet. This showed

that their prisoner was a man of gentle breeding and had no

business upon the highroads at a time when every educated

person was regarded as an enemy of the Revolutionary state.

They took Condorcet and they bound him and they gagged

him and they threw him into the village lock-up, but in the

morning when the soldiers came to drag him back to Paris and

cut his head off, behold! he was dead.

This man who had given all and had received nothing had

good reason to despair of the human race. But he has written

a few sentences which ring as true to-day as they did one

hundred and thirty years ago. I repeat them here for your

benefit.

Nature has set no limits to our hopes,'' he wrote, and

the picture of the human race, now freed from its chains and

marching with a firm tread on the road of truth and virtue

and happiness, offers to the philosopher a spectacle which

consoles him for the errors, for the crimes and the injustices

which still pollute and afflict this earth.''

The world has just passed through an agony of pain compared

to which the French Revolution was a mere incident.

The shock has been so great that it has killed the last spark of

hope in the breasts of millions of men. They were chanting a

hymn of progress, and four years of slaughter followed their

prayers for peace. Is it worth while,'' so they ask, to work

and slave for the benefit of creatures who have not yet passed

beyond the stage of the earliest cave men?''

There is but one answer.

That answer is ``Yes!''

The World War was a terrible calamity. But it did not

mean the end of things. On the contrary it brought about the

coming of a new day.

It is easy to write a history of Greece and Rome or the

Middle Ages. The actors who played their parts upon that

long-forgotten stage are all dead. We can criticize them with

a cool head. The audience that applauded their efforts has

dispersed. Our remarks cannot possibly hurt their feelings.

But it is very difficult to give a true account of contemporary

events. The problems that fill the minds of the people

with whom we pass through life, are our own problems, and

they hurt us too much or they please us too well to be described

with that fairness which is necessary when we are writing

history and not blowing the trumpet of propaganda. All

the same I shall endeavour to tell you why I agree with poor

Condorcet when he expressed his firm faith in a better future.

Often before have I warned you against the false impression

which is created by the use of our so-called historical

epochs which divide the story of man into four parts, the ancient

world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Reformation,

and Modern Time. The last of these terms is the most

dangerous. The word ``modern'' implies that we, the people

of the twentieth century, are at the top of human achievement.

Fifty years ago the liberals of England who followed the leadership

of Gladstone felt that the problem of a truly representative

and democratic form of government had been solved forever

by the second great Reform Bill, which gave workmen

an equal share in the government with their employers. When

Disraeli and his conservative friends talked of a dangerous

leap in the dark'' they answered No.'' They felt certain of

their cause and trusted that henceforth all classes of society

would co-operate to make the government of their common

country a success. Since then many things have happened,

and the few liberals who are still alive begin to understand

that they were mistaken.

There is no definite answer to any historical problem.

Every generation must fight the good fight anew or perish

as those sluggish animals of the prehistoric world have

perished.

If you once get hold of this great truth you will get a new

and much broader view of life. Then, go one step further

and try to imagine yourself in the position of your own great-

great-grandchildren who will take your place in the year

10,000. They too will learn history. But what will they

think of those short four thousand years during which we have

kept a written record of our actions and of our thoughts?

They will think of Napoleon as a contemporary of Tiglath

Pileser, the Assyrian conqueror. Perhaps they will confuse

him with Jenghiz Khan or Alexander the Macedonian. The

great war which has just come to an end will appear in the light

of that long commercial conflict which settled the supremacy

of the Mediterranean when Rome and Carthage fought during

one hundred and twenty-eight years for the mastery of the sea.

The Balkan troubles of the 19th century (the struggle for

freedom of Serbia and Greece and Bulgaria and Montenegro)

to them will seem a continuation of the disordered conditions

caused by the Great Migrations. They will look at pictures

of the Rheims cathedral which only yesterday was destroyed

by German guns as we look upon a photograph of the Acropolis

ruined two hundred and fifty years ago during a war

between the Turks and the Venetians. They will regard the

fear of death, which is still common among many people, as a

childish superstition which was perhaps natural in a race of

men who had burned witches as late as the year 1692. Even

our hospitals and our laboratories and our operating rooms

of which we are so proud will look like slightly improved

workshops of alchemists and mediaeval surgeons.

And the reason for all this is simple. We modern men and

women are not ``modern'' at all. On the contrary we still

belong to the last generations of the cave-dwellers. The foundation

for a new era was laid but yesterday. The human race

was given its first chance to become truly civilised when it took

courage to question all things and made ``knowledge and

understanding'' the foundation upon which to create a more

reasonable and sensible society of human beings. The Great

War was the ``growing-pain'' of this new world.

For a long time to come people will write mighty books to

prove that this or that or the other person brought about the

war. The Socialists will publish volumes in which they will ac-

cuse the capitalists'' of having brought about the war for commercial

gain.'' The capitalists will answer that they lost infinitely

more through the war than they made--that their children

were among the first to go and fight and be killed--and

they will show how in every country the bankers tried their

very best to avert the outbreak of hostilities. French historians

will go through the register of German sins from the

days of Charlemagne until the days of William of Hohenzollern

and German historians will return the compliment and

will go through the list of French horrors from the days of

Charlemagne until the days of President Poincare. And

then they will establish to their own satisfaction that the other

fellow was guilty of ``causing the war.'' Statesmen, dead and

not yet dead, in all countries will take to their typewriters and

they will explain how they tried to avert hostilities and how

their wicked opponents forced them into it.

The historian, a hundred years hence, will not bother about

these apologies and vindications. He will understand the real

nature of the underlying causes and he will know that personal

ambitions and personal wickedness and personal greed had very

little to do with the final outburst. The original mistake, which

was responsible for all this misery, was committed when our

scientists began to create a new world of steel and iron and

chemistry and electricity and forgot that the human mind is

slower than the proverbial turtle, is lazier than the well-known

sloth, and marches from one hundred to three hundred years

behind the small group of courageous leaders.

A Zulu in a frock coat is still a Zulu. A dog trained to ride

a bicycle and smoke a pipe is still a dog. And a human being

with the mind of a sixteenth century tradesman driving a 1921

Rolls-Royce is still a human being with the mind of a sixteenth

century tradesman.

If you do not understand this at first, read it again. It

will become clearer to you in a moment and it will explain

many things that have happened these last six years.

Perhaps I may give you another, more familiar, example,

to show you what I mean. In the movie theatres, jokes and

funny remarks are often thrown upon the screen. Watch the

audience the next time you have a chance. A few people seem

almost to inhale the words. It takes them but a second to read

the lines. Others are a bit slower. Still others take from

twenty to thirty seconds. Finally those men and women who

do not read any more than they can help, get the point when

the brighter ones among the audience have already begun to

decipher the next cut-in. It is not different in human life,

as I shall now show you.

In a former chapter I have told you how the idea of the

Roman Empire continued to live for a thousand years after

the death of the last Roman Emperor. It caused the establishment

of a large number of ``imitation empires.'' It gave the

Bishops of Rome a chance to make themselves the head of the

entire church, because they represented the idea of Roman

world-supremacy. It drove a number of perfectly harmless

barbarian chieftains into a career of crime and endless warfare

because they were for ever under the spell of this magic

word ``Rome.'' All these people, Popes, Emperors and plain

fighting men were not very different from you or me. But

they lived in a world where the Roman tradition was a vital

issue something living--something which was remembered

clearly both by the father and the son and the grandson. And

so they struggled and sacrificed themselves for a cause which

to-day would not find a dozen recruits.

In still another chapter I have told you how the great religious

wars took place more than a century after the first open

act of the Reformation and if you will compare the chapter

on the Thirty Years War with that on Inventions, you will see

that this ghastly butchery took place at a time when the first

clumsy steam engines were already puffing in the laboratories

of a number of French and German and English scientists.

But the world at large took no interest in these strange

contraptions, and went on with a grand theological discussion

which to-day causes yawns, but no anger.

And so it goes. A thousand years from now, the historian

will use the same words about Europe of the out-going nine-

teenth century, and he will see how men were engaged upon

terrific nationalistic struggles while the laboratories all around

them were filled with serious folk who cared not one whit for

politics as long as they could force nature to surrender a few

more of her million secrets.

You will gradually begin to understand what I am driving

at. The engineer and the scientist and the chemist, within a

single generation, filled Europe and America and Asia with

their vast machines, with their telegraphs, their flying machines,

their coal-tar products. They created a new world in which

time and space were reduced to complete insignificance. They

invented new products and they made these so cheap that almost

every one could buy them. I have told you all this before

but it certainly will bear repeating.

To keep the ever increasing number of factories going, the

owners, who had also become the rulers of the land, needed raw

materials and coal. Especially coal. Meanwhile the mass of

the people were still thinking in terms of the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries and clinging to the old notions of the

state as a dynastic or political organisation. This clumsy mediaeval

institution was then suddenly called upon to handle the

highly modern problems of a mechanical and industrial world.

It did its best, according to the rules of the game which had

been laid down centuries before. The different states created

enormous armies and gigantic navies which were used for the

purpose of acquiring new possessions in distant lands. Whereever{sic}

there was a tiny bit of land left, there arose an English or

a French or a German or a Russian colony. If the natives

objected, they were killed. In most cases they did not object,

and were allowed to live peacefully, provided they did not

interfere with the diamond mines or the coal mines or the oil

mines or the gold mines or the rubber plantations, and they

derived many benefits from the foreign occupation.

Sometimes it happened that two states in search of raw

materials wanted the same piece of land at the same time.

Then there was a war. This occurred fifteen years ago when

Russia and Japan fought for the possession of certain terri-

tories which belonged to the Chinese people. Such conflicts,

however, were the exception. No one really desired to fight.

Indeed, the idea of fighting with armies and battleships and

submarines began to seem absurd to the men of the early 20th

century. They associated the idea of violence with the long-

ago age of unlimited monarchies and intriguing dynasties.

Every day they read in their papers of still further inventions,

of groups of English and American and German scientists who

were working together in perfect friendship for the purpose

of an advance in medicine or in astronomy. They lived in a

busy world of trade and of commerce and factories. But only

a few noticed that the development of the state, (of the gigantic

community of people who recognise certain common ideals,)

was lagging several hundred years behind. They tried to warn

the others. But the others were occupied with their own

affairs.

I have used so many similes that I must apologise for bringing

in one more. The Ship of State (that old and trusted

expression which is ever new and always picturesque,) of the

Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans and the Venetians

and the merchant adventurers of the seventeenth century had

been a sturdy craft, constructed of well-seasoned wood, and

commanded by officers who knew both their crew and their

vessel and who understood the limitations of the art of navigating

which had been handed down to them by their ancestors.

Then came the new age of iron and steel and machinery.

First one part, then another of the old ship of state was

changed. Her dimensions were increased. The sails were discarded

for steam. Better living quarters were established, but

more people were forced to go down into the stoke-hole, and

while the work was safe and fairly remunerative, they did not

like it as well as their old and more dangerous job in the

rigging. Finally, and almost imperceptibly, the old wooden

square-rigger had been transformed into a modern ocean liner.

But the captain and the mates remained the same. They were

appointed or elected in the same way as a hundred years before.

They were taught the same system of navigation which

had served the mariners of the fifteenth century. In their

cabins hung the same charts and signal flags which had done

service in the days of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great.

In short, they were (through no fault of their own) completely

incompetent.

The sea of international politics is not very broad. When

those Imperial and Colonial liners began to try and outrun

each other, accidents were bound to happen. They did happen.

You can still see the wreckage if you venture to pass

through that part of the ocean.

And the moral of the story is a simple one. The world is

in dreadful need of men who will assume the new leadership--

who will have the courage of their own visions and who will

recognise clearly that we are only at the beginning of the

voyage, and have to learn an entirely new system of seamanship.

They will have to serve for years as mere apprentices.

They will have to fight their way to the top against every possible

form of opposition. When they reach the bridge, mutiny

of an envious crew may cause their death. But some day, a

man will arise who will bring the vessel safely to port, and he

shall be the hero of the ages.

AS IT EVER SHALL BE

``The more I think of the problems of our lives, the more I am

``persuaded that we ought to choose Irony and Pity for our

``assessors and judges as the ancient Egyptians called upon

``the Goddess Isis and the Goddess Nephtys on behalf of their

``dead.

``Irony and Pity are both of good counsel; the first with her

``smiles makes life agreeable; the other sanctifies it with her

``tears.

``The Irony which I invoke is no cruel Deity. She mocks

``neither love nor beauty. She is gentle and kindly disposed.

``Her mirth disarms and it is she who teaches us to laugh at

``rogues and fools, whom but for her we might be so weak as

``to despise and hate.''

And with these wise words of a very great Frenchman I

bid you farewell.

8 Barrow Street, New York.

Saturday, June 26, xxi.

AN ANIMATED CHRONOLOGY,

500,000 B.C.--A.D. 1922

THE END

CONCERNING THE PICTURES

CONCERNING THE PICTURES OF THIS BOOK AND A FEW

WORDS ABOUT THE BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The day of the historical textbook without illustrations has gone.

Pictures and photographs of famous personages and equally famous

occurrences cover the pages of Breasted and Robinson and Beard. In

this volume the photographs have been omitted to make room for a

series of home-made drawings which represent ideas rather than events.

While the author lays no claim to great artistic excellence (being

possessed of a decided leaning towards drawing as a child, he was

taught to play the violin as a matter of discipline,) he prefers to

make his own maps and sketches because he knows exactly what he

wants to say and cannot possibly explain this meaning to his more

proficient brethren in the field of art. Besides, the pictures were all

drawn for children and their ideas of art are very different from those

of their parents.

To all teachers the author would give this advice--let your boys and

girls draw their history after their own desire just as often as you have

a chance. You can show a class a photograph of a Greek temple or a

mediaeval castle and the class will dutifully say, ``Yes, Ma'am,'' and

proceed to forget all about it. But make the Greek temple or the

Roman castle the centre of an event, tell the boys to make their own

picture of the building of a temple,'' or the storming of the castle,''

and they will stay after school-hours to finish the job. Most children,

before they are taught how to draw from plaster casts, can draw after

a fashion, and often they can draw remarkably well. The product of

their pencil may look a bit prehistoric. It may even resemble the

work of certain native tribes from the upper Congo. But the child is

quite frequently prehistoric or upper-Congoish in his or her own tastes,

and expresses these primitive instincts with a most astonishing accuracy.

The main thing in teaching history, is that the pupil shall remember

certain events ``in their proper sequence.'' The experiments of

many years in the Children's School of New York has convinced the

author that few children will ever forget what they have drawn, while

very few will ever remember what they have merely read.

It is the same with the maps. Give the child an ordinary conventional

map with dots and lines and green seas and tell him to revaluate

that geographic scene in his or her own terms. The mountains will be

a bit out of gear and the cities will look astonishingly mediaeval. The

outlines will be often very imperfect, but the general effect will be

quite as truthful as that of our conventional maps, which ever since

the days of good Gerardus Mercator have told a strangely erroneous

story. Most important of all, it will give the child a feeling of intimacy

with historical and geographic facts which cannot be obtained in any

other way.

Neither the publishers nor the author claim that ``The Story of Mankind''

is the last word to be said upon the subject of history for children.

It is an appetizer. The book tries to present the subject in such

a fashion that the average child shall get a taste for History and shall

ask for more.

To facilitate the work of both parents and teachers, the publishers

have asked Miss Leonore St. John Power (who knows more upon this

particular subject than any one else they could discover) to compile a

list of readable and instructive books.

The list was made and was duly printed.

The parents who live near our big cities will experience no difficulty

in ordering these volumes from their booksellers. Those who

for the sake of fresh air and quiet, dwell in more remote spots, may

not find it convenient to go to a book-store. In that case, Boni and

Liveright will be happy to act as middle-man and obtain the books

that are desired. They want it to be distinctly understood that

they have not gone into the retail book business, but they are quite

willing to do their share towards a better and more general historical

education, and all orders will receive their immediate attention.

AN HISTORICAL READING LIST FOR CHILDREN

``Don't stop (I say) to explain that Hebe was (for once) the

``legitimate daughter of Zeus and, as such, had the privilege to draw

``wine for the Gods. Don't even stop, just yet, to explain who the

``Gods were. Don't discourse on amber, otherwise ambergris; don't

``explain that gris' in this connection doesn't mean grease'; don't

``trace it through the Arabic into Noah's Ark; don't prove its electrical

``properties by tearing up paper into little bits and attracting them

``with the mouth-piece of your pipe rubbed on your sleeve. Don't

``insist philologically that when every shepherd `tells his tale' he is not

``relating an anecdote but simply keeping `tally' of his flock. Just go

``on reading, as well as you can, and be sure that when the children

``get the thrill of the story, for which you wait, they will be asking

``more questions, and pertinent ones, than you are able to answer.--

(``On the Art of Reading for Children,'' by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.)

The Days Before History

``How the Present Came From the Past,'' by Margaret E. Wells,

Volume I.

How earliest man learned to make tools and build homes, and the

stories he told about the fire-makers, the sun and the frost. A simple,

illustrated account of these things for children.

``The Story of Ab, by Stanley Waterloo.

A romantic tale of the time of the cave-man. (A much simplified

edition of this for little children is ``Ab, the Cave Man'' adapted by

William Lewis Nida.)

``Industrial and Social History Series,'' by Katharine E. Dopp.

``The Tree Dwellers--The Age of Fear''

``The Early Cave-Men--The Age of Combat''

``The Later Cave-Men--The Age of the Chase''

``The Early Sea People--First Steps in the Conquest of the Waters''

``The Tent-Dwellers--The Early Fishing Men''

Very simple stories of the way in which man learned how to make

pottery, how to weave and spin, and how to conquer land and sea.

``Ancient Man,'' written and drawn and done into colour by Hendrik

           Willem van Loon.

The beginning of civilisations pictured and written in a new and

fascinating fashion, with story maps showing exactly what happened in

all parts of the world. A book for children of all ages.

The Dawn of History

``The Civilisation of the Ancient Egyptians,'' by A. Bothwell Gosse.

``No country possesses so many wonders, and has such a number

of works which defy description.'' An excellent, profusely illustrated

account of the domestic life, amusements, art, religion and occupations

of these wonderful people.

``How the Present Came From the Past,'' by Margaret E. Wells,

      Volume II.

What the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the

Persians contributed to civilisation. This is brief and simple and may

be used as a first book on the subject.

``Stories of Egyptian Gods and Heroes,'' by F. H. Brooksbank.

The beliefs of the Egyptians, the legend of Isis and Osiris, the

builders of the Pyramids and the Temples, the Riddle of the Sphinx, all

add to the fascination of this romantic picture of Egypt.

``Wonder Tales of the Ancient World,'' by Rev. James Baikie.

Tales of the Wizards, Tales of Travel and Adventure, and Legends

of the Gods all gathered from ancient Egyptian literature.

``Ancient Assyria,'' by Rev. James Baikie.

Which tells of a city 2800 years ago with a street lined with beautiful

enamelled reliefs, and with libraries of clay.

``The Bible for Young People,'' arranged from the King James version,

with twenty-four full page illustrations from old masters.

``Old, Old Tales From the Old, Old Book,'' by Nora Archibald Smith.

``Written in the East these characters live forever in the West--

they pervade the world.'' A good rendering of the Old Testament.

``The Jewish Fairy Book,'' translated and adapted by Gerald Friedlander.

Stories of great nobility and beauty from the Talmud and the old

Jewish chap-books.

``Eastern Stories and Legends,'' by Marie L. Shedlock.

``The soldiers of Alexander who had settled in the East, wandering

merchants of many nations and climes, crusading knights and hermits

brought these Buddha Stories from the East to the West.''

Stories of Greece and Rome

``The Story of the Golden Age,'' by James Baldwin.

Some of the most beautiful of the old Greek myths woven into the

story of the Odyssey make this book a good introduction to the glories

of the Golden Age.

``A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales,'' by Nathaniel Hawthorne,

with pictures by Maxfield Parrish.

``The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy,'' by Padraic

Colum, presented by Willy Pogany.

An attractive, poetically rendered account of ``the world's greatest

story.''

``The Story of Rome,'' by Mary Macgregor, with twenty plates in

colour.

Attractively illustrated and simply presented story of Rome from

the earliest times to the death of Augustus.

``Plutarch's Lives for Boys and Girls,'' retold by W. H. Weston.

``The Lays of Ancient Rome,'' by Lord Macaulay.

``The early history of Rome is indeed far more poetical than anything

else in Latin Literature.''

``Children of the Dawn,'' by Elsie Finnemore Buckley.

Old Greek tales of love, adventure, heroism, skill, achievement, or

defeat exceptionally well told. Especially recommended for girls.

``The Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children,'' by Charles

Kingsley.

``The Story of Greece,'' by Mary Macgregor, with nineteen plates in

colour by Walter Crane.

Attractively illustrated and simply presented--a good book to

begin on.

Christianity

``The Story of Jesus,'' pictures from paintings by Giotto, Fra Angelico,

Duccio, Ghirlandais, and Barnja-da-Siena. Descriptive text

from the New Testament, selected and arranged by Ethel Natalie

Dana.

A beautiful book and a beautiful way to present the Christ Story.

``A Child's Book of Saints,'' by William Canton.

Sympathetically told and charmingly written stories of men and

women whose faith brought about strange miracles, and whose goodness

to man and beast set the world wondering.

``The Seven Champions of Christendom,'' edited by F. J. H. Darton.

How the knights of old--St. George of England, St. Denis of

France, St. James of Spain, and others--fought with enchanters and

evil spirits to preserve the Kingdom of God. Fine old romances interestingly

told for children.

``Stories From the Christian East,'' by Stephen Gaselee.

Unusual stories which have been translated from the Coptic, the

Greek, the Latin and the Ethiopic.

``Jerusalem and the Crusades,'' by Estelle Blyth, with eight plates in

colour.

Historical stories telling how children and priests, hermits and

knights all strove to keep the Cross in the East.

Stories of Legend and Chivalry

``Stories of Norse Heroes From the Eddas and Sagas,'' retold by E. M.

Wilmot-Buxton.

These are tales which the Northmen tell concerning the wisdom of

All-Father Odin, and how all things began and how they ended. A

good book for all children, and for story-tellers.

``The Story of Siegfried,'' by James Baldwin.

A good introduction to this Northern hero whose strange and

daring deeds fill the pages of the old sagas.

``The Story of King Arthur and His Knights,'' written and illustrated

by Howard Pyle.

This, and the companion volumes, ``The Story of the Champions of

the Round Table,'' ``The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions,''

``The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur,'' form an incomparable

collection for children.

``The Boy's King Arthur,'' edited by Sidney Lanier, illustrated by N.

C. Wyeth.

A very good rendering of Malory's King Arthur, made especially

attractive by the coloured illustrations.

``Irish Fairy Tales,'' by James Stephens, illustrated by Arthur Rackham.

Beautifully pictured and poetically told legends of Ireland's epic

hero Fionn. A book for the boy or girl who loves the old romances,

and a book for story-telling or reading aloud.

``Stories of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France,'' by A. J.

Church.

Stories from the old French and English chronicles showing the

romantic glamour surrounding the great Charlemagne and his crusading

knights.

``The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood,'' written and illustrated by

Howard Pyle.

Both in picture and in story this book holds first place in the hearts

of children.

``A Book of Ballad Stories,'' by Mary Macleod.

Good prose versions of some of the famous old ballads sung by the

minstrels of England and Scotland.

``The Story of Roland,'' by James Baldwin.

``There is, in short, no country in Europe, and no language, in

which the exploits of Charlemagne and Roland have not at some time

been recounted and sung.'' This book will serve as a good introduction

to a fine heroic character.

``The Boy's Froissart,'' being Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of Adventure,

Battle, and Custom in England, France, Spain.

``Froissart sets the boy's mind upon manhood and the man's mind

upon boyhood.'' An invaluable background for the future study of

history.

``The Boy's Percy,'' being old ballads of War, Adventure and Love

from Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, edited by

Sidney Lanier.

``He who walks in the way these following ballads point, will be

manful in necessary fight, loyal in love, generous to the poor, tender in

the household, prudent in living, merry upon occasion, and honest in

all things.''

``Tales of the Canterbury Pilgrims,'' retold from Chaucer and others

by E. J H. Darton.

``Sometimes a pilgrimage seemed nothing but an excuse for a

lively and pleasant holiday, and the travellers often made themselves

very merry on the road, with their jests and songs, and their flutes

and fiddles and bagpipes.'' A good prose version much enjoyed by boys

and girls.

``Joan of Arc,'' written and illustrated by M. Boutet de Monvel.

A very fine interpretation of the life of this great heroine. A book

to be owned by every boy and girl.

``When Knights Were Bold,'' by Eva March Tappan.

Telling of the training of a knight, of the daily life in a castle, of

pilgrimages and crusades, of merchant guilds, of schools and literature,

in short, a full picture of life in the days of chivalry. A good

book to supplement the romantic stories of the time.

Adventurers in New Worlds

``A Book of Discovery,'' by M. B. Synge, fully illustrated from authentic

sources and with maps.

A thoroughly fascinating book about the world's exploration from

the earliest times to the discovery of the South Pole. A book to be

owned by older boys and girls who like true tales of adventure.

``A Short History of Discovery From the Earliest Times to the Founding

of the Colonies on the American Continent,'' written and

done into colour by Hendrik Willem van Loon.

``Dear Children: History is the most fascinating and entertaining

and instructive of arts.'' A book to delight children of all ages.

``The Story of Marco Polo,'' by Noah Brooks.

``Olaf the Glorious,'' by Robert Leighton.

An historical story of the Viking age.

The Conquerors of Mexico,'' retold from Prescott's Conquest of

Mexico,'' by Henry Gilbert.

The Conquerors of Peru,'' retold from Prescott's Conquest of Peru,''

by Henry Gilbert.

``Vikings of the Pacific,'' by A. C. Laut.

Adventures of Bering the Dane; the outlaw hunters of Russia;

Benyowsky, the Polish pirate; Cook and Vancouver; Drake, and other

soldiers of fortune on the West Coast of America.

``The Argonauts of Faith,'' by Basil Mathews.

The Adventures of the ``Mayflower'' Pilgrims.

``Pathfinders of the West,'' by A. C. Laut.

The thrilling story of the adventures of the men who discovered the

great Northwest.

``Beyond the Old Frontier,'' by George Bird Grinnell.

Adventures of Indian Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders on the

Pacific Coast.

``A History of Travel in America,'' by Seymour Dunbar, illustrated

from old woodcuts and engravings. 4 volumes.

An interesting book for children who wish to understand the problems

and difficulties their grandfathers had in the conquest of the West.

This is a standard book upon the subject of early travel, but is so

readable as to be of interest to older children.

``The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators,'' by Hendrik Willem van

Loon. Fully illustrated from old prints.

The World's Progress in Invention--Art--Music.

``Gabriel and the Hour Book,'' by Evaleen Stein.

How a boy learned from the monks how to grind and mix the colours

for illuminating the beautiful hand-printed books of the time and how

he himself made books that are now treasured in the museums of France

and England.

``Historic Inventions,'' by Rupert S. Holland.

Stories of the invention of printing, the steam-engine, the spinning-

jenny, the safety-lamp, the sewing machine, electric light, and other

wonders of mechanism.

``A History of Everyday Things in England,'' written and illustrated

by Marjorie and C. V. B. Quennell. 2 Volumes.

A most fascinating book, profusely illustrated in black and white

and in colour, giving a vivid picture of life in England from 1066-1799.

It tells of wars and of home-life, of amusements and occupations, of

art and literature, of science and invention. A book to be owned by

every boy and girl.

``First Steps in the Enjoyment of Pictures,'' by Maude I. G. Oliver.

A book designed to help children in their appreciation of art by giving

them technical knowledge of the media, the draughtsmanship, the

composition and the technique of well-known American pictures.

``Knights of Art,'' by Amy Steedman.

Stories of Italian Painters. Attractively illustrated in colour from

old masters.

``Masters of Music,'' by Anna Alice Chapin.

``Story Lives of Men of Science,'' by F. J. Rowbotham.

``All About Treasures of the Earth,'' by Frederick A. Talbot.

A book that tells many interesting things about coal, salt, iron,

rare metals and precious stones.

``The Boys' Book of New Inventions,'' by Harry E. Maule.

An account of the machines and mechancial{sic} processes that are

making the history of our time more dramatic than that of any other

age since the world began.

``Masters of Space,'' by Walter Kellogg Towers.

Stories of the wonders of telegraphing through the air and beneath

the sea with signals, and of speaking across continents.

``All About Railways,'' by F. S. Hartnell.

``The Man-of-War, What She Has Done and What She Is Doing,''

by Commander E. Hamilton Currey.

True stories about galleys and pirate ships, about the Spanish

Main and famous frigates, and about slave-hunting expeditions in the

days of old.

The Democracy of To-Day.

``The Land of Fair Play,'' by Geoffrey Parsons.

``This book aims to make clear the great, unseen services that

America renders each of us, and the active devotion each of us must

yield in return for America to endure.'' An excellent book on our

government for boys and girls.

``The American Idea as Expounded by American Statesmen,'' compiled

by Joseph B. Gilder.

A good collection, including The Declaration of Independence, The

Constitution of the United States, the Monroe Doctrine, and the

famous speeches of Washington, Lincoln, Webster and Roosevelt.

``The Making of an American,'' by Jacob A. Riis.

The true story of a Danish boy who became one of America's finest

citizens.

``The Promised Land,'' by Mary Antin.

A true story about a little immigrant. ``Before we came, the New

World knew not the Old; but since we have begun to come, the

Young World has taken the Old by the hand, and the two are learning

to march side by side, seeking a common destiny.''

Illustrated Histories in French.

(The colourful and graphic pictures make these histories beloved by

all children whether they read the text or not.)

``Voyages et Glorieuses Decouvertes des Grands Navigateurs et Explorateurs

Francais, illustre par Edy Segrand.''

``Collection d'Albums Historiques.''

Louis XI, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de Job.

Francois I, texte de G. Gustave Toudouze, aquarelles de Job.

Henri IV, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de H. Yogel.

Richelieu, texte de Th. Cahu, aquarelles de Maurice Leloir.

Le Roy Soleil, texte de Gustave Toudouze, aquarelles de Mauriae

Leloir.

Bonaparte, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de Job.

`Fabliaux et Contes du Moyen-Age''; illustrations de A. Robida

End