The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe

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Title: The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe
Author: Bénézet, Louis Paul, 1878-1961
Language: English
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THE WORLD WAR AND WHAT WAS BEHIND IT

THE STORY OF THE MAP OF EUROPE

L. P. BENEZET

SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, EVANSVILLE, INDIANA

[Illustration: The Peace Palace at the Hague]

PREFACE

This little volume is the result of the interest shown by pupils,
teachers, and the general public in a series of talks on the causes of
the great European war which were given by the author in the fall of
1914. The audiences were widely different in character. They included
pupils of the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, students in high
school and normal school, teachers in the public schools, an
association of business men, and a convention of boards of education.
In every case, the same sentiment was voiced: "If there were only some
book which would give us these facts in simple language and illustrate
them by maps and charts as you have done!" After searching the market
for a book of this sort without success, the author determined to put
the subject of his talks into manuscript form. It has been his aim to
write in a style which is well within the comprehension of the
children in the upper grades and yet is not too juvenile for adult
readers. The book deals with the remarkable sequence of events in
Europe which made the great war inevitable. Facts are revealed which,
so far as the author knows, have not been published in any history to
date; facts which had the strongest possible bearing on the outbreak
of the war. The average American, whether child or adult, has little
conception of conditions in Europe. In America all races mix. The
children of the Polish Jew mingle with those of the Sicilian, and in
the second generations both peoples have become Americans. Bohemians
intermarry with Irish, Scotch with Norwegians. In Europe, on the other
hand, Czech and Teuton, Bulgar and Serb may live side by side for
centuries without mixing or losing their distinct racial
characteristics. In order that the American reader may understand the
complicated problem of European peace, a study of races and languages
is given in the text, showing the relationship of Slav, Celt, Latin,
and Teuton, and the various sub-divisions of these peoples. A
knowledge of these facts is very essential to any understanding of the
situation in Europe. The author has pointed out the fact that
political boundaries are largely king-made, and that they have seldom
been drawn with regard to the natural division of Europe by
nationalities, or to the wishes of the mass of the population.

The chapter, entitled "Europe as it Should Be," with its accompanying
map, shows the boundaries of the various nations as they would look if
the bulk of the people of each nationality were included in a single
political division. In many places, it is, of course, impossible to
draw sharp lines. Greek shades off into Bulgar on one side and into
Skipetar and Serb on the other. Prague, the capital of the Czechs, is
one-third German in its population. There are large islands of Germans
and Magyars in the midst of the Roumanians of Transylvania. These are
a few examples out of many which could be cited. However, the general
aim of the chapter has been to divide the continent into nations, in
each of which the leading race would vastly predominate in population.

It is hoped that the study of this little work will not only throw
light upon the causes of war in general, but will also reveal its
cruelty and its needlessness. It is shown that the history of Europe
from the time of the great invasions by the Germanic tribes has been a
continuous story of government without the consent of the governed.

A preventive for wars, such as statesmen and philanthropists in many
countries have urged, is outlined in the closing chapter. It would
seem as though after this terrible demonstration of the results of
armed peace, the governments of the world would be ready to listen to
some plan which would forever forbid the possibility of another war.
Just as individuals in the majority of civilized countries discovered,
a hundred years ago, that it was no longer necessary for them to carry
weapons in order to insure their right to live and to enjoy
protection, so nations may learn at last that peace and security are
preferable to the fruits of brigandage and aggression. The colonies of
America, after years of jealousy and small differences, followed by a
tremendous war, at last learned this lesson. In the same way the
states of Europe will have to learn it. The stumbling blocks in the
way are the remains of feudal government in Europe and the ignorance
and short-sightedness of the common people in many countries.
Ignorance is rapidly waning with the advance of education, and we
trust that feudalism will not long survive its last terrible crime,
the world war of 1914.

Now that the United States has become a belligerent, it is very
essential that our people understand the events that led up to our
participation in the war. So many of our citizens are of a
peace-loving nature, we are so far removed from the militarism of
continental Europe, and the whole war seems so needless and so
profitless to those who have not studied carefully its causes, that
there is danger of a want of harmony with the program of the
government if all are not taught the simple truth of the matter. There
is no quicker channel through which to reach all the people than the
public schools. With this in mind, two entire chapters and part of a
third are devoted to demonstrating why no other course was open to
this country than to accept the war which was forced upon her.

In the preparation of this little work, the author has received many
helpful suggestions from co-workers. His thanks are especially due to
Professor A. G. Terry of Northwestern University and Professor A. H.
Sanford of the Wisconsin State Normal School at La Crosse, who were
kind enough to read through and correct the manuscript before its
final revision. The author is especially indebted to the Committee on
Public Information at Washington, D. C., for furnishing to him
authoritative data on many phases of the war. Acknowledgment is also
made to Row, Peterson and Company for kind permission to use
illustrations from History Stories of Other Lands; also to the
International Film Service, Inc., of New York City for the use of many
valuable copyright illustrations of scenes relating to the great war.

L. P. BENEZET.

Evansville, Indiana,
January 2, 1918

CONTENTS

Preface
List of Maps
List of Illustrations

1. The Great War
2. Rome and the Barbarian Tribes
3. From Chiefs to Kings
4. Master and Man
5. A Babel of Tongues
6. "The Terrible Turk"
7. The Rise of Modern Nations
8. The Fall of Two Kingdoms
9. The Little Man from the Common People
10. A King-Made Map and Its Trail of Wrongs
11. Italy a Nation at Last
12. The Man of Blood and Iron
13. The Balance of Power
14. The "Entente Cordiale"
15. The Sowing of the Dragon's Teeth
16. Who Profits?
17. The Spark that Exploded the Magazine
18. Why England Came In
19. Diplomacy and Kingly Ambition
20. Back to the Balkans
21. The War under the Sea
22. Another Crown Topples
23. The United States at War--Why?
24. Europe As It Should Be
25. The Cost of It All
26. What Germany Must Learn

Pronouncing Glossary
Index

LIST OF MAPS

1. Distribution of Peoples According to Relationship
2. Distribution of Languages
3. Southeastern Europe in 600 B.C.
4. Southeastern Europe 975 A.D.
5. Southeastern Europe 1690
6. The Empire of Charlemagne
7. Europe in 1540
8. The Growth of Brandenburg-Prussia 1400-1806
9. Italy in 525
10. Italy in 650
11. Italy in 1175
12. Europe in 1796
13. Europe in 1810
14. Europe in 1815
15. Italy Made One Nation--1914--
16. Formation of the German Empire
17. Southeastern and Central Europe 1796
18. Losses of Turkey During the Nineteenth Century
19. Turkey As the Balkan Allies Planned to Divide It
20. Changes Resulting from Balkan Wars 1912-1913
21. The Two Routes from Germany into France
22. The Roumanian Campaign as the Allies Wished It
23. The Roumanian Campaign as It Turned Out
24. Europe as It Should Be

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. The Peace Palace at the Hague
2. Fleeing from Their Homes, Around which a Battle is Raging
3. A Drill Ground in Modern Europe
4. The Forum of Rome as It Was 1600 Years Ago
5. The Last Combat of the Gladiators
6. Germans Going into Battle
7. A Hun Warrior
8. Gaius Julius Caesar
9. A Prankish Chief
10. Movable Huts of Early Germans
11. Goths on the March
12. Franks Crossing the Rhine
13. Men of Normandy Landing in England
14. Alexander Defeating the Persians
15. A Knight in Armor
16. A Norman Castle in England
17. A Vassal Doing Homage to His Lord
18. William the Conqueror
19. A Typical Bulgarian Family
20. Mohammed II Before Constantinople
21. A Scene in Salonika
22. Louis XIV
23. John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough
24. The Great Elector of Brandenburg
25. Frederick the Great
26. Catharine II
27. Courtier of Time of Louis XIV
28. The Taking of the Bastille
29. The Palace of Versailles
30. The Reign of Terror
31. The First Singing of "The Marseillaise"
32. Charles the Fifth
33. The Emperor Napoleon in 1814
34. The Retreat from Moscow
35. Napoleon at Waterloo
36. The Congress of Vienna
37. Prince Metternich
38. The First Meeting of Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel
39. Bismarck
40. An Attack on a Convoy in the Franco-Prussian War
41. The Proclamation at Versailles of William I as Emperor of
Germany
42. Peter the Great
43. Entrance to the Mosque of St. Sophia
44. The Congress of Berlin
45. An Arab Sheik and His Staff
46. A Scene in Constantinople
47. Durazzo
48. A Modern Dreadnaught
49. Submarine
50. A Fort Ruined by the Big German Guns
51. Russian Peasants Fleeing Before the German Army
52. A Bomb-proof Trench in the Western War Front
53. Venizelos
54. The Deutschland in Chesapeake Bay
55. Crowd in Petrograd During the Revolution
56. Revolutionary Soldiers in the Duma
57. Kerensky Reviewing Russian Troops
58. Flight from a Torpedoed Liner
59. President Wilson Reading the War Message
60. American Grain Set on Fire by German Agents
61. Polish Children
62. The Price of War
63. Rendered Homeless by War
64. Charles XII of Sweden

THE STORY OF THE MAP OF EUROPE

CHAPTER I

The Great War

The call from Europe.--Friend against friend.--Why?--Death and
devastation.--No private quarrel.--Ordered by government.--What makes
government?--The influence of the past.--Four causes of war.

Among the bricklayers at work on a building which was being erected in
a great American city during the summer of 1914 were two men who had
not yet become citizens of the United States. Born abroad, they still
owed allegiance, one to the Emperor of Austria, the other to the Czar
of Russia.

Meeting in a new country, and using a new language which gave them a
chance to understand each other, they had become well acquainted. They
were members of the same labor union, and had worked side by side on
several different jobs. In the course of time, a firm friendship had
sprung up between them. Suddenly, on the same day, each was notified
to call at the office of the agent of his government in the city. Next
morning the Russian came to his boss to explain that he must quit
work, that he had been called home to fight for the "Little Father" of
the Russians. He found his chum, the Austrian, there ahead of him,
telling that he had to go, for the Russians had declared war on
Austria and the good Kaiser,[1] Franz Josef, had need of all his
young men.

[1] In the German language, the title Kaiser means Emperor.

The two chums stared at each other in sorrow and dismay. The pitiless
arm of the god of war had reached across the broad Atlantic, plucking
them back from peace and security. With weapons put into their hands
they would be ordered to kill each other on sight.

A last hand-clasp, a sorrowful "Good luck to you," and they parted.

Why was this necessary? What was this irresistible force, strong
enough to separate the two friends and drag them back five thousand
miles for the purpose of killing each other? To answer these two
questions is the purpose of this little volume.

Beginning with the summer of 1914, Europe and parts of Asia and Africa
were torn and racked with the most tremendous war that the world has
ever seen. Millions of men were killed. Other millions were maimed,
blinded, or disfigured for life. Still other millions were herded into
prison camps or forced to work like convict laborers. Millions of
homes were filled with grief. Millions of women were forced to do hard
work which before the war had been considered beyond their power.
Millions of children were left fatherless. What had been the richest
and most productive farming land in Europe was made a barren waste.
Thousands of villages and towns were utterly destroyed and their
inhabitants were forced to flee, the aged, the sick, and the infants
alike.

In many cases, as victorious armies swept through Poland and Serbia,
the wretched inhabitants fled before them, literally starving, because
all food had been seized for the use of fighting men. Dreadful
diseases, which cannot exist where people have the chance to bathe and
keep themselves clean, once more appeared, sweeping away hundreds of
thousands of victims. The strongest, healthiest, bravest men of a
dozen different nations were shot down by the millions or left to drag
out a miserable existence, sick or crippled for life. Silent were the
wheels in many factories which once turned out the comforts and
luxuries of civilization. There were no men to make toys for the
children, or to work for mankind's happiness. The only mills and
factories which were running full time were those that turned out the
tools of destruction and shot and shell for the guns. Nations poured
out one hundred fifty million dollars a day for the purpose of killing
off the best men in Europe. Had the world gone mad? What was the
reason for it all?

[Illustration: Fleeing from their Homes, around which a Battle is Raging.]

In 1913 Germans traveled in Russia and Englishmen traveled in Germany
freely and safely. Germans were glad to trade with intercourse
Russians, and happy to have Englishmen spend their money in Germany.
France and Austria exchanged goods and their inhabitants traveled
within each other's boundaries. A Frenchman might go anywhere through
Germany and be welcomed. There was nothing to make the average German
hate the average Englishman or Belgian. The citizen of Austria and the
citizen of Russia could meet and find plenty of ground for friendship.

We cannot explain this war, then, on the grounds of race hatred. One
can imagine that two men living side by side and seeing each other
every day might have trouble and grow to hate each other, but in this
great war soldiers were shooting down other soldiers whom they had
never seen before, with whom they had never exchanged a word, and it
would not profit them if they killed a whole army of their opponents.
In many cases, the soldiers did not see the men whom they were
killing. An officer with a telescope watched where the shells from the
cannon were falling and telephoned to the captain in charge to change
the aim a trifle for his next shots. The men put in the projectile,
closed and fired the gun. Once in a while, a shell from the invisible
enemy, two, three, or four miles away, fell among them, killing and
wounding. When a regiment of Austrians were ordered to charge the
Russian trenches, they shot and bayoneted the Russians because they
were told to do so by their officers, and the Russian soldiers shot
the Austrians because their captains so ordered them. The officers on
each side were only obeying orders received from their generals. The
generals were only obeying orders from the government.

In the end, then, we come back to the governments, and we wonder what
has caused these nations to fly at each other's throats. The question
arises as to what makes up a government or why a government has the
right to rule its people.

In the United States, the government officials are simply the servants
of the people. Practically every man in our country, unless he is a
citizen of some foreign nation, has a right to vote, and in many of
the states women, too, have a voice in the government. We, the people
of the United States, can choose our own lawmakers, can instruct them
how to vote and, in some states, can vote out of existence any law
that they the people have made which we do not like. In all states, we
can show our disapproval of what our law-makers have done by voting
against them at the next election. Such is the government of a
republic, a "government of the people, by the people, and for the
people," as Abraham Lincoln called it. In the leading British
colonies, the people rule. Australian citizens voted against forcing
men to serve in the army. The result was very close and the vote of
the women helped to decide it. Canada, on the contrary, voted to
compel her men to go. How is it in Europe? Have the people of Germany
or Austria the right to vote on war? Were they consulted before their
governments called them to arms and sent them to fight each other? It
is plain that in order to understand what this war is about, we must
look into the story of how the different governments of Europe came to
be and learn why their peoples obey them so unquestioningly.

We must remember that government by the people is a very new thing.
One hundred and thirty years ago, even in the United States only about
one-fourth of the men had the right to vote. These were citizens of
property and wealth. They did not think a poor man was worth
considering. In England, a country which allows its people more voice
in the government than almost any other nation in Europe, it is only
within the last thirty years that all men could vote. There are some
European countries, like Turkey, where the people have practically no
power at all and others, like Austria, where they have very little
voice in how they shall be governed.

For over a thousand years, the men of Europe have obeyed without
thinking when their lords and kings have ordered them to pick up their
weapons and go to war. In many instances they have known nothing of
the causes of the conflict or of what they were fighting for. A famous
English writer has written a poem which illustrates how little the
average citizen has ever known concerning the cause of war, and shows
the difference between the way in which war was looked upon by the men
of old and the way in which one should regard it. The poem runs as
follows:

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM

It was a summer evening,
Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage door
Was sitting in the sun,
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet
In playing there had found,
He came to ask what he had found
That was so large and smooth and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
And, with a natural sigh--
"'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
"Who fell in the great victory.

"I find them in the garden,
For there's many hereabout;
And often when I go to plow,
The plowshare turns them out!
For many a thousand men," said he,
"Were slain in the great victory."

"Now tell us what 'twas all about,"
Young Peterkin he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes--
"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for."

"It was the English," Kaspar cried,
"Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for
I could not well make out;
But everybody said," quoth he,
"That 'twas a famous victory.

"My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by;
They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;
So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

"They say it was a shocking sight
After the field was won--
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

"Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won,
And our good Prince Eugene."
"Why,'twas a very wicked thing!"
Said little Wilhelmine.
"Nay, nay, my little girl," quoth he,
"It was a famous victory.

"And everybody praised the duke
Who this great fight did win."
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why, that I cannot tell," said he;
"But 'twas a famous victory."

--Robert Southey.

Old Kaspar, who has been used to such things all his life, cannot feel
the wickedness and horror Of the battle. The children, on the other
hand, have a different idea of war. They are not satisfied until they
know what it was all about and what good came of it, and they feel
that "it was a very wicked thing." If the men in the armies had
stopped to ask the reason why they were killing each other and had
refused to fight until they knew the truth, the history of the world
would have been very different.

One reason why we still have wars is that men refuse to think for
themselves, because it is so much easier to let their dead ancestors
think for them and to keep up customs which should have been changed
ages ago. People in Europe have lived in the midst of wars or
preparation for wars all their lives. There never has been a time when
Europe was not either a battlefield or a great drill-ground for
armies.

There was a time, long ago, when any man might kill another in Europe
and not be punished for his deed. It was not thought wrong to take
human life. Today it is not considered wrong to kill, provided a man
is ordered to do so by his general or his king. When two kings go to
war, each claiming his quarrel to be a just one, wholesale murder is
done, and each side is made by its government to think itself very
virtuous and wholly justified in its killing. It should be the great
aim of everyone today to help to bring about lasting peace among all
the nations.

[Illustration: A Drill Ground in Modern Europe.]

In order to know how to do this, we must study the causes of the wars
of the past. We shall find, as we do so, that almost all wars can be
traced to one of four causes: (1) the instinct among barbarous tribes
to fight with and plunder their neighbors; (2) the ambition of kings
to enlarge their kingdoms; (3) the desire of the traders of one nation
to increase their commerce at the expense of some other nation; (4) a
people's wish to be free from the control of some other country and to
become a nation by itself. Of the four reasons, only the last
furnishes a just cause for war, and this cause has been brought about
only when kings have sent their armies out, and forced into their
kingdoms other peoples who wished to govern themselves.

Questions for Review

1. Why must foreigners in the United States return to their native
lands when summoned by their governments?
2. How is it that war helps to breed diseases?
3. Is race hatred a cause of war or a result of it?
4. Whom do we mean by the government in the United States?
5. Who controls the government in Russia?
6. Who in England?
7. Who in Germany?
8. Who in France?
9. In Southey's poem, how does the children's idea of the battle
differ from that of their grandfather? Why?
10. Are people less likely to protest against war if their forefathers
have fought many wars?
11. What have been the four main causes of war?

CHAPTER II

Rome and the Barbarian Tribes

New governments in Europe.--Earliest times.--How civilization
began.--The rise of Rome.--Roman civilization.--Roman cruelty.--The
German tribes.--The Slavic tribes.--The Celtic tribes.--The Huns and
Moors.--The great Germanic invasions of the Roman world.

To search for the causes of the great war which began in Europe in
1914, we must go far back into history. It should be remembered that
many of the governments of today have not lived as long as that of our
own country. This is, perhaps, a new thought to some of us, who rather
think that, as America is a new country, it is the baby among the
great nations. But, one hundred and thirty years ago, when the United
States was being formed, there was no nation called Italy; the
peninsula which we now know by that name was cut up among nine or ten
little governments. There was no nation known as Germany; the land
which is in the present German empire was then divided among some
thirty or thirty-five different rulers. There was no Republic of
France; instead, France had a king whose will was law, and the French
people were cruelly oppressed. There was no kingdom of Belgium, no
kingdom of Serbia, of Bulgaria, of Roumania. The kingdom of Norway was
part of Denmark. The Republic of France, as we now know it, dates back
only to 1871; the Empire of Germany and the United Kingdom of Italy to
about the same time. The kingdoms of Roumania, Serbia, and Bulgaria
have been independent of Turkey only since 1878. The kingdom of
Albania did not exist before 1913. Most of the present nations of
modern Europe, then, are very new. The troubles which led to the great
war, however, originated in the dim twilight of history.

In the earliest days, there were no separate countries or kingdoms.
Men gathered together in little bands, each of which had its leader.
This leader was generally chosen because of his bodily strength and
courage. He was the best fighter of the tribe. The people did not have
any lasting homes. They moved around from place to place, wherever
they could find the best hunting and fishing. When two tribes wanted
the same hunting grounds, they fought, and the weaker party had to
give way. Selfishness was supreme. If a man wanted anything which
belonged to his weaker neighbor, he simply beat this neighbor over the
head with his club, and took it. The stronger tribe attacked the
weaker, without any thought of whether or not its quarrel was just.

Gradually, in the southern and warmer parts of Europe, the tribes
began to be more civilized. Towns sprang up. Ships were built. Trade
came to be one of the occupations. The fighting men needed weapons and
armor; so there grew up artisans who were skilled in working metals.
In Egypt and Syria there were people who had reached quite a high
degree of civilization, and gradually the Europeans learned from them
better ways of living. First the Greeks, then the Etruscans
(Ē-trŭs'cans), a people who lived in Italy just north of where
Rome now is, and finally the southern Italians learned that it was
possible to live in cities, without hunting and plundering. Grazing
(the tending of flocks of animals) came to be the occupation of many.
The owners of sheep or cattle drove their flocks from place to place,
as grass and water failed them where they were. There was no separate
ownership of land.

At last came the rise of the city of Rome, which, starting out as the
stronghold of a little gang of robbers, spread its rule gradually over
all the surrounding country. By this time, the barbarians of northern
Europe had gotten past the use of clubs as weapons. They, too, had
learned to make tools and arms of bronze, and those living near
civilized countries had obtained swords of iron. The club, however,
still remained as the sign of authority. The large bludgeon of the
chief was carried before the tribe as a sign of his power over them.
You have all seen pictures of a king sitting on his throne and holding
a wand or stick in his right hand. It is interesting to think that
this scepter, which the present king of England carries on state
occasions to remind his people of his power, is a relic of the old,
old days when his grandfather, many times removed, broke the head of
his rival for leadership in the tribe and set up his mighty club for
his awestruck people to worship.

The city of Rome (at first a republic, afterwards an empire) spread
its rule over all of Italy, over all the shores of the Mediterranean
Sea, and finally over all the countries of Europe south and west of
the rivers Danube and Rhine. One of the emperors planted a colony
north of the Danube near its mouth, and the descendants of these
colonists are living in that same country today. They have not
forgotten their origin, for they still call themselves Romans (Roumani
[Ro͞o-mä'ni]), and talk a language greatly resembling the Latin,
which was the tongue spoken by the Romans of old. With the exception
of this country, which is now Roumania, the part of Europe north and
east of the Danube and Rhine was practically free from the Romans. In
this territory, roving bands wandered around, driving their cattle
with them and clearing the woods of game.

[Illustration: The Forum (public square) of Rome as it was 1600 years
ago.]

In some ways, the Romans were a highly civilized people. They had
schools where their children were taught to read and write, to speak
Greek, and to work problems in geometry. They had magnificent public
buildings, fine temples and palaces. They built excellent paved roads
all over the southern part of Europe, and had wonderful systems of
aqueducts which supplied their cities with pure water from springs and
lakes miles away. Their dress was made of fine cloth. They knew how to
make paper, glass, and steel.

On the other hand, they were a cruel and bloodthirsty people. Their
favorite amusement was to go to shows where gladiators fought, either
with each other or with wild beasts. These gladiators were generally
men from tribes which had fought against Rome. They had been captured
and brought to that city, where they were trained to use certain
weapons. Then on holidays, with all the people of Rome packed into big
amphitheaters, these unfortunate captives were forced to fight with
each other until one man of each pair was killed. It occasionally
happened that one gladiator might be wounded, and lie helpless on the
sand, The spectators would then shout to the victorious fighter to
take his knife and finish what he had begun. In this way what would
seem to us like cold-blooded murder was committed hundreds of times
each year, while the fairest ladies and young girls of Rome sat and
watched with eager interest. Thus, although the Romans had all the
outward appearance of being civilized, they were savages at heart, and
had no sympathy for any people who were not of their own race.

[Illustration: The Last Combat of the Gladiators]

In the early days, the Romans prided themselves on their honor. They
scorned a lie and looked down on anyone who would cheat or deceive.
They lived hardy lives and would not allow themselves luxuries. They
rather despised the Greeks, because the latter surrounded themselves
with comforts in life. The early Romans were fighters by nature. They
had a certain god named Janus (our month January is named after him)
and his temple was open only when they were engaged in war. It is a
matter of history that during the twelve hundred years from the first
building of Rome to the end of the Roman Empire, the temple of Janus
was closed on but three occasions and then only for a short time.

About five or six hundred years after the founding of Rome came
several disastrous wars which killed off a great majority of her
sturdy fighters. Rome was the victor in all of these wars, but she won
them at tremendous cost to herself. With the killing off of her best
and bravest men, a great deal of the old time honesty was lost. Very
soon, we begin to hear of Roman governors who, when put in charge of
conquered states, used their offices only to plunder the helpless
inhabitants and to return to Rome after their terms were finished,
laden with ill-gotten gains. Roman morals, which formerly were very
strict, began to grow more lax, and in general the Roman civilization
showed signs of decay.

To the north and east of the Roman Empire dwelt a people who were to
become the leaders of the new nations of Europe. These were the free
German tribes, which occupied the part of Europe bounded, roughly, by
the rivers Danube and Rhine, the Baltic Sea, and the Carpathian
Mountains. In many ways they were much less civilized than the Romans.
They were clad in skins and furs instead of cloth. They lived in rough
huts and tents or in caves dug in the sides of a hill. They, too, like
the Romans, held human life cheap, and bloodshed and murder were
common among them. As a rule, the men scorned to work, leaving
whatever labor there was, largely to the women, while they busied
themselves in fighting and hunting, or, during their idle times, in
gambling. Nevertheless, these people, about the time that the Roman
honesty began to disappear, had virtues more like those of the early
Romans. They were frank and honorable. The men were faithful husbands
and kind fathers, and their family life was very happy. They were
barbarous and rough, but those of them who were taken to Rome and
learned the Roman civilization made finer, nobler men than Rome was
producing about the time of which we speak.

[Illustration: Germans Going Into Battle]

To the east of these German tribes were the Slavs, a people no better
civilized, but not so warlike in their nature. As the Germans, in
later years, moved on to the west, the Slavs, in turn, moved westward
and occupied much of the land which had been left vacant by the
Germans.

[Illustration: A Hun Warrior]

The inhabitants of western Europe, that is, France, Spain, and the
British Isles, were largely Celts. In fact, all Europe could be said
to be divided up among four great peoples: There were the Latins in
Italy, the Celts in western Europe, the Germans in central Europe, and
the Slavs to the east. All of these four families were distantly
related, as can be proved by the languages which they spoke. The
Greeks, while not belonging to any one of the four, were also distant
cousins of both Germans and Latins. Probably all five peoples are
descended from one big family of tribes.

In addition to these, there were, from time to time invasions of
Europe by other nations which did not have any connection by blood
with Celts, Latins, Greeks, Germans, or Slavs. For instance, the
ferocious Huns, a people of the yellow race, rushed into Europe about
400 A.D., but were beaten in a big battle by the Romans and Germans
and finally went back to Asia. Three hundred years later, a great
horde of Moors and Arabs from Africa crossed over into Europe by way
of the Straits of Gibraltar, and at one time threatened to sweep
before them all the Christian nations. For several hundred years after
this, they held the southern part of Spain, but were finally driven
out.

Let us now come back to the story of what happened in Europe after the
Romans had conquered all the country south and west of the Danube and
Rhine. The wild tribes of the Germans were restlessly roaming through
the central part of Europe. They were not at peace with each other. In
fact, constant war was going on. Julius Caesar, the great Roman
general, who conquered what is now France and added it to the Roman
world, tells us that one great tribe of Germans, the Suevi (Swē'vī),
made it their boast that they would let no other tribe live anywhere
near them. About a hundred years B.C., two great German tribes. the
Cimbri and the Teutones, broke across the Rhine and poured into the
Roman lands in countless numbers. For seven years they roamed about
until at last they were conquered in two bloody battles by a Roman
general, who was Caesar's uncle by marriage. After this time, the
Romans tried to conquer the country of the Germans and they might have
been successful but for a young German chief named Arminius. He had
lived in Rome as a young man and had learned the Romans' method of
war; so when an army came against his tribe, he taught the Germans how
to defend themselves. As a result, the Roman army was trapped in a big
forest and slaughtered, almost to a man.

[Illustration: Gaius Julius Caesar. From a bust in the British Museum]

This defeat ended any thought that the Romans may have had of
conquering all Germany. For the next one hundred and fifty years,
Germans and Romans lived apart, each afraid of the other. Then came a
time when the Germans again became the attacking party. Other fiercer
and wilder peoples, like the Huns, were assailing them in the east and
pushing them forward. They finally broke over the Rhine-Danube
boundary and poured across the Roman Empire in wave after wave. Some
of these tribes were the Vandals, Burgundians, Goths, Franks, and
Lombards. The Roman Empire went to pieces under their savage attacks.

Questions for Review

1. Why is it that after nations become civilized, people need less
land to live on?
2. Are barbarous tribes more likely to engage in war than civilized
peoples?
3. Explain why clubs were the earliest weapons and why the more
civilized tribes were better armed than the barbarians.
4. Can a people be said to be civilized when they enjoy bloodshed and
are not moved by the sufferings of others?
5. What was it that lowered the morals of the Roman republic?
6. In what way were the Germans better men than the later Romans?
7. What was the religion of the Moors and the Arabs?
8. Why did the German tribes invade the Roman empire?

CHAPTER III

From Chiefs to Kings

The early chief a fighter.--The club the sign of power.--Free men led
by a chief of their own choosing.--The first slaves.--Barbarians
conquer civilized nations.--A ruling class among conquered
people.--All men no longer free and equal.--The value of arms and
armor.--The robber chiefs.--How kings first came.--Treaties between
tribes follow constant wars.--Tribes unite for protection against
enemies.--A king is chosen for the time being.--Some kings refuse to
resign their office when the danger is past.--New generations grow up
which never knew a kingless state.--The word "king" becomes sacred.

The chiefs of the invading tribes knew no law except the rule of the
sword. If they saw anything which they wanted, they took it. Rich
cities were plundered at will. They did not admit any man's ownership
of anything. In the old days when the tribes were roaming around,
there was no private ownership of land. Everything belonged to the
tribe in common. Each man had a vote in the council of the tribe.

Among these invaders, as with all barbarous tribes, there was no such
thing as an absolute rule. A chief was obeyed because the greater part
of his people considered him the best leader in war. Often, no doubt,
when a chief had lost a battle and the majority of the tribe had lost
confidence in him, he resigned and let them choose a new chief. (For
the same reason we frequently hear today that the prime minister, or
leader of the government, of some European country has resigned.) In
spite of the fact, then, that the chief was stronger than any other
man in the tribe, if the majority of his warriors had combined against
him to put another man in his place he could not have withstood them.
Government, in its beginning, was based upon the consent of the
governed. All men in the primitive tribe were equal in rank, except as
one was a better fighter than another, and the chief held the
leadership in war only because the members of his tribe allowed him to
keep it.

[Illustration: A Frankish Chief.]

It must be remembered that in these early days, the people had no
fixed place of abode. Their only homes were rude huts which they could
put up or tear down at very short notice; and so when they heard of
more fertile lands or a warmer climate across the mountains to the
south they used to pull up stakes and migrate in a body, never to
return. It was always the more savage and uncivilized peoples who were
most likely to migrate. The lands which they wished to seize they
generally found already settled by other tribes, more civilized and
hence more peaceful, occupied in trade and agriculture, having
gradually turned to these pursuits from their former habits of hunting
and fighting. Sometimes these more civilized and peace-loving people
were able, by their better weapons and superior knowledge of the art
of fortifying, to beat back the invasion of the immigrating
barbarians. Oftener, though, the rougher, ruder tribes were the
victors, and settled down among the people they had conquered, to rule
them, doing no work themselves, but forcing the conquered ones to feed
and clothe them.

[Illustration: Movable Huts of Early Germans]

History is full of instances of such conquests, and they were taking
place, no doubt, ages before the times from which our earliest records
date. The best examples, however, are to be found in the invasions of
the Roman Empire by the Germanic tribes to which we have referred
above. The country between the Rhine River and the Pyrenees Mountains,
which had been called Gaul when the Gauls lived there, became France
when the Franks conquered the Gauls and stayed to live among them. In
like manner, two German tribes became the master races in Spain. The
Burgundians came down from the shores of the Baltic Sea and gave their
name to their new home in the fertile valley of the Sa䮥 (Sōn);
the Vandals came out of Germany to roam through Spain, finally
founding a kingdom in Africa; while the Lombards crossed the Alps to
become the masters of the Valley of the Po, whither the Gauls had gone
before them, seven hundred years earlier.

[Illustration: Goths on the March]

[Illustration: Franks Crossing the Rhine]

The island now known as Great Britain, which was inhabited two
thousand years ago by the Britons and Gaels, Celtic peoples, was
overrun and conquered in part about 450 A.D. by the Saxons and Angles,
Germanic tribes, after whom part of the island was called Angleland.
(The men from the south of England are of the same blood as the Saxons
in the German army, against whom they had to fight in the great war.)
Then came Danes, who partially conquered the Angles and Saxons, and
after them, in 1066 A.D., the country was again conquered by the
Normans, descendants of some Norsemen, who, one hundred and fifty
years before, had come down from Norway and conquered a large
territory in the northwestern part of France.

[Illustration: Men of Normandy Landing in England.]

In some cases, the conquered tribes moved on to other lands, leaving
their former homes to their conquerors. In this way the Britons and
Gaels gave up the greater part of their land to the Angles and Saxons
and withdrew to the hills and mountains of Wales, Cornwall, and
northern Scotland. In other cases, the conquered people and their
conquerors inhabited the same lands side by side, as the Normans
settled down in England among the Anglo-Saxons.

In the early days of savagery, one tribe would frequently make a raid
upon another neighboring tribe and bring home with it some captives
who became slaves, working without pay for their conquerors and
possessing no more rights than beasts of burden. (This custom exists
today in the interior of Africa, and was responsible for the infamous
African slave trade. Black captives were sold to white traders through
the greed of their captors, who forgot that their own relatives and
friends might be carried off and sold across the seas by some other
tribe of blacks.)

When these slaves were kept as the servants of their conquerors, their
number was very small as compared with that of their masters. When, on
the other hand, a tribe settled among a people whom they had
conquered, they often found themselves fewer in numbers, and kept
their leadership only by their greater strength and fighting ability.

Here there had arisen a new situation: all men were no longer equal,
led by a chief of their own choosing, but instead, the greater part of
them now had no voice in the government. They had become subjects,
working to earn their own living and also, as has been said, to
support in idleness their conquerors.

This ability of the few to rule the many and force them to support
their masters was increased as certain peoples learned better than
others how to make strong armor and effective weapons. Nearly five
hundred years before the time of Christ, at the battle of Marathon
(Măr'ȧ thŏn), the Greeks discovered that one Greek, clad
in metal armor and armed with a long spear, was worth ten Persians
wearing leather and carrying a bow and arrows or a short sword. One
hundred and sixty years later, a small army of well-equipped
Macedonian Greeks, led by that wonderful general, Alexander the Great,
defeated nearly forty times its number of Persians in a great battle
in Asia and conquered a vast empire.

[Illustration: Alexander Defeating the Persians]

In later times, as better and better armor was made, the question of
wealth entered in. The chief who had money enough to buy the best arms
for his men could defeat his poorer neighbor and force him to pay
money as to a ruler. Finally, in the so-called "Middle Ages," before
the invention of gunpowder, one knight, armed from crown to sole in
steel, was worth in battle as much as one hundred poorly-armed farmers
or "peasants" as they are called in Europe.

In the "Dark Ages,"[2] after all these barbarians that we have
named had swarmed over Europe, and before the governments of modern
times were fully grown, there were hundreds of robber chiefs, who,
scattered throughout a country, were in the habit of collecting
tribute at the point of the sword from the peaceful peasants who lived
near. This tribute they collected in some cases, regularly, a fixed
amount each month or year, just as if they had a right to collect it,
like a government tax collector. It might be money or food or fodder,
or fuel. The robber chiefs were well armed themselves and were able to
give good weapons and armor to their men, who lived either in the
chief's castle or in small houses built very near it. They likewise
plundered any travelers who came by, unless their numbers and weapons
made them look too dangerous to be attacked. But the regular tribute
forced from the peaceful farmers was the chief source of their income.
The robber chief and his men lived a life of idleness when they were
not out upon some raid for plunder, and the honest, industrious
peasants worked hard enough to support both their own families and
those of the robbers.

[2] The "Dark Ages" came before the "Middle Ages." They were called
"dark" because the barbarians had extinguished nearly all civilization
and learning.

[Illustration: A Knight in Armor]

These robber chiefs had no right but might. They were outlaws, and
lived either in a country which had no government and laws, or in one
whose government was too weak to protect its people. They were no
worse, however, than the so-called feudal barons who came after them,
who oppressed the people even more, because they had on their side
whatever law and government existed in those days.

Now let us stop to consider how first there came to be kings. In the
early days of the human race and also in later days among barbarous
peoples, the land was very sparsely settled. The reason lay in the
chief occupations of the men. A small tribe might inhabit a great
stretch of territory through which they wandered to keep within reach
of plenty of game. As time went on, however, the population increased,
and, as agriculture took the place of hunting, and homes became more
lasting, tribes found themselves living in smaller and smaller tracts
of land, and hence nearer to their neighbors. In some cases, constant
fighting went on, just as Caesar tells us that two thousand years ago,
the Swiss and the Germans fought almost daily battles back and forth
across the Rhine. In other cases, the tribes found it better for all
concerned to make treaties of peace with their neighbors, and if they
did not exchange visits and mix on friendly terms, at least they did
not attack each other.

Finally, one day there would come to several tribes which had treaties
with each other a common danger, such as an invasion by some horde of
another race or nation. Common interest would drive them together for
mutual protection, and the chief of some one of them would be chosen
to lead their joint army. In this way, we find the fifteen tribes of
the Belgians uniting against the Roman army led by Julius Caesar, and
electing as king over them the chief of one of the tribes "on account
of his justice and wisdom." Five years later, in the year 52 B.C., we
find practically all the inhabitants of what is now France united into
a nation under the leadership of Vercingetorix (Vẽr sin jet'ō riks)
in one last effort to free themselves from Rome. Five hundred years
later, the Romans themselves were driven to join forces with two of
the Germanic tribes to check the swift invasion of the terrible Huns.

In some cases, these alliances were only for a short time and the
kingships were merely temporary. In other cases, the wars that drove
the tribes to unite under one great chief or king lasted for years or
even centuries, so that new generations grew up who had never lived
under any other government than that of a king. Thus when the wars
were ended, the tribes continued to be ruled by the one man, although
the reason for the kingship had ceased to be. In the days of the Roman
republic, from 500 to 100 B.C., when grave danger arose, the senate,
or council of elders, appointed one man who was called the dictator,
and this dictator ruled like an absolute monarch until the danger was
past. Then, like the famous Cincinnatus, he gave up the position and
retired to private life. The first lasting kingships, then, began, as
it were, by the refusal of some dictator to resign when the need for
his rule was ended.

By this time, the custom of choosing the son of a chief or king to
take his father's place was fairly well settled, and it did not take
long to have it understood as a regular thing that at a king's death
he should be followed by his oldest son. Often there were quarrels and
even civil wars caused by ambitious younger sons, who did not submit
to their elder brothers without a struggle, but as people grew to be
more civilized and peace-loving, they found it better to have the
oldest son looked upon as the rightful heir to the kingship.

As kingdoms grew larger, and more and more people came to be busied in
agriculture, trade, and even, on a small scale, in manufacture, the
warriors grew fewer in proportion, and people began to forget that the
king was originally only a war leader, and that the office was created
through military need. They came to regard the rule of the king as a
matter of course and stopped thinking of themselves as having any
right to say how they should be governed. Kings were quick to foster
this feeling. For the purpose of making their own positions sure, they
were in the habit of impressing it upon their people that the kingship
was a divine institution. They proclaimed that the office of king was
made by the gods, or in Christian nations, by God, and that it was the
divine will that the people of the nations should be ruled by kings.
The great Roman orator, Cicero (Sĭs'erō), in a speech delivered
in the year 66 B.C., referring to people who lived in kingdoms, says
that the name of king "seems to them a great and sacred thing." This
same feeling has lasted through all the ages down to the present time,
and the majority of the people in European kingdoms, even among the
educated classes, still look upon a king as a superior being, and are
made happy and proud if they ever have a chance to do him a service of
any sort.

Questions for Review

1. Why was it that in barbarian tribes there was no private ownership
of land?
2. What is meant by saying that government was based upon the consent
of the governed?
3. Was there anything besides love of plunder that induced the German
tribes to move southward?
4. Explain the beginnings of slavery.
5. Explain the value of armor in early times.
6. What is meant by the "Dark Ages"?
7. What is meant by saying that the fighting men were parasites?
8. When the first kings were chosen was it intended that they should
be rulers for life?
9. Is it easy for a man in power to retain this power?
10. Why is it that most Europeans bow low before a king?

CHAPTER IV

Master and Man

The land is the king's.--He lends it to barons.--Barons lend it to
knights and smaller barons.--Smaller barons collect rent for it from
the peasants.--A father's lands are lent to his son.--Barons pay for
the land by furnishing men for the king's wars.--No account is taken
of the rights of the peasant.--The peasant, the only producer, is
despised by the fighting men.--If a baron rebels, his men must rebel
also.--Dukes against kings.--What killed the feudal system.--Feudal
wrongs alive today.

When one great tribe or nation invaded and conquered a country, as the
Ostrogoths came into Italy in the year 489 A.D., or as the Normans
entered England in 1066, their king at once took it for granted that
he owned all the conquered land. In some cases, he might divide the
kingdom up among his chiefs, giving a county to each of forty or fifty
leaders. These great leaders (dukes or barons, as they were called in
the Norman-French language, or earls, as the English named them) would
in turn each divide up his county among several less important chiefs,
whom we may call lesser or little barons. Each little baron might have
several knights and squires, who lived in or near his castle and had
received from him tracts of land corresponding in size, perhaps, to
the American township and who, therefore, fought under his banner in
war.

[Illustration: A Norman Castle in England]

Each baron had under him a strong body of fighting men, "men-at-arms,"
as they were called, or "retainers," who in return for their "keep,"
that is, their food and lodging, and a chance to share the plunder
gained in war, swore to be faithful to him, became his men, and gave
him the service called homage. (This word comes from hōmō, the Latin
for "man.") The lesser baron, in turn, swore homage to, and was the
"man" of the great baron or earl. Whenever the earl called on these
lesser chiefs to gather their fighting men and report to him, they had
to obey, serving him as unquestioningly as their squires and retainers
obeyed them. The earl or duke swore homage to the king, from whom he
had received his land.

This, then, was the feudal system (so named from the word feudum,
which, in Latin, meant a piece of land the use of which was given to a
man in return for his services in war), a system which reversed the
natural laws of society, and stood it on its apex, like a cone
balanced on its point. For instead of saying that the land was the
property of the people of the tribe or nation, it started by taking
for granted that the land all belonged to the king. The idea was that
the king did not give the land, outright, to his dukes and earls, but
that he gave them, in return for their faithful support and service in
war, the use of the land during their lifetime, or so long as they
remained true to him. In Macbeth, we read how, for his treason, the
lands of the thane (earl) of Cawdor were taken from him by the
Scottish king and given to the thane of Glamis. The lands thus lent
were called fiefs. Upon the death of the tenant, they went back to the
king or duke who had given them in the first place, and he at once
gave them to some other one of his followers upon the same terms. It
often happened that upon the death of an earl or baron his son was
granted the lands which his father had held, Finally, in many
counties, it grew into a custom, and the oldest son took possession of
his father's fief, but not without first going to the king and
swearing homage and fidelity to him.

Two things must be kept in mind if we are to understand the system
fully. In the first place, in the division of the lands among the
barons of the conquering nation, no account was taken of the peasants.
As they were of the defeated people, their rights to the land were not
once considered. In many countries, the victors thought of them as
part and parcel of the conquered territory. They "went with" the land
and were considered by the lord of the county as merely his servants.
When one lord turned over a farm to another, the farmers were part of
the bargain. If any of them tried to run away, they were brought back
and whipped. They tilled the land and raised live stock, giving a
certain share of their yearly crop and a certain number of beeves,
hogs, sheep, etc., to the lord, as rent for the land, much as the free
farmers in other countries paid tribute to the robber chieftains. Thus
the one class of people who really earned their right to live, by
producing wealth, were oppressed and robbed by all the others. Note
this point, for there are wrongs existing today that are due to the
fact that the feudal system is not wholly stamped out in some
countries.

[Illustration: A Vassal doing Homage to his Lord]

In the second place, it must be noted that the king was not the direct
master of all the people. Only the great lords had sworn homage to
him. He was lord of the dukes, earls, and barons. The less important
barons swore homage to the great barons, and the knights, squires,
retainers, and yeomen swore homage to the lesser barons. If a lesser
baron had subdivided his fief among certain knights and squires, the
peasants owed allegiance, not to him, but to the squire to whom they
had been assigned. Thus, if a "man" rebelled against his lord, all of
his knights, retainers, etc., must rebel also. If, for instance, a
great duke refused to obey his king and broke his oath of allegiance,
all his little barons and knights must turn disloyal too, or rather,
must remain loyal, for their oaths had been taken to support the duke,
and not the king. History is full of such cases. In many instances,
dukes became so powerful that they were able to make war on even terms
with kings. The great Dukes of Burgundy for a time kept the kings of
France in awe of their power; the Duke of Northumberland in 1403
raised an army that almost overthrew King Henry Fourth of England; the
Duke of York, in 1461, drove Henry Sixth from the throne of England
and became king in his place.

[Illustration: William the Conqueror]

A strange case arose when, in 1066, William, who as duke of Normandy
had sworn homage to the king of France, became, through conquest, king
of England. His sons, great-grandsons, and great-great-grandsons
continued for one hundred and fifty years to be obliged to swear
allegiance to the French kings in order to keep the duchy of Normandy.
It was as if the Governor of Texas had led an army into Mexico,
conquered it, and become Emperor of that country, without resigning
his governorship or giving up his American citizenship.

Two things which tended to break down the feudal system and bring more
power to the common people were, first, the invention of gunpowder,
and, second, the rise of towns. A man with a musket could bring down a
knight in armor as easily as he could the most poorly armored peasant.
Kings, in fighting to control their great lords, gave more freedom to
citizens of towns in return for their help. The king's armies came to
be recruited largely from townspeople, who were made correspondingly
free from the feudal lords.

The rule of the feudal system, that each man owed a certain amount of
military service to his ruler has lasted to the present day and is
responsible for much of the misery that now exists. Kings went to war
with each other simply to increase their territories. The more land a
king had under his control, the more people who owed him taxes, and
the greater number he could get into his army, the greater became his
ambition to spread his kingdom still farther.

Questions for Review

1. How was it that the king of a tribe could claim to own all the
land in the country which he had invaded?
2. Did the kings, lords, and fighting men contribute anything to the
welfare of the working classes?
3. Would the peasants have been better off if all the fighting men,
lords, dukes, kings, etc., had suddenly been killed?
4. Can you see why in some countries in Europe a man who earns his
living is looked down upon by the nobles?
5. What is meant by saying that the feudal system turns society
upside down?
6. Why did the farmers continue to feed the fighting men?
7. Explain how the use of gunpowder in warfare helped to break up the
feudal system.
8. How did the rise of cities also help to do away with the feudal
system?

CHAPTER V

A Babel of Tongues

The great family of languages.--Few languages in Europe not belonging
to the family.--The dying Celtic languages.--The three branches of the
Germanic family.--The influence of the Latin tongue on the south of
Europe.--The many Slavic peoples.--The map as divided by kings without
regard to peoples and languages.--The strange mixture in
Austria-Hungary.--The southeast of Europe.--The Greeks and
Dacians.--The Roman colonists.--The Slavs.--The Volgars.--The
Skipetars.--A hopeless mixture.

In Chapter II it was pointed out that almost all the peoples of
Europe were related, in one big family of tribes. It is likely that
the forefathers of the Celts, the Latins, the Germans, the Greeks, and
the Slavs belonged to one big tribe which had its home back in the
highlands of Central Asia. As a general rule, the relationship of
peoples to each other can be told by the languages which they speak.
If two tribes are related because their forefathers once belonged to
the same tribe, it is almost certain that they will show this
relationship in their languages.

The language of England a thousand years ago was very much like the
language of the Germans, for the English were originally German
tribes. Even today, it is easy to see that English is a Germanic
language. Take the English words house, father, mother, brother,
water, here, is, etc. The German words which mean the same are haus,
vater, mutter, bruder, wasser, hier, ist. It is very plain that the
two languages must have come from the same source.

There are professors in European colleges who have spent their whole
lives studying this relationship of languages. These men have proved
not only that almost all the languages of Europe are related, but that
the language of the Persians, and that of some of the old tribes in
Hindustan also belong to one great family of tongues. Let us take the
word for mother. In one of the ancient languages of Hindustan it was
matr; in the Greek, it was mātār; in the Latin mater (mätār); in
the Bohemian matka; in the German mu̠tter; in the Spanish mädre;
in the Norwegian mōder, etc. This great family of languages is called
"the Indo-European group," because the tribes which spoke them,
originally inhabitants of Asia, have scattered all over India and
Europe. The only peoples in Europe whose languages do not belong to it
are the Finns and Laplanders of the north, the Basques (Bȧsks) of the
Pyrenees Mountains, the Hungarians, the Gypsies, and the Turks.

The descendants of the old Celtic peoples have not kept up the Celtic
languages to any great extent. The reason for this is that first the
Romans and then the Germanic tribes conquered most of the lands where
the Celts lived. In this way, Spain, Portugal, France, and Belgium now
talk languages that have grown from the Latin, the language of Rome.
The Celts in the British Isles now all talk English, because the
English, who were a Germanic people, conquered them and forced them to
use their language. Patriotic Irishmen and Welshmen (who are
descendants of the Celtic tribes) are trying to keep alive the Irish
and Welsh languages, but all of the young people in the British Isles
learn English, and they are generally content to talk only one
language. The other Celtic languages which have existed within the
last one hundred years are the Gaelic of the north of Scotland, the
Breton of western France, and the Cornish of the southwestern corner
of England.

The Germanic languages (sometimes called Teutonic) are found in three
parts of Europe today. The Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian,
and Swedish, belong to this family. Western Austria and Germany form,
with Holland and Western Belgium, a second group of German-speaking
nations. (The people of eastern Belgium are Celts and talk a kind of
French.) The third part of Europe which uses a Germanic language is
England.

In an earlier chapter we learned how the Celts in France, Spain, and
Portugal gave up their own languages and used the Latin. Latin
languages today are found also in the southern and western parts of
Switzerland, all over Italy, and in Roumania.

We learned also about the Slavs who lived to the eastward of the
Germanic tribes. When the Germans moved west, these Slavs followed
them and occupied the lands which had just been left vacant. In this
way, we find Slavic peoples talking Slavic (sometimes called Slavonic)
languages in the parts of Europe to the east and south of the Germans.
More than half of the inhabitants of Austria-Hungary are Slavs,
although the Austrians proper are a Germanic people, and the
Hungarians do not belong to the Indo-European family at all. The
Serbians and Montenegrins are Slavs. The Poles and Russians are Slavs.
The Bulgarians speak a Slavic language and have some Slavic blood in
them, although, as will be pointed out later, originally they did not
belong to the Slavic family.

[Map: Distribution Of Peoples According to Relationship]

The Greeks and Albanians belong to the great Indo-European family of
tribes, but their languages are not closely related to any of the four
great branches.

[Map: Distribution Of Languages]

The two maps on pages 65 and 66 are very much alike and yet
in some respects very different. The first shows how Europe is largely
inhabited by peoples of the great Indo-European family. Those who are
descended from the Celts are marked Celtic even though today they have
given up their Celtic language, as have the Cornish in England and the
inhabitants of Spain, France, eastern Belgium, and the greater part of
Ireland. The Bulgarians are marked as not belonging to the great
family, although they speak a Slavic language.

In the second map, the distribution of languages is shown. You
will notice that the Celtic languages are found only in small parts of
the British Isles, and in the westernmost point of France. The
Bulgarians are here marked Slavic because their language belongs to
that branch. One of the most curious things about the two maps is the
presence of little spots like islands, particularly made up of
German-speaking peoples. There are several of these little islands in
Russia. They have been there for nearly two hundred years. A traveler
crossing the southern part of Russia is astonished to find districts
as large as an American county where not a word of Russian is spoken.
The people are all of Germanic blood, although they live under the
government of Russia. In the same way, there is a large German island
in the midst of the Roumanians in Transylvania and another between the
Slovaks and Poles at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. There is a
large Hungarian island in Transylvania also, entirely surrounded by
Germans and Roumanians. The table on the opposite page shows the main
branches of the Indo-European family that are found in Europe.

THE INDO-EURPOEAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES

(a) Hindu branch

(b) Persian branch

(d) Latin branch Portuguese
Spanish
French
Romansh (southeastern Switzerland)
Italian
Roumanian

(e) Germanic branch Norwegian
Danish
Swedish
Dutch
Flemish (Belgium)
Low German
High German
English

(f) Slavonic branch Russian
Polish }
Lettish } Baltic states of Russia
Lithuanian }
Old Prussian (dead)
Czech (Bohemian [pronounced Check])
Slo vak' (northern Hungary)
Serbian
Bulgarian
Slove'nian (southwestern Austria)
Croa'tian (southern Austria)
Ruthe'nian (northeastern Austria-Hungary, and
southwestern Russia)

(g) Greek

(h) Alba'nian

The main source of the present trouble in Europe is that kings and
their ministers and generals, like their ancestors, the feudal lords,
never considered the wishes of the people when they changed the
boundaries of kingdoms. Austria-Hungary is a good example. The
Austrians and Hungarians were two very different peoples. They had
nothing in common and did not wish to be joined under one ruler, but a
king of Hungary, dying, left no son to succeed him, and his only
daughter was married to the archduke of Austria. This archduke of
Austria (a descendant of the counts of Hapsburg) was also emperor of
Germany and king of Bohemia, although the Bohemian people had not
chosen him as their ruler. The Hungarians, before their union with
Austria, had conquered certain Slavic tribes and part of the
Roumanians. Later Austria annexed part of Poland. In this way, the
empire became a jumble of languages and nationalities. When its
congress is called together, the official announcement is read in
eleven different languages. Forty-one different dialects are talked in
an area not as large as that of the state of Texas.

We must remember that besides the literary or written languages of
each country there are several spoken dialects. A man from Devonshire,
England, meeting a man from Yorkshire in the north of the same
country, has difficulty in understanding many words in his speech. The
language of the south of Scotland also is English, although it is very
different from the English that we in America are taught. A Frenchman
from the Pyrenees Mountains was taught in school to speak and read the
French language as we find it in books. Yet besides this, he knows a
dialect that is talked by the country people around him, that can not
be understood by the peasants from the north of France near the
Flemish border. The man who lives in the east of France can understand
the dialect of the Italians from the west of Italy much better than he
can that of the Frenchman from the Atlantic coast.

In America, with people moving around from place to place by means of
stage coach, steamboat, and railroad, there has been no great chance
to develop dialects, although we can instantly tell the New Englander,
the southerner, or the westerner by his speech. It should be
remembered that in Europe, for centuries, the people were kept on
their own farms or in their own towns. The result of this was that
each little village or city has its own peculiar language. It is said
that persons who have studied such language matters carefully, after
conversing with a man from Europe, can tell within thirty miles where
his home used to be in the old country. There are no sharply marked
boundaries of languages. The dialects of France shade off into those
of Spain on the one hand and into those of the Flemish and the Italian
on the other.

[Map: Southeastern Europe, 600 B.C.]

The British Isles furnish us with four or five different
nationalities. The people of the north of Ireland are really lowland
Scotch of Germanic descent, while the other three-fourths of Ireland
is inhabited by Celts. To make the difference all the greater, the
Celts are almost universally Catholics, while the Scotch-Irish are
Protestants. The people of the north of Scotland are Gaels, a Celtic
race having no connection in language or blood with the people of the
southern half of that country. The Welsh are a Celtic people, having
no relationship with the English, who are a Germanic people. The Welsh
and the Cornish of Cornwall and the people of highland Scotland are
the descendants of the ancient Britons and Gaels who inhabited the
island when Julius Caesar and the Romans first landed there. Then five
hundred years afterwards, as has already been told, came great swarms
of Germans (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes), who drove the Britons to the
west and north, and settled the country now known as England. After
these, you will recall, came a number of Danes, another Germanic
people, who settled the east coast of England. Two hundred years
later, the Normans came from France. These Normans had been living in
France for a century or two, but had come originally from Norway.
Normans, Danes, Angles, and Saxons all mixed to make the modern
English. Together, they fought the Scotch, the Welsh and the Irish,
and having conquered them, oppressed them harshly for many centuries.

[Map: Southeastern Europe, 975 A.D.]

But it is in the southeastern corner of Europe that one finds the
worst jumble of nationalities. Six hundred years before Christ, the
Greeks and their rougher cousins, the Thracians, Macedonians, and
Dacians inhabited this district. When one of the Roman Emperors
conquered the Dacians about 100 A.D., he planted a large Roman colony
north of the Danube River. Then came the West Goths, who swept into
this country, but soon left it for the west of Europe. Next came the
Slavic tribes who are the ancestors of the modern Serbs. Following
these, came a large tribe which did not belong to the Indo-European
family, but was distantly related to the Finns and the Turks. These
people were called the Volgars, for they came from the country around
the River Volga. Before long, we find them called the Bulgars. (The
letters B and V are often interchanged in the languages of
south-eastern Europe. The people of western Europe used to call the
country of the Serbs Servia, but the Serbs objected, saying that the
word servio, in Latin, means "to be a slave," and that as they were
not slaves, they wanted their country to be called by its true name,
Serbia. The Greeks, on the other hand, pronounce the letter B as
though it were V.)

A strange thing happened to the Volgars or Bulgars. They completely
gave up their Asiatic language and adopted a new one, which became in
time the purest of the Slavic tongues. They intermarried with the
Slavs around them and adopted Slavic names. They founded a flourishing
nation which lay between the kingdom of Serbia and the Greek Empire of
Constantinople.

North of the Bulgars lay the country of the Roumani (ro͞o
mä'nï). These people claimed to be descended from the Roman
Emperor's colonists, as was previously told, but the reason their
language is so much like the Italian is that a large number of people
from the north of Italy moved into the country nearly a thousand years
after the first Roman colonists settled there. From 900 to 1300 A.D.,
south-eastern Europe was inhabited by Serbians, Bulgarians,
Roumanians, and Greeks.

[Illustration: A Typical Bulgarian Family]

A fifth people perhaps ought to be counted here, the Albanians.
(See map) This tribe is descended from the Illyrians, who
inhabited the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea even before the time
of the Roman Empire. Their language, like the Greek, is a branch of
the Indo-European family which is neither Latin, Celtic, Germanic, nor
Slavic. They are distant cousins of the Italians and are also slightly
related to the Greeks. They are a wild, fierce, uncivilized people,
and have never known the meaning of law and order. Robbery and warfare
are common. Each village is always fighting with the people of the
neighboring towns. The Albanians, or Skipetars (skïp'ĕtars) as
they call themselves, were Christians until they were conquered by the
Turks about 1460. Since that time, the great majority of them have
been staunch believers in the Mohammedan religion.

Questions for Review

1. Where did the great Indo-European family of languages have its
beginning?
2. Why is it that the Celtic languages are dying out?
3. What killed the Celtic languages in Spain and France?
4. What are the three parts of Europe where Germanic languages are
spoken?
5. In what parts of Europe are languages spoken which are descended
from the Latin?
6. Explain the presence in Austria-Hungary of eleven different
peoples?
7. Are the Bulgarians really a Slavic people?

CHAPTER VI

"The Terrible Turk"

The Greek Empire at Constantinople.--The invading Mohammedans.--The
Ottoman Turks.--The fall of Constantinople.--The enslaving of the
Bulgars, Serbs, Greeks, Albanians, and Roumanians.--One little part of
Serbia unconquered.--The further conquests of the Turks.--The attack
on Vienna.--John Sobieski to the rescue.--The waning of the Turkish
empire.--The Spanish Jews.--The jumble of languages and peoples in
southeastern Europe.

In the last chapter, we referred briefly to the Greek empire at
Constantinople. This city was originally called Byzantium, and was a
flourishing Greek commercial center six hundred years before Christ.
Eleven hundred years after this, a Roman emperor named Constantine
decided that he liked Byzantium better than Rome. Accordingly, he
moved the capital of the empire to the Greek city, and renamed it
Constantinopolis (the word polis means "city" in Greek). Before long,
we find the Roman empire divided into two parts, the capital of one at
Rome, of the other at Constantinople. This eastern government was
continued by the Greeks nearly one thousand years after the government
of the western empire had been seized by the invading Germanic tribes.

[Illustration: The Turkish Sultan before Constantinople]

For years, this Greek empire at Constantinople had been obliged to
fight hard against the Mohammedans who came swarming across the
fertile plains of Mesopotamia (mĕs'ō pō tā' mĭ ā) and Asia
Minor. (Mesopotamia is the district lying between the Tigris
(tī'grĭs) and Euphrates (ūfrā'tēz) Rivers. Its name in Greek
means "between the rivers.") The fiercest of the Mohammedan tribes,
the warlike Ottoman Turks, were the last to arrive. For several years,
they thundered at the gates of Constantinople, while the Greek Empire
grew feebler and feebler.

At last in 1453, their great cannon made a breach in the walls, and
the Turks poured through. The Greek Empire was a thing of the past,
and all of southeastern Europe lay at the mercy of the invading
Moslems (another name for "Mohammedans"). The Turks did not drive out
the Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbians, and Albanians, but settled down
among them as the ruling, military class. They strove to force these
peoples to give up Christianity and turn Mohammedans, but were
successful only in the case of the Skipetars of Albania. The
Albanians, Serbians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Roumanians remained where
they had been, but were oppressed by the newcomers.

For more than two hundred years after the capture of Constantinople,
the Turks pushed their conquests farther and farther into Europe. The
entire coast of the Black Sea fell into their hands. All of Greece,
all of Bulgaria, and all of Roumania became part of their empire. Of
the kingdom of Serbia, one small province remained unconquered. Up in
the mountains near the coast of the Adriatic gathered the people of
one county of the Serbian kingdom. As the Turks attacked them, they
retreated higher and higher up the mountain sides and rolled huge
stones down upon the invaders. Finally, the Turk became disgusted, and
concluded that "the game was not worth the candle." Thus the little
nation of Montenegro was formed, composed of Serbians who never
submitted to the Ottoman rule. (The inhabitants of this small country
call it Tzernagorah (tzẽr nä gō'ra); the Italians call it
Montenegro. Both of these names mean "Dark Mountain.")

Not satisfied with these conquests, the Turks pushed on, gaining
control of the greater part of the kingdom of Hungary. About 1682,
they were pounding at the forts around Vienna. The heroic king of
Poland, John Sobieski (sō bĭ ĕs'kĭ), came to the rescue of the
Austrian emperor with an army of Poles and Germans and
completely defeated the Turks. He saved Vienna, and ended any further
advance of the Turkish rule into Europe. (The map on page 82
shows the high water mark of the Turkish conquests.)

It must be remembered that the original inhabitants of the conquered
lands were still living where they always had lived. The Turks were
very few in number compared with the millions of people who inhabited
their empire and paid them tribute. Many wars were caused by this
conquest, but it was two hundred and thirty years before the Christian
peoples won back their territory.

[Map: Southeastern Europe 1690 A.D.]

By the year 1685, the Hungarians had begun to win back part of their
kingdom. By 1698, almost all of Hungary and Transylvania was free from
Turkish rule. It will be recalled that a certain Count of Hapsburg had
become Emperor of Germany, and when we say Germany, we include
Austria, which had become the home of the Hapsburgs. It was shortly
after this that the Hapsburg family came to be lords of Hungary also,
through the marriage of one of their emperors with the only daughter
of the king of that country. (See page 69.)

In this way, when the province of Bukowina and the territory known as
the Banat, just north of the Danube and west of what is now Roumania,
were reconquered from the Turks, it was the joint kingdom to which
they were attached. (Bukowina has never been a part of Hungary. It is
still a crown land, or county subject to the emperor of Austria
personally.)

During the 15th century, the southeastern part of Europe came to be
inhabited by a still different people. Not long after Ferdinand and
Isabella, the king and queen of Spain, had conquered the Moorish
kingdom of Granada (see Chapter II) that used to stretch across
the southern half of Spain, the Spaniards decided to drive out of
their country all "unbelievers," that is, all who were not Christians
of the Catholic faith. (This happened in 1492, the same year that they
sent Columbus to America.) The Moors retreated into Africa, which was
their former home, but the millions of Spanish Jews had no homeland to
which to return. In the midst of their distress, the Sultan of Turkey,
knowing them to be prosperous and well-behaved citizens, invited them
to enter his land. They did so by hundreds of thousands.

The descendants of these people are to be found today throughout the
Balkan peninsula, though mainly in the large cities. They are so
numerous in Constantinople that four newspapers are published there in
the Spanish language, but printed in Hebrew characters. The city of
Salonika, a prosperous seaport of 140,000 people, which used to belong
to Turkey but now is part of Greece, has over 50,000 of these Jews.
They readily learn other tongues, and many of them can talk in four or
five languages besides their native Spanish, which they still use in
the family circle.

Constantinople (called Stamboul by the Turks) is a polyglot city, that
is, a place of many languages. Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Jews,
Italians are all found mingled together.

[Illustration: A Scene in Salonicka]

The main source of trouble in the Balkan peninsula is that the races
and nationalities are so jumbled together that it is almost impossible
to say which land should belong to which nation. Take the case of
Macedonia (the district just northwest of the Aegean Sea). It is
inhabited largely by Bulgarians, and yet there are so many Greeks and
Serbs mixed in with the former that at the close of the last Balkan
war in 1913, Greece and Serbia both claimed it as belonging to them
because of the "prevailing nationality of its inhabitants!" In other
words, the Serbians claimed that the inhabitants of Macedonia were
largely Serbs, the Greeks were positive that its people were largely
Greeks, while Bulgaria is very resentful today because the land was
not given to her, on the ground that almost all its inhabitants are
Bulgarians!

Religious and racial hatreds have had a great deal to do with making
the Balkan peninsula a hotbed of political trouble. Right in the
center of Bulgaria, for example, speaking the same language, dressing
exactly alike, doing business with each other on an equal footing, are
to be found the native Bulgarian and the descendant of the Turkish
conquerors; yet one goes to the Greek Orthodox Church to worship and
the other to the Mohammedan Mosque. With memories of hundreds of years
of wrong and oppression behind them, Bulgarians and Turks hate and
despise each other with a fierce intensity. Let us now leave the
Balkan states, with their seething pot of racial and religious hatred,
and turn to other causes of European wars.

Questions for Review

1. What became of the Greeks when the Turks captured Constantinople?
2. Why could one county of Serbia resist the Turks?
3. How long after the fall of Constantinople were the Turks
threatening Vienna?
4. Explain how Constantinople has people of so many different
nationalities.
5. Why have the Turk and Bulgarian never been friendly?

CHAPTER VII

The Rise of Modern Nations

How the peasants looked upon war.--War the opportunity of the fighting
men.--The decreasing power of barons.--The growth of royal power.--How
four little kingdoms became Spain.--Other kingdoms of Europe.--The
rise of Russia.--The Holy Roman Empire.--The electors.--The rise of
Brandenburg.--The elector of Brandenburg becomes King of
Prussia.--Frederick the Great.--The seizure of Silesia and the
consequent wars.

You have already been shown how in the early days of the feudal
system, the lords, with their squires, knights, and fighting men made
up a class of the population whose only trade was war, and how the
poor peasants were compelled to raise crops and live stock enough to
feed both themselves and the fighting men. These peasants had no love
for war, as war resulted only in their losing their possessions in
case their country was invaded by the enemy. The fighting men, on the
other hand, had nothing to do unless war was going on, and as those
who were not killed returned from a war with rich plunder in case they
were victorious, they were always looking for a chance to start
trouble with some neighboring country.

In those days, kings cared little what their nobles did, so long as
the nobles furnished them with fighting men in times of war. As a
result, one county in a certain kingdom would often be at war with a
neighboring county. The fighting man either was killed in battle or he
came out of it with increased glory and plunder, but the peasants and
the common people had nothing to gain by war and everything to lose.
As we have seen, force ruled the world, and the common people had no
voice in their government. The workers were looked down upon by the
members of the fighting class, who never did a stroke of work
themselves and considered honest toil as degrading. In fact, as one
writer has said, the only respectable trade in Europe in those days
was what we today would call highway robbery.

France and England in the 15th Century

Gradually in most of the European countries the king was able to put
down the power of his nobles and make himself master over the whole
nation. In this way a strong central power grew up in France. After
the death of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in 1477, no noble
dared to question the leadership of the king of France. The same thing
was true in England after the battle of Bosworth in 1485, which
resulted in the death of King Richard III and the setting of the Tudor
family on the throne.

Spain and Other Kingdoms

Spain had been divided into four little kingdoms: Leon, Castile,
Aragon, and Granada, the latter ruled by the Moors. The nation
marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabella of Castile and Leon joined
the three Christian kingdoms into one, and after 1492, when the Moors
were defeated and Granada annexed to the realm of Ferdinand and
Isabella, Spain became one kingdom. About this time, also, there had
grown up a strong kingdom of Hungary, a kingdom of Portugal, a kingdom
of Poland, and one of Denmark. Norway was ruled by the Danes, but
Sweden was a separate kingdom. In Russia, Czar Ivan the Terrible
(1533-84) had built up a strong power which was still further
strengthened by Czar Peter the Great (1690-1725).

The Holy Roman Empire

The rest of the continent of Europe, with the exception of the Turkish
Empire, formed what was called the Holy Roman Empire, a rule which had
been founded by Charlemagne (A.D. 800), the great Frankish monarch,
who had been crowned in Rome by the pope as ruler of the western
world. (The name "Holy Roman Empire" was not used by Charlemagne. We
first hear of it under Otto I, the Saxon emperor, who was crowned in
962.)

[Map: The Empire of Charlemagne]

This Holy Roman Empire included all of what is now Germany (except the
eastern third of Prussia), all of what is now Bohemia, Austria (but
not Hungary), and all of Italy except the part south of Naples. There
were times when part of France and all of the low countries (now
Belgium and Holland) also belonged to the Empire. (The mountaineers of
Switzerland won their independence from the Empire in the fourteenth
century, and formed a little republic.) See map "Europe in 1540."

[Map: Europe in 1540]

In the Holy Roman Empire, the son of the emperor did not necessarily
succeed his father as ruler. There were seven (afterwards nine)
"electors" who, at the death of the ruling monarch, met to elect his
successor. Three of these electors were archbishops, one was king of
Bohemia, and the others were counts of large counties in Germany like
Hanover and Brandenburg. It frequently happened that the candidate
chosen was a member of the family of the dead emperor, and there were
three or four families which had many rulers chosen from among their
number. The most famous of these families was that of the Counts of
Hapsburg, from whom the present emperor of Austria is descended.

[Illustration: Louis XIV]

This Holy Roman Empire was not a strong government, as the kingdoms of
England and France grew to be. The kings of Bohemia, Saxony, and
Bavaria all were subjects of the emperor, as were many powerful
counts. These men were jealous of the emperor's power, and he did not
dare govern them as strictly as the king of France ruled his nobles.

France in the 18th Century

[Illustration: John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough]

During the 18th century, there were many wars in Europe caused by the
ambition of various kings to make their domains larger and to increase
their own incomes. King Louis XIV of France had built up a very
powerful kingdom. Brave soldiers and skillful generals spread his rule
over a great part of what is Belgium and Luxemburg, and annexed to the
French kingdom the part of Germany between the Rhine River and the
Vosges (Vōzh) Mountains. Finally, the English joined with the troops
of the Holy Roman Empire to curb the further growth of the French
kingdom, and at the battle of Blenheim (1704), the English Duke of
Marlborough, aided by the emperor's army, put an end to the further
expansion of the French.

[Illustration: The Great Elector of Brandenburg]

Prussia

The 18th century also saw the rise of a new kingdom in Europe. You
will recall that there was a county in Germany named Brandenburg,
whose count was one of the seven electors who chose the emperor. The
capital of this county was Berlin. It so happened that a number of
Counts of Brandenburg, of the family of Hohenzollern, had been men of
ambition and ability. The little county had grown by adding small
territories around it. One of these counts, called "the Great
Elector," had added to Brandenburg the greater part of the neighboring
county of Pomerania. His son did not have the ability of his father,
but was a very proud and vain man. He happened to visit King William
III of England, and was very much offended because during the
interview, the king occupied a comfortable arm chair, while the
elector, being simply a count, was given a chair to sit in which was
straight-backed and had no arms. Brooding over this insult, as it
seemed to him, he went home and decided that he too should be called a
king. The question was, what should his title be. He could not call
himself "King of Brandenburg," for Brandenburg was part of the Empire,
and the emperor would not allow it. It had happened some one hundred
years before, that, through his marriage with the daughter of the Duke
of Prussia, a Count of Brandenburg had come into possession of the
district known as East Prussia, at the extreme southeastern corner of
the Baltic Sea. Between this and the territory of Brandenburg lay the
district known as West Prussia, which was part of the Kingdom of
Poland. However, Prussia lay outside the boundaries of the Empire, and
the emperor had nothing to say about what went on there. Therefore,
the elector sent notice to all the kings and princes of Europe that
after this he was to be known as the "King of Prussia." It was a
situation somewhat like the one we have already referred to, when the
kings of England were independent monarchs and yet subjects of the
kings of France because they were also dukes of Normandy.

[Illustration: Frederick The Great]

The son of this elector who first called himself king had more energy
and more character than his father. He ruled his country with a rod of
iron, and built up a strong, well-drilled army. He was especially fond
of tall soldiers, and had agents out all over Europe, kidnapping men
who were over six feet tall to serve in his famous regiment of Guards.
He further increased the size of the Prussian kingdom.

His son was the famous Frederick the Great, one of the most remarkable
fighters that the world has ever seen. This prince had been brought up
under strict discipline by his father. The old king had been insistent
that his son should be no weakling. It is told that one day, finding
Frederick playing upon a flute, he seized the instrument and snapped
it in twain over his son's shoulder. The young Frederick, under this
harsh training, became a fit leader of a military nation. When his
father died and left him a well-filled treasury and a wonderfully
drilled army, he was fired with the ambition to spread his kingdom
wider. Germany, as has been said, was made up of a great many little
counties, each ruled by its petty prince or duke, all owing homage, in
a general way, to the ruler of Austria, who still was supposed to be
the head of the Holy Roman Empire.

[Map: The Growth of Brandenburg-Prussia, 1400-1806]

This empire was not a real nation, but a collection of many different
nationalities which had little sympathy with each other. The ruler of
Austria was also king of Bohemia and of Hungary, but neither country
was happy at being governed by a German ruler. Then, too, the
Croatians, Serbs, Slovenes, and Slovaks were unhappy at being ruled,
first by the Hungarians and then by the emperor, as they were Slavic
peoples who wished their independence. It so happened that about the
time that Frederick became king of Prussia in place of his father, the
head of the House of Austria died, leaving his only child, a daughter,
Maria Theresa, to rule the big empire. Frederick decided that he could
easily defeat the disorganized armies of Austria, so he announced to
the world that the rich province of Silesia was henceforth to be his
and that he proposed to take it by force of arms. Naturally, this
brought on a fierce war with Austria, but in the end, Frederick's
well-trained troops, his store of money, and above all, his expert
military ability made the Prussians victorious, and at the close of
the fighting, almost all of Silesia remained a part of the kingdom of
Prussia. The Austrians, however, were not satisfied, and two more wars
were fought before they finally gave up trying to recover the stolen
state. Frederick remained stronger than ever as a result of his
victories.

Questions for Review

1. Why were the fighting men of the Middle Ages a source of loss to a
nation in general?
2. How was it that Spain became one nation?
3. What did Peter the Great do for Russia?
4. Why did the Emperor have less power than many kings?
5. What was the ambition of Louis XIV of France?
6. What effect had the training of his father upon the character of
Frederick the Great?
7. Had Frederick the Great any right to Silesia?

CHAPTER VIII

The Fall of the Two Kingdoms

The Poles, a divided nation.--The three partitions.--Wars and revolts
as a result.--The disappearance of Lithuania.--The growing power of
the king of France.--An extravagant and corrupt court.--Peasants
cruelly taxed and oppressed.--Bankruptcy at last.--The meeting of the
three estates.--The third estate defies the king.--The fall of the
Bastille.--The flight and capture of the king.--The king
beheaded.--Other kings alarmed.--Valmy saves the revolution.--The
reign of terror.

In the flat country to the northeast of Austria-Hungary and east of
Prussia lay the kingdom of Poland, the largest country in Europe with
the exception of Russia. The Poles, as has been said before, were a
Slavic people, distant cousins of the Russians and Bohemians. They had
a strong nobility or upper class, but these nobles were jealous of
each other, and as a result, the country was torn apart by many
warring factions. The condition of the working class was very
miserable. The nobles did not allow them any privileges. They were
serfs, that is to say, practically slaves, who had to give up to their
masters the greater part of the crops that they raised. In the council
of the Polish nobles, no law could be passed if a single nobleman
opposed it. As a result of this jealousy between factions, the Poles
could not be induced to obey any one leader, and thus, divided, were
easy to conquer.

Frederick the Great, regretting the fact that he was separated from
his land in East Prussia by the county of West Prussia, which was part
of Poland, proposed to his old enemy, Maria Theresa of Austria, and to
the Empress Catharine II of Russia that they each take a slice of
Poland. This was accordingly done, in the year 1772. Poor Poland was
unable to resist the three great powers around her, and the other
kings of Europe, who had been greedily annexing land wherever they
could get it, stood by without a protest. Some twenty years later,
Prussia and Russia each again annexed a large part of the remainder of
Poland, and two years after this, the three powers divided up among
them all that was left of the unhappy kingdom. The Poles fought
violently against this last partition, but they were not united and
were greatly outnumbered by the troops of the three powers.

This great crime against a nation was the result of the military
system; and this in turn was the result of the feudal system, which
made the king, as commander-in-chief of the army, the supreme ruler of
his country. The men in the Prussian and Austrian armies had no desire
to fight and conquer the poor Poles. Victory meant nothing to them.
They gained no advantage from it. To the kings who divided up the
countries it simply meant an enlargement of their kingdoms, more
people to pay taxes to them, and more men to draw on for their armies.

[Illustration: Catharine II]

Instead of crushing out the love of the Poles for their country, this
wrongful tearing apart has made their national spirit all the
stronger. There have been revolts and bloody wars, caused by Polish
uprisings, time and time again, and the Poles will never be satisfied
until their unhappy country is once more united.

To the northeast of the Poles live the Lithuanians, whose country had
been annexed to the Polish kingdom when their duke, who had married
the daughter of the king of Poland, followed his father-in-law on the
Polish throne. Lithuania fell to Russia's share in the division, so
that its people only changed masters. They are a distinct nation,
however, possessing a language and literature of their own, and having
no desire to be ruled by either Poles or Russians. If they were to
receive justice, they would form a country by themselves, lying
between Poland and Russia proper.

The Downfall of the French Monarchy

[Illustration: Courtier of time of Louis XIV]

In the meantime, a great change had come about in France. There, for
hundreds of years, the power of the king had been growing greater,
until by the eighteenth century, there was no one in the country who
could oppose him. He had great fortresses and prisons where he sent
those who had offended him, shutting them up without a trial and not
even letting their families know where they had been taken. The
peasants and working classes had been ground down under taxes which
grew heavier and heavier. The king spent millions of dollars on his
palaces, on his armies, on his courts. Money was stolen by court
officials. Paris was the gayest capital in the world, the home of
fashion, art, and frivolity and the poor peasants paid the bills.

[Illustration: The Taking of The Bastille]

For years, there had been mutterings. The people were ripe for a
revolt, but they had no weapons, and there was no one to lead them. At
last, came a time when there was no money in the royal treasury. After
all the waste and corruption, nothing was left to pay the army and
keep up the expenses of the government. One minister of finance after
another tried to devise some scheme whereby the country might meet its
debts, but without success. The costly wars and wasteful extravagances
of the past hundred years were at last to bring a reckoning. In
desperation, the king summoned a meeting of representative men from
all over the kingdom. There were three classes represented, the
nobles, the clergy, and what was called "the third estate," which
meant merchants, shopkeepers, and the poor gentlemen. A great
statesman appeared, a man named Mirabeau. Under his leadership, the
third estate defied the king, and the temper of the people was such
that the king dared not force them to do his will. In the midst of
these exciting times, a mob attacked the great Paris prison, the
Bastille. They took it by storm, and tore it to the ground. This
happened on the fourteenth of July, 1789, a day which the French still
celebrate as the birthday of their nation's liberty. All over France
the common people rose in revolt. The soldiers in the army would no
longer obey their officers. The king was closely watched, and when he
attempted to flee to Germany was brought back and thrown into prison.
Many of the nobles, in terror, fled from the country. Thus began what
is known as the French Revolution.

[Illustration: The Palace of Versailles]

As soon as the king was thrown into prison and the people of France
took charge of their government, a panic arose throughout the courts
of Europe. Other kings, alarmed over the fate of the king of France,
began to fear for themselves. They, too, had taxed and oppressed their
subjects. They felt that this revolt of the French people must be put
down, and the king of France set back upon his throne, otherwise the
same kind of revolt might take place in their countries as well.
Accordingly, the king of Prussia, the king of England, and the emperor
of Austria all made war on the new French Republic. They proposed to
overwhelm the French by force of arms and compel them to put back
their king upon his throne.

Of course, if the soldiers in the armies of these kings had known what
the object of this war was, they would have had very little sympathy
with it, but for years they had been trained to obey their officers,
who in turn obeyed their generals, who in turn obeyed the orders of
the kings. The common soldiers were like sheep, in that they did not
think for themselves, but followed their leaders. They were not
allowed to know the truth concerning this attack on France. They did
not know the French language, and had no way of finding out the real
situation, for there were no public schools in these countries, and
very few people knew how to read the newspapers. The newspapers,
moreover, were controlled by the governments, and were allowed to
print only what favored the cause of the kings.

The French, however, knew the meaning of the war. A young French poet
from Strasbourg on the Rhine wrote a wonderful war song which was
first sung in Paris by the men of Marseilles, and thus has come to be
called "La Marseillaise." It is the cry of a crushed and oppressed
people against foreign tyrants who would again enslave them. It fired
the French army with a wonderful enthusiasm, and untrained as they
were, they beat back the invaders at the hard-fought field of Valmy
and saved the French Republic.

[Illustration: The Reign of Terror]

The period known as "the reign of terror" now began in earnest. A
faction of the extreme republican party got control of the government,
and kept it by terrorizing the more peaceable citizens. The brutal
wrongs which nobles had put upon the lower classes for so many hundred
years were brutally avenged. The king was executed, as were most of
the nobles who had not fled from the country. For three or four years,
the gutters of the principal French cities ran blood. Then the better
sense of the nation came to the front and the people settled down. A
fairly good government was organized, and the executions ceased. Still
the kings of Europe would not recognize the new republic. There was
war against France for the next twenty years on the part of England,
and generally two or three other countries as well.

[Illustration: The First Singing of 'The Marseillaise']

Questions for Review

1. Why was Poland an easy prey for her neighbors?
2. Why did not Spain, France, or England interfere to prevent the
partition of Poland?
3. How did Lithuania come to be joined to Poland?
4. What things could the king of France do which would not be
tolerated in the United States today?
5. Why did the people of France submit to the rule of the king?
6. Why did the king call together the three "estates"?
7. Why do the French celebrate the 14th of July?
8. Why did the other kings take up the cause of the king of France?
9. What was the cause of the reign of terror?

CHAPTER IX

The Little Man from the Common People

The young Corsican.--The war in Italy.--Italy a battlefield for
centuries.--The victories of Bonaparte.--The first consul.--The
empire.--The French sweep over Europe.--Kings and emperors beaten and
deposed.--The fatal Russian campaign.--The first abdication.--The
return from Elba.--The battle of Waterloo.--The feudal lords once more
triumphant.

And now there came to the front one of the most remarkable characters
in all history. This was Napoleon Bonaparte, a little man from the
island of Corsica, of Italian parentage, but a French citizen, for the
island had been forcibly The annexed to France shortly before his
birth. As a young lieutenant in the army, he had seen the storming of
the Bastille. Later on, being in charge of the cannon which defended
the House of Parliament, he had saved one of the numerous governments
set up during this period. A Paris mob was trying to storm this
building, as they had the castle of the king. As a reward, he had been
put in charge of the French army in Italy, which was engaged in
fighting the Austrians.

In order to understand the situation it is necessity at this point to
devote some attention to the past history of the Italian peninsula.

Italy had not been a united country since the days of the Roman
Empire. The southern part of the peninsula had formed, with Sicily, a
small nation called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The northern part
had belonged to the Ostrogoths, the Lombards, the Franks, and the Holy
Roman Empire in turn. The Italian people wanted to become one nation,
but they were divided up among many little princes, each with his
separate dominions. The cities of Genoa and Venice had each formed a
republic, which was strong on the sea only, for both cities had large
navies and had acquired practically all their wealth by their trade
with Constantinople, Egypt, and the far East. In 1796 the Hapsburg
family held the control of northern Italy except the lands around the
city of Venice and the county of Piedmont. The latter formed a
separate kingdom with the island of Sardinia, much as Sicily was
joined with the southern end of the peninsula.

Italy had been the battlefield where Goths, Franks, Huns, Lombards,
Germans, Austrians, French, and Spaniards had fought their battles for
the control of the civilized world. (See the following maps.) At one
time, the Austrian House of Hapsburg controlled the greater part of
the peninsula. This was especially true when Charles V was elected
emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. As a Hapsburg, he was ruler of
Austria. As a descendant of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, he was
Lord of the Low Countries (what is now Holland and Belgium). He was
also king of Spain, being the oldest living grandson of Ferdinand and
Isabella. When he became ruler of the two Sicilies, and defeated the
French king for the control of northern Italy, there were only four
powers in Europe which were not under his sway: Russia, Turkey,
Poland, and England. (See map.)

[Map: Italy in 525 A.D.]

[Map: Italy in 650 A.D.]

[Map: Italy in 1175 A.D.]

[Illustration: Charles the Fifth]

Three hundred years after this, the Austrians were again invading
Italy, and at the time when Bonaparte entered it (1796), they had
overrun and controlled the entire valley of the Po. The cause of the
war was still the deposing of the French monarch. The Austrian armies
were fighting to force the people of France to take back the rule of
the hated kings. The armies of France, on the other hand, represented
the rights of the people to choose their own form of government.

Of course the French, intoxicated by the success of the Revolution,
were eager to spread the republican form of government all over
Europe. There was a real possibility that they might do so, and the
kings were fighting in defense of their thrones. (The map shows
the conquests of the new republic up to this time.)

[Map: Europe in 1796]

Such was the situation when young Bonaparte, twenty-six years of age,
went down into Italy to take command of the French army. The generals,
many of them as old as his father, began offering him advice, but he
impatiently waved them aside and announced that he was going to wage
war on a plan hitherto unheard of. He made good his boast, and after a
short campaign in which he inspired his ragged, hungry army to perform
wonders in fighting, he had driven the Austrians out of northern
Italy, broken up the Republic of Venice, and forced the emperor to
make peace with France. After a brilliant but unsuccessful campaign in
Egypt and Syria, Bonaparte returned to France, where, as the popular
military hero, he had little difficulty in overthrowing the five
Directors of the French government and having himself elected "First
Consul" or president of France.

A new combination of nations now united against the republic, but
Bonaparte cut to pieces a great Austrian army, and a second time
compelled his enemies to make peace. He now proposed that the French
people elect him "emperor of the French" for life, and by an
overwhelming vote they did so. The empire was very different from the
other empires and kingships of Europe, since it was created by the
vote of the people. The other monarchs held their thrones by reason of
their descent from the chiefs of the plundering tribes which invaded
Europe during the Dark Ages. By this time, the kings had forgotten
that they owed their power to the swords of their fighting men, and
there had grown up a doctrine called "The Divine Right of Kings." In
other words, the kings claimed that God in his wisdom had seen fit to
make them rulers over these lands, and that they were responsible to
God alone. In this way they tried to make it appear that any one who
attempted to drive a king from his throne was opposed to the will of
Heaven.

The victorious French, exulting in their newly-won freedom from the
tyranny of kings and nobles, were full of warlike pride in the
wonderful victories gained by their armies under the brilliant
leadership of Napoleon. (He dropped his last name, Bonaparte, when he
was elected emperor.) They swept over the greater part of Europe and
helped to spread the idea that the people had rights that all kings
were bound to respect, and that it was not necessary to be ruled by
descendants of the old robber chiefs.

For sixteen years Napoleon did not meet defeat. He beat the Austrians
and Russians singly; he beat them combined. In two fierce battles, he
crushed the wonderful Prussian army, which had been trained in the
military school of Frederick the Great. He drove out the king of
Spain, the king of the Two Sicilies, the kings of several of the small
German kingdoms. He made one of his brothers king of Spain, another
king of Holland, a third king of Westphalia (part of western Germany).
He set his brother-in-law on the throne of Naples. He had his small
son crowned king of Rome. He took away from Prussia all of her
territory except Brandenburg, Silesia, Pomerania. and East and West
Prussia. He reorganized the old Polish kingdom and kings called it the
Grand Duchy of Warsaw. He forced Austria to give up all claim to
northern Italy. He annexed to France the land which is now Belgium and
Holland, and parts of western Germany and Italy. (See map
entitled "Europe in 1810.")

[Map: Europe in 1810]

All over Europe, those of the people who had education enough to
understand what was going on, were astonished to see the old feudal
kings and princes driven from their thrones and their places taken by
men sprung from the common people. The father of the Bonapartes had
been a poor lawyer. Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law, king of South
Italy, was the son of an innkeeper. Bernadotte, one of Napoleon's
generals, whom the Swedes chose as their king, was likewise descended
from the lower classes. In nations where the working classes had never
dreamed of opposing the rulers there sprang up a new hope.

[Illustration: The Emperor Napoleon in 1814]

Bonaparte at last made a fatal mistake. With an army of half a million
men, he invaded Russia, and established his headquarters in Moscow.
The Russian people, however, set fire themselves to their beautiful
city, and the French had to retreat a thousand miles through snow and
ice, while bands of Russian Cossacks swooped down on them from the
rear and took a hundred thousand prisoners. Encouraged by this
terrible blow dealt the French, the allied kings of Europe again
united in one last effort to drive the little Corsican from the throne
of France.

For two years Napoleon held them at bay, making up for his lack of
soldiers by his marvelous military skill, and by the enthusiasm which
he never failed to arouse in his troops. In 1814, however, surrounded
by the troops of Austria, Prussia, Russia, and England, he had to
confess himself beaten. Even Bernadotte, his former general, led the
Swedish troops against him. The allied kings brought back in triumph
to Paris the brother of the king who had been executed there
twenty-two years before, and set him on the throne of France. Napoleon
was banished to the little island of Elba to the west of Italy, and
the monarchs flattered themselves that their troubles were ended.

[Illustration: The Retreat from Moscow]

In the spring of the following year, however, Napoleon escaped from
his island prison and landed on the southern coast of France. The king
ordered his soldiers to capture their former emperor. But the magic of
his presence was too much for them, and the men who had been sent to
put him into chains shed tears of joy at the sight of him, and threw
themselves at his feet. One week later, the king of France had fled a
second time from his country, and the man chosen by the people was
once more at the head of the government.

All the kingdoms of Europe declared war against France, and four large
armies were headed toward her borders. Napoleon did not wait for them
to come. Gathering a big force, he marched rapidly north into the low
countries, where he met and defeated an army of Prussians. Another
army of English was advancing from Brussels. On the field of Waterloo,
the French were defeated in one of the great battles of the world's
history. The defeated Prussians had made a wide circuit and returned
to the field to the aid of their English allies, while the general
whom Napoleon had sent to follow the Germans arrived too late to
prevent the emperor from being crushed. A second time, Napoleon had to
give up his crown, and a second time King Louis XVIII was brought back
into Paris and put upon the French throne by the bayonets of foreign
troops. The people had been crushed, apparently, and the old feudal
lords were once more in control.

[Illustration: Napoleon at Waterloo]

Questions for Review

1. Had Italy ever been a nation?
2. What German tribe ruled Italy in 525? (See map.)
3. What tribe ruled Italy in 650? (See map.)
4. What part of Italy once belonged to the Holy Roman Empire? (See
map.)
5. What induced the French to elect Bonaparte as First Consul and
afterward Emperor?
6. What led Napoleon to make war on the other rulers?
7. What was Napoleon's great mistake?
8. Why did the people welcome him upon his return from Elba?
9. What was the effect of the battle of Waterloo?

CHAPTER X

A King-Made Map and its Trail of Wrongs

A meeting of kings and diplomats.--Austrians and English vs. Prussians
and Russians.--Talleyrand the subtle.--Carving a new map.--The people
are ignored.--Sowing the seeds of trouble.--Unhappy Poland.--Divided
Italy.--Revolts of the people.--The outbreaks of 1848.

And now the kings and princes, with their ministers of state and
diplomats, met at Vienna to decide what should be the map of Europe.
In past years, there had been a great deal of suspicion and jealousy
among these monarchs. Hardly five years had gone by without finding
two of them flying at each other's throats in some unjust war or
other. Only their great fear of uprisings similar to the French
Revolution had driven them to act together in crushing the French
Republic, and the empire voted by the people, which had followed it.
This famous "Congress of Vienna," which took place 1815, is a fair
example of the way in which European lands have been cut up and
parceled out to various monarchs without any regard for the wishes of
the people.

[Illustration: The Congress of Vienna]

Russia and Prussia, proud of the part that their mighty armies had had
in crushing Napoleon, were arrogantly intending to divide the map of
Europe as suited them, and it was only by a great deal of diplomacy
that they were beaten. (The game of diplomacy is frequently a polite
name for some very cunning deception, involving lying and cheating, in
which kings and their ministers take part.) The Austrians were afraid
of the Russian-Prussian combination, and they induced England to side
with them. England did not love Austria, but feared the other two
powers. The English minister, Lord Castlereagh, finally persuaded the
Austrians, Prussians, and Russians, to allow the French diplomat,
Talleyrand, to take part in their final meetings. Now Talleyrand was
probably the most slippery and tricky diplomat of all Europe. He had
grown to power during the troublous days of the latter part of the
French Revolution, and had guessed which party would remain in power
so skillfully that he always appeared as the strong friend of the
winning side. Although he had served Napoleon during the first years
of the empire, he was shrewd enough to remain true to King Louis XVIII
during the latter's second exile. The Prussian-Russian combination was
finally obliged to give in, somewhat, to the demands of Austria,
England, and France. Compare this map with the one given in the
preceding chapter, and you will see most of the important changes.

Prussia, which had been cut down to about half its former size by
Napoleon, got back some of its Polish territory, and was given a great
deal of land in western Germany along the River Rhine. Part of the
kingdom of Saxony was forcibly annexed to Prussia also. It is needless
to say that its inhabitants were bitterly unhappy over this
arrangement. Austria kept part of her Polish territory, and gave the
rest of it to Russia.

The southern part of the Netherlands, which is today called Belgium,
had belonged to the Hapsburg family, the emperors of Austria. As was
previously said, it was conquered by the French and remained part of
France until the fall of Napoleon. It was now joined with Holland to
make the kingdom of the Netherlands. Its people were Walloons and
Flemish, almost entirely Catholic in their religion, and they very
much disliked to be joined with the Protestant Dutch of Holland.

[Map: Europe in 1815]

The state of Finland, which had not been strong enough to defend
itself against its two powerful neighbors, Sweden and Russia, had been
fought over by these two powers for more than a century. It was
finally transferred to Russia, and in order to appease Sweden, Norway,
which had been ruled by the Danes, was torn away from Denmark and made
part of the kingdom of Sweden. The Norwegians desired to remain an
independent country, and they loved the Swedes even less than they
loved the Danes. Therefore, this union was another source of trouble.
The greater part of the kingdom of Poland and all of Lithuania were
joined to Russia.

Russia got back all of the territory she had taken in 1795, and in
addition large parts of the former shares of Prussia and Austria. In
order to pay back Austria for the loss of part of Poland, she was
given all of northern Italy except the counties of Piedmont and Savoy
near France.

The German states (and these included both Austria and Prussia) were
formed into a loose alliance called the German Confederation.
England's share of the plunder consisted largely of distant colonies,
such as South Africa, Ceylon, Trinidad, etc. France shrank back to the
boundaries which she had had at the beginning of the revolution. The
kings of France, of the Two Sicilies, and of Spain (all of them
members of the Bourbon family) who had been driven out by Napoleon,
were set back upon their thrones.

This arrangement left Italy all split up into nine or ten different
parts, although its people desired to be one nation. It left Austria a
government over twelve different nationalities, each one of which was
dissatisfied. It joined Belgium to Holland in a combination
displeasing to both. It gave Norway and Finland as subject states to
Sweden and Russia respectively. It left the Albanians, Serbians,
Roumanians, Bulgarians, and Greeks all subject to the hated Turks. It
set upon three thrones, once vacant, kings who were hated by their
subjects. It divided the Poles up among four different
governments--for, strange as it may seem, the powers could not decide
who should own the city of Cracow and the territory around it, and
they ended by making this district a little republic, under the joint
protection of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. In fact, the Swiss, serene
in their lofty mountains, were almost the only small people of Europe
who were left untroubled. The Congress of 1815 had laid the foundation
for future revolutions and wars without number.

At first, the Poles were fairly well treated by the Russians, but
after two or three unsuccessful attempts at a revolution, Poland,
which, as one of the states of the Russian Empire, was still called a
kingdom, was deprived of all its rights, and its people were forced to
give up the use of their language in their schools, their courts, and
even their churches. In the same fashion, the Poles in Prussia were
"not even allowed to think in Polish," as one Polish patriot bitterly
put it. All through the first half of the 19th century, there were
uprisings and struggles among these people. As a result of one of
them, in 1846, the little Republic of Cracow was abolished, and its
territory forcibly annexed to Austria.

The Italian people formed secret societies which had for their object
the uniting of Italy, and the freeing of its people from foreign
rulers. All through Germany there were mutterings of discontent. The
people wanted more freedom from their lords. Greece broke out into
insurrection against the Turks, and fifteen years after the Congress
of 1815 won its right to independence. Not long afterwards, the
southern half of the Netherlands broke itself loose from the northern
half, and declared to the world that it should henceforth be a new
kingdom, under the name of Belgium. About the same time, the people of
France rose up against the Bourbon kings, and threw them out "for
good." A distant cousin of the king was elected, not "king of France"
but "citizen king of the French," and the people were allowed to elect
men to represent them in a parliament or Congress at Paris. In Spain,
one revolution followed another. For a short time, Spain was a
republic, but the people were not well enough educated to govern
themselves, and the kingdom was restored.

[Illustration: Prince Metternich]

The statesman who had more to do with the division of territory in
1815 than any other was Prince Metternich of Austria. He stood for the
"divine right of kings," and did not believe in allowing the common
people any liberty whatsoever. In 1848, an uprising occurred in
Austria, and crowds in Vienna, crying, "down with Metternich," forced
the aged diplomat to flee. During the same year, there were outbreaks
in Germany. The people everywhere were revolting against the feudal
rights of their kings and princes, and gaining greater liberty for
themselves. In 1848, France, also, grew tired of her "citizen king,"
and that country a second time became a republic. The French made the
mistake, however, of electing as their president, Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte, nephew of the great Napoleon, and in time he did exactly
what his uncle had done,--persuaded the French people to elect him
emperor.

Questions for Review

1. What were the motives of each of the nations represented at the
Congress of Vienna?
2. Why were the Russians and Prussians the leaders of the meeting at
first?
3. Why did the English and Austrians assist each other?
4. What had Napoleon done for Poland? (See last chapter.)
5. What kings deposed by Napoleon were set back on their thrones?
6. What were the greatest wrongs done by the Congress?
7. How did the Poles protest against the settlement made by the
Congress?
8. What did the Belgians do about it?
9. What did the French finally do to the Bourbon kings?

CHAPTER XI

Italy a Nation at Last

The Crimean War curbs Russia.--Cavour plans a United Italy.--War
against Austria.--Garibaldi, the patriot.--The Kingdom of Sardinia
becomes part of the new Kingdom of Italy.--Venice and Rome are
added.--Some Italians still outside the kingdom.

Meanwhile, Italy, under the leadership of two patriots named Mazzini
and Garibaldi, was in a turmoil. The Austrians and the Italian princes
who were subject to them were constantly crushing some attempted
revolution.

One thing which helped the cause of the people was that the great
powers were all jealous of each other. For example, Russia attacked
Turkey in 1853, but France and England were afraid that if Russia
conquered the Turks and took Constantinople, she would become too
powerful for them. Therefore, both countries rushed troops to aid
Turkey, and in the end, Russia was defeated, although thousands of
soldiers were killed on both sides before the struggle was over.

You will remember that the counties of Piedmont and Savoy in western
Italy, together with the island of Sardinia, made up a little kingdom
known as the "Kingdom of Sardinia." This country had for its prime
minister, a statesman named Count Cavour, who, like all Italians,
strongly hoped for the day when all the people living on the Italian
peninsula should be one nation. At the time of the Crimean War (as the
war between Russia on the one side and Turkey, France, and England on
the other was called) he caused his country also to declare war on
Russia, and sent a tiny army to fight alongside of the English and
French. A few years later, he secretly made a bargain with Napoleon
III. (This was what President Bonaparte of France called himself after
he had been elected emperor.) The French agreed to make war with his
country against the Austrians. If they won, the Sardinians were to
receive all north Italy, and in return for France's help were to give
France the county of Savoy and the seaport of Nice.

When Cavour and the French were all ready to strike, it was not hard
to find an excuse for a war. Austria declared war on Sardinia, and, as
had been arranged, France rushed to the aid of the Italians. Austria
was speedily beaten, but no sooner was the war finished than the
French emperor repented of his bargain. He was afraid that it would
make trouble for him with his Catholic subjects if the Italians were
allowed to take all the northern half of the peninsula, including the
pope's lands, into their kingdom. Accordingly, the Sardinians received
only Lombardy in return for Savoy and Nice, which they gave to France,
and the Austrians kept the county of Venetia. A fire once kindled,
however, is hard to put out. No sooner did the people of the other
states of northern Italy see the success of Sardinia, than, one after
another, they revolted against their Austrian princes and voted to
join the new kingdom of Italy. In this way, Parma, Modena, Tuscany,
and part of the "States of the Church" were added. All of this
happened in the year 1859.

These "States of the Church" came to be formed in the following way:
The father of the great king of the Franks, Charlemagne, who had been
crowned western emperor by the pope in the year 800, had rescued
northern Italy from the rule of the Lombards. He had made the pope
lord of a stretch of territory extending across Italy from the
Adriatic Sea to the Mediterranean. The inhabitants of this country had
no ruler but the pope. They paid their taxes to him, and acknowledged
him as their feudal lord. It was part of this territory which revolted
and joined the new kingdom of Italy.

You will remember the name of Garibaldi, the Italian patriot, who with
Mazzini had been stirring up trouble for the Austrians. They finally
pursued him so closely that he had to leave Italy. He came to America
and set up a fruit store in New York City, where there were quite a
number of his countrymen. By 1854, he had made a great deal of money
in the fruit business, but had not forgotten his beloved country, and
was anxious to be rich only in order that he might free Italy from the
Austrians. He sold out his business in New York, and taking all his
money, sailed for Italy. When the war of 1859 broke out, he
volunteered, and fought throughout the campaign.

But the compromising terms of peace galled him, and he was not
satisfied with a country only half free. In the region around Genoa,
he enrolled a thousand men to go on what looked like a desperate
enterprise. Garibaldi had talked with Cavour, and between them, they
had schemed to overthrow the kingdom of the Two Sicilies and join this
land to the northern country. Of course, Cavour pretended not to know
anything about Garibaldi, for the king of Naples and Sicily was
supposed to be a friend of the king of Sardinia. Nevertheless, he
secretly gave Garibaldi all the help that he dared, and urged men to
enroll with him.

[Illustration: The First Meeting of Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel]

With his thousand "red-shirts," as they were called, Garibaldi landed
on the island of Sicily, at Marsala. The inhabitants rose to welcome
him, and everywhere they drove out the officers who had been appointed
by their king to rule them. In a short time, all Sicily had risen in
rebellion against the king. (You will remember that this family of
kings had been driven out by Napoleon and restored by the Congress of
Vienna in 1815. They were Bourbons, the same family that furnished the
kings of Spain and the last kings of France. They stood for "the
divine right of kings," and had no sympathy with the common people.)
Crossing over to the mainland, Garibaldi, with his little army now
swollen to ten times its former size, swept everything before him as
he marched toward Naples. Everywhere, the people rose against their
former masters, and welcomed the liberator. The king fled in haste
from Naples, never to return. A vote was taken all over the southern
half of Italy and Sicily, to decide whether the people wanted to join
their brothers of the north to make a new kingdom of Italy. It was so
voted almost unanimously. Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia, thus
became the first king of United Italy. He made Florence his capital at
first, as the country around Rome still belonged to the pope. The pope
had few soldiers, but was protected by a guard of French troops.
However, ten years later, in 1870, when war broke out between France
and Prussia, the French troops left Rome, and the troops of Italy
marched quietly in and took possession of the city. Rome, for so many
years the capital, not only of Italy but of the whole Mediterranean
world, became once more the chief city of the peninsula. The pope was
granted a liberal pension by the Italian government in order to make
up to him for the loss of the money from his former lands. The dream
of Italians for the last 600 years had finally come to pass. Italy was
again one country, ruled by the popular Victor Emmanuel, with a
constitution which gave the people the right to elect representatives
to a parliament or congress. One of the worst blunders of the Congress
of Vienna had been set right by the patriotism of the people of Italy.

It should be noted, however, that there are still Italians who are not
part of this kingdom. The county of Venetia, at the extreme northeast
of Italy, was added to the kingdom in 1866 as the result of a war
which will be told about more fully in the next chapter, but the
territory around the city of Trent, called by the Italians Trentino,
and the county of Istria at the head of the Adriatic Sea, containing
the important seaports of Trieste, Fiume, and Pola, are inhabited
almost entirely by people of Italian blood. Certain islands along the
coast of Dalmatia also are full of Italians. To rescue these people
from the rule of Austria has been the earnest wish of all Italian
patriots, and was the chief reason why Italy did not join Germany and
Austria in the great war of 1914.

[Map: Italy Made One Nation, 1914]

Questions for Review

1. Why did England and France side with Turkey against Russia?
2. What bargain did Cavour make with Napoleon III?
3. How did the rest of Italy come to join Sardinia?
4. Explain the origin of the "States of the Church."
5. Why did Sicily and Naples revolt against their king?
6. What Italians are not yet citizens of the kingdom of Italy?

CHAPTER XII

The Man of Blood and Iron

The people demand their rights--Bismarck, the chief prop of the
Prussian monarchy--The question of the leadership of the German
states--The wonderful Prussian army--The war on Denmark--Preparing to
crush Austria--The battle of Sadowa--Easy terms to the defeated
nation--Preparing to defeat France--A good example of a war caused by
diplomats--Prussia's easy victory--The new German empire--Harsh terms
of peace--The triumph of feudal government.

All of this time, the kings of Europe had been engaged in contests
with their own people. The overthrow of the French king at the time of
the revolution taught the people of the other countries of Europe that
they too could obtain their liberties. You have already been told how
the people of Austria drove out Prince Metternich, who was the leader
of the party which refused any rights to the working classes.

That same year, 1848, had seen the last king driven out of France, had
witnessed revolts in all parts of Italy, and had found many German
princes in trouble with their subjects, who were demanding a share in
the government, the right of free speech, free newspapers, and trial
by jury. The empires of Austria and Russia had joined with the kingdom
of Prussia in a combination which was known as the "Holy Alliance."
This was meant to stop the further spread of republican ideas and to
curb the growing power of the common people.

[Illustration: Bismarck]

Not long after this, there came to the front in Prussia a remarkable
man, who for the next forty years was perhaps the most prominent
statesman in Europe. His full name was Otto Eduard Leopold von
Bismarck-Schönausen, but we generally know him under the name of
Bismarck. He was a Prussian nobleman, a believer in the divine right
of kings, the man who more than anybody else is responsible for the
establishing of the present empire of Germany. He once made a speech
in the Prussian Diet or council in which he said that "blood and
iron," not speeches and treaties, would unite Germany into a nation.
His one object was a united Germany, which should be the strongest
nation in Europe. He wanted Germany to be ruled by Prussia, Prussia to
be ruled by its king, and the king of Prussia to be controlled by
Bismarck. It is marvellous to see how near he came to carrying through
his whole plan.

After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Prussia remained among the
powers of Europe, but was not as great as Austria, Russia, England, or
France. The German states, some 35 in number, had united in a loose
alliance called the German Confederation. (This union was somewhat
similar to the United States of America between 1776 and 1789.)
Austria was the largest of these states, and was naturally looked upon
as the leader of the whole group. Prussia was the second largest,
while next after Prussia, and much smaller, came the kingdoms of
Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, and Wurtemburg. Bismarck, as prime minister
of Prussia, built up a wonderfully strong army. He did this by means
of a military system which at first made him very unpopular with the
people. Every man in the nation, rich or poor, was obliged to serve a
certain number of years in the army and be ready at a moment's notice
to join a certain regiment if there came a call to war.

Having organized this army, and equipped it with every modern weapon,
Bismarck was anxious to use it to accomplish his purpose. There were
two counties named Schleswig (shlĕs'vig) and Holstein (hōl'stīn)
which belonged to the king of Denmark and yet contained a
great many German people. The inhabitants of Schleswig were perhaps
half Danes, while those of Holstein were more than two-thirds Germans.
These Germans had protested against certain actions of the Danish
government, and were threatening to revolt. Taking advantage of this
trouble, Prussia and Austria, as the leading states of the German
Federation, declared war on little Denmark. The Danes fought
valiantly, but were overwhelmed by the armies of their enemies.
Schleswig and Holstein were torn away from Denmark and put under the
joint protection of Austria and Prussia.

This sort of arrangement could not last. Sooner or later, there was
bound to be a quarrel over the division of the plunder. Now Bismarck
had a chance to show his crafty diplomacy. He made up his mind to
crush Austria and put Prussia in her place as the leader of the German
states. He first negotiated with Napoleon III, Emperor of the French,
and made sure that this monarch would not interfere. Next he
remembered that the provinces of Venetia, Trentino, and Istria still
belonged to Austria, as the Italians had failed to gain them in the
war of 1859. Accordingly, Bismarck induced Italy to declare war on
Austria by promising her Venetia and the other provinces in return for
her aid. Saxony, Bavaria, and Hanover were friendly to Austria, but
Bismarck did not fear them. He knew that his army, under the
leadership of its celebrated general, von Moltke, was more than a
match for the Austrians, Bavarians, etc., combined.

When Bismarck was ready, Prussia and Italy struck. The Austrians were
successful at first against the Italians, but at Sadowa in Bohemia,
their armies were beaten in a tremendous battle by the Prussians.
Austria was put down from her place as the leader of the German
Confederation, and Prussia took the leadership. Hanover, whose king
had sided with the Austrians, was annexed to Prussia. The king of
Prussia and several of his generals were anxious to rob Austria of
some of her territory, as had been the custom in the past whenever one
nation defeated another in war. Bismarck, however, restrained them. In
his program of making Prussia the leading military state in Europe, he
saw that his next opponent would be France, and he did not propose, on
attacking France, to find his army assailed in the rear by the
revengeful Austrians. Accordingly, Bismarck compelled the king to let
Austria off without any loss of territory except Venetia, which was
given to the Italians. Austria was even allowed to retain Trentino and
Istria, and was not required to pay a large indemnity to Prussia. (A
custom which had come down from the middle ages, when cities which
were captured had been obliged to pay great sums of money, in order to
get rid of the conquering armies, was the payment of a war indemnity
by the defeated nation. This was a sum of money as large as the
conquerors thought they could safely force their victims to pay.) The
Austrians, although they were angry over the manner in which Bismarck
had provoked the war, nevertheless appreciated the fact that he was
generous in not forcing harsh terms upon them, as he could have done
had he wanted to.

The eyes of all Europe now turned toward the coming struggle between
Prussia and France. It was plain that it was impossible for two men
like Bismarck and Emperor Napoleon to continue in power very long
without coming to blows. It was Bismarck's ambition, as was previously
said, to make Prussia the leading military nation of Europe, and he
knew that this meant a struggle with Napoleon. You will remember also
that he planned a united Germany, led by Prussia, and he felt that the
French war would bring this about. On the other hand, the French
emperor was extremely jealous of the easy victory that Prussia and
Italy had won over Austria. He had been proud of the French army, and
wanted it to remain the greatest fighting force in Europe. He was just
as anxious for an excuse to attack Prussia as Bismarck was for a
pretext to attack him.

It should be kept in mind that all this time there was no ill-feeling
between the French people and the Germans. In fact, the Germans of the
Rhine country were very friendly to France, and during Napoleon's time
had been given more liberties and had been governed better than under
the rule of their former feudal lords. All the hostility and jealousy
was between the military chiefs. Even Bismarck did not dislike the
French. He had no feeling toward them at all. It was part of his
program that their military power should be crushed and his program
must be carried through. Europe, to his mind, was too small to contain
more than one master military power.

The four years between 1866 and 1870 were used by Bismarck to gain
friends for Prussia among other countries of Europe, and to make
enemies for France. The kingdoms of south Germany (Bavaria, Baden, and
Wurtemburg), which had sided with Austria during the late war, were
friendly to France and hostile to Prussia. Napoleon III, however, made
a proposal in writing to Bismarck that France should be given a slice
of this south German territory in return for some other land which
France was to allow Prussia to seize. Bismarck pretended to consider
this proposal, but was careful to keep the original copy, in the
French ambassador's own handwriting. (Each nation sends a man to
represent her at the capital of each other nation. These men are
called ambassadors. They are given power to sign agreements for their
governments.) By showing this to the rulers of the little south German
kingdoms, he was able to turn them against Napoleon and to make secret
treaties with these states by which they bound themselves to fight on
the side of Prussia in case a war broke out with France. In similar
fashion, Bismarck made the Belgians angry against the French by
letting it be known that Napoleon was trying to annex their country
also.

Meanwhile, aided by General von Moltke and Count von Roon (rōn),
Bismarck had built up a wonderful military power. Every man in Prussia
had been trained a certain number of years in the army and was ready
at a moment's notice to join his regiment. The whole campaign against
France had been planned months in advance. In France on the other
hand, the illness and irritability of Napoleon III had resulted in
poor organization. Men who did not wish to serve their time in the
army were allowed to pay money to the government instead. Yet their
names were carried on the rolls. In this way, the French army had not
half the strength in actual numbers that it had on paper. What is
more, certain government officials had taken advantage of the
emperor's weakness and lack of system and had put into their own
pockets money that should have been spent in buying guns and
ammunition.

When at last Bismarck was all ready for the war, it was not hard to
find an excuse. Old Queen Isabella of Spain had been driven from her
throne, and the Spanish army under General Prim offered the crown to
Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, a cousin of the king of Prussia. This
alarmed Napoleon, who imagined that if Prussia attacked him on the
east, this Prussian prince, as king of Spain, would lead the Spanish
army over the Pyrenees against him on the south. France made so
vigorous a protest that the prince asked the Spaniards not to think of
him any longer. This was not enough for Napoleon, who now proceeded to
make a fatal mistake. The incident was closed, but he persisted in
reopening it. He sent his ambassador to see King William of Prussia to
ask the latter to assure France that never again should Prince Leopold
be considered for the position of king of Spain. The king answered
that he could not guarantee this, for he was merely the head of the
Hohenzollern family. Prince Leopold, whose lands lay outside of
Prussia, was not even one of his subjects. The interview between the
king and the French ambassador had been a friendly one. The ambassador
had been very courteous to the king, and the king had been very polite
to the ambassador. They had parted on good terms.

[Illustration: An Attack on a Convoy in the Franco-Prussian War.]

In the meanwhile, Bismarck had been hoping that an excuse for war
would come from this incident. He was at dinner with General von
Moltke and Count von Roon when a long telegram came from the king,
telling of his interview with the French ambassador. In the story of
his life written by himself, Bismarck tells how, as he read the
telegram both Roon and Moltke groaned in disappointment. He says that
Moltke seemed to have grown older in a minute. Both had earnestly
hoped that war would come. Bismarck took the dispatch, sat down at a
table, and began striking out the message polite words and the phrases
that showed that the meeting had been a friendly one. He cut down the
original telegram of two hundred words to one of twenty. When he had
finished, the message sounded as if the French ambassador had bullied
and threatened the king of Prussia, while the latter had snubbed and
insulted the Frenchman. Bismarck read the altered telegram to Roon and
Moltke. Instantly, they brightened up and felt better. "How is that?"
he asked. "That will do it," they answered. "War is assured."

The telegram was given to the newspapers, and within twenty-four
hours, the people of Paris and Berlin were shouting for war. Napoleon
III hesitated, but he finally gave in to his generals and his wife who
urged him to "avenge the insult to the French nation."

[Illustration: The Proclamation at Versailles of William I as Emperor
of Germany]

We give this story of the starting of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870
just to show the tricks of European diplomats. What Bismarck did was
no worse than what the Frenchman, Talleyrand, would have done, or the
Austrian, Metternich, or several of the Turkish or Russian diplomats.
It simply proves how helpless the people of European countries are,
when the military class which rules them has decided, for its own
power and glory, on war with some other nation.

The war was short. The forces of France were miserably unprepared. The
first great defeat of the French army resulted in the capture of the
emperor by the Prussians and the overthrowing of the government in
Paris, where a third republic was started. One of the French generals
turned traitor, thinking that if he surrendered his army and cut short
the war the Prussians would force the French to take Napoleon III back
as emperor. Paris was besieged for a long time. The people lived on
mule meat and even on rats and mice rather than surrender to the
Germans, but at last they were starved out, and peace was made.

[Map: Formation of the German Empire]

In the meantime, another of Bismarck's plans had been successful. In
January, 1871, while the siege of Paris was yet going on, he induced
the kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemburg, together with Baden,
Hesse-Darmstadt, and all the other little German states to join
Prussia in forming a new empire of Germany. The king of Prussia was to
be "German Emperor," and the people of Germany were to elect
representatives to the Reichstag or Imperial Congress. Although at the
outset, the war was between the kingdom of Prussia and the empire of
France, the treaty of peace was signed by the republic of France and
the empire of Germany.

Bismarck was very harsh in his terms of peace. France was condemned to
pay an indemnity of 5,000,000,000 francs (nearly one billion dollars)
and certain parts of France were to be occupied by the German troops
until this money was fully paid. Two counties of France, Alsace and
Lorraine, were to be annexed to Germany. Alsace was inhabited largely
by people of German descent, but there were many French mingled with
them, and the whole province had belonged to France so long that its
people felt themselves to be wholly French. Lorraine contained very
few Germans, and was taken, contrary to Bismarck's best judgment,
because it contained the important city of Metz, which was strongly
fortified. Here the military chiefs overruled Bismarck. The desire
among the French for revenge on Germany for taking this
French-speaking province has proved that Bismarck was right. It was a
blunder of the worst kind.

The policy of "blood and iron" had been successful. From a second rate
power, Prussia had risen, under Bismarck's leadership, to become the
strongest military force in Europe. Schleswig had been torn from
Danish, Holstein from Austrian control. Hanover had been forcibly
annexed, and Alsace and Lorraine wrested from France. The greater part
of the inhabitants of these countries were bitterly unhappy at being
placed under the Prussian military rule. Moreover, it must be
remembered that a great deal of this growth in power had been at the
expense of the liberty of the common people. The revolution of 1848
had demanded free speech, free newspapers, the right to vote, and the
right to elect men to a congress or parliament, and while some of
these rights had been granted, still the whole country was under the
control of the war department. The emperor, as commander-in-chief of
the army, could suppress any newspaper and dismiss the congress
whenever he might think this proper. The Reichstag was, as it has been
called, a big debating society, whose members had the right to talk,
but were not allowed to pass any laws that were contrary to the wishes
of the military leaders.

Questions for Review

1. What was the reason for the revolts of 1848 all over Europe?
2. What was the object of the "Holy Alliance"?
3. What was Bismarck's purpose in building up a strong army?
4. How did Bismarck defeat Austria?
5. What is a war indemnity?
6. Explain how Bismarck made enemies for Napoleon III.
7. Why were the French alarmed when Spain offered its crown to Prince
Leopold of Hohenzollern?
8. What means did Bismarck use to bring on war with France?
9. Was Prussia's victory a good thing for her people?

CHAPTER XIII

The Balance of Power

The recovery of France.--The jealousy of the powers.--The policy of
uniting against the strongest.--The dream of Russia.--A war of
liberation.--The powers interfere in favor of the Turk.--The Congress
of Berlin.--Bismarck's Triple Alliance.--France and Russia are driven
together.--The race for war preparation.--The growth of big navies.

Under the third republic,[3] France recovered very rapidly from the
terrible blow dealt her by Germany. Her people worked hard and saved
their money. In less than two years, they had paid off the last cent
of the one billion dollar indemnity, and the German troops were
obliged to go home. France had adopted the same military system that
Germany had, and required all of her young men to serve two years in
the army and be ready at a moment's notice to rush to arms. She began
also to build up a strong navy, and to spread her colonies in Africa
and other parts of the world. This rapid recovery of France surprised
and disturbed Bismarck, who thought that never again, after the war of
1870, would she become a strong power. He had tried to renew the old
"Holy Alliance" between Germany, Russia, and Austria with the idea of
preventing the spread of republics. These were the three nations which
gave their people very few rights, and which stood for the "divine
right of kings" and for the crushing of all republics. Bismarck called
this new combination the "Drei-kaiser-bund" or three-emperor-bond. He
himself says that the proposed alliance fell to pieces because of the
lies and treachery of Prince Gortchakoff, the Russian Minister of
Foreign Affairs.

[3] The first republic began in 1792, when King Louis XVI was beheaded,
the second in 1848 when Louis Philippe, the "citizen king," was driven
out.

An incident which happened in 1875 helped to estrange Germany from
Russia. As was previously said, Bismarck was astonished and alarmed
when he saw how quickly France was getting over the effects of the
war. In 1875, some trouble came up again between France and Germany,
and Bismarck a second time planned to make war on the republic
and--complete the task that he had left unfinished in 1871. He wanted
to reduce France to the rank of a second class power, on a par with
Spain and Denmark. This time, however, England and Russia growled
ominously. They notified Bismarck that they would not stand by and see
France crushed--not from any love of France, but because they were
jealous of Prussia and afraid that the Germans might become too
powerful in Europe. Accordingly, Bismarck had to give up his idea of
war. Prussia was strong, but she could not fight England, Russia, and
France combined. However, he remembered that England and Russia had
spoiled his plans and waited for a chance to get revenge.

[Illustration: Peter the Great]

The great object of all European diplomats was to maintain what they
called "the balance of power." By this they meant that no one country
was to be allowed to grow so strong that she could defy the rest of
Europe. Whenever one nation grew too powerful, the others combined to
pull her down.

In the meantime, trouble was again brewing among the Balkan nations,
which were still subject to the Turks. Revolts had broken out among
the Serbians, and the people of Bosnia and Bulgaria. As has already
been told, these nations are Slavic, cousins of the Russians, and they
have always looked upon Russia as their big brother and protector. Any
keen-eared, intelligent Russian can understand the language of the
Serbs, it is so much like his own tongue. (Bel-grad, Petro-grad; the
word "grad" means "city" in both languages.)

Not only was Russia hostile toward the Turks because they were
oppressing the little Slav states, but she had reasons of her own for
wanting to see Turkey overthrown. Ever since the reign of Peter the
Great, Russia had had her eye upon Constantinople. Peter had conquered
the district east of the Gulf of Finland, and had founded St.
Petersburg[4] there, just to give Russia a port which was free of
ice. In the same way, other czars who followed him had fought their
way southward to the Black Sea, seeking for a chance to trade with the
Mediterranean world. But the Black Sea was like a bottle, and the
Turks at Constantinople were able to stop the Russian trade at any
time they might wish to do so. Russia is an agricultural country, and
must ship her grain to countries that are more densely inhabited, to
exchange it for their manufactures.

[4] Now called Petrograd.

[Illustration: Entrance to the Mosque of St Sophia]

Therefore, it has been the dream of every Russian czar that one day
Russia might own Constantinople. Again, this city, in ancient days,
was the home of the Greek church, as Rome was the capital of the
western Catholic church. The Russians are all Greek Catholics, and
every Russian looks forward to the day when the great church of St.
Sophia, which is now a Mohammedan mosque, shall once more be the home
of Christian worship. With this plan in mind, Russian diplomats were
only too happy to stir up trouble for the Turks among the Slavic
peoples of the Balkan states, as Serbia, Bulgaria, Roumania, and
Montenegro are called. Glance at the two following maps of
southeastern Europe, and see how Turkey had been reduced in size
during the two hundred years which followed the Turkish defeat at the
gates of Vienna by John Sobieski and the Austrians. The state of
Bessarabia had changed hands two or three times, remaining finally in
the hands of Russia.

The revolts of the Balkan peoples in 1875 and 1876 were hailed with
joy among the Russians, and the government at St. Petersburg lost no
time in rushing to the aid of the Balkan states and declaring war on
Turkey. After a short but stubbornly contested conflict, Russia and
the little countries were victors. A treaty of peace was signed at San
Stephano, by which Roumania, Serbia, and Bulgaria were to be
recognized by Turkey as independent states. The boundaries of Bulgaria
were to reach to the Aegean Sea, including most of Macedonia, thus
cutting off Turkey from her county of Albania, except by water. Bear
this in mind, for it will help you to understand Russia's later
feeling when Bulgaria in 1915 joined the ranks of her enemies.

[Map: Southeastern and Central Europe, 1706]

[Map: Losses of Turkey during the Nineteenth Century]

[Illustration: The Congress of Berlin. Prince Gortchakoff (seated).
Disraeli (with cane). Count Andrassy. Bismarck.]

The matter was all settled, and Turkey had accepted these terms, when
once more the diplomats of Europe began to meddle. It will be
remembered that Russia three years before had prevented a second war
against France planned by Bismarck. It was very easy for him to
persuade Austria and England that if Russia were allowed to cripple
Turkey and set up three new kingdoms which would be under her control,
she would speedily become the strongest nation in Europe. The "balance
of power" would be disturbed. England and Austria sided with Germany,
and a meeting of statesmen and diplomats was called at Berlin in 1878
to decide once more what should be the map of Europe. Representatives
were present from all the leading European countries. Even Turkey had
two men at the meeting, but the three men who really controlled were
Bismarck, Count Andrassy of Austria, and Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin
Disraeli) of England. Russia was robbed of a great part of the fruits
of her victory. Bulgaria was left partially under the control of
Turkey, in that she had to pay Turkey a large sum of money each year
for the privilege of being left alone. Her territory was made much
smaller than had been agreed to by the treaty of San Stephano. In fact
less than one-third of the Bulgarians were living within the
boundaries finally agreed upon by the congress. A great part of the
Serbians were still left under Turkish rule, as were the Greeks of
Thessaly and Epirus. The two counties of Bosnia and Herzegovina were
still to belong to Turkey, but as the Turks did not seem to be strong
enough to keep order there, Austria was to take control of them and
run their government, although their taxes were still to be paid to
Turkey. Austria solemnly agreed never to take them from Turkey.
Russia, naturally, was very unhappy over this arrangement, and so were
the inhabitants of the Balkan kingdoms, for they had hoped that now
they were at last to be freed from the oppression of their ancient
enemies, the Turks. Thus the Congress of Berlin, like that of Vienna
in 1815 laid the foundation for future wars and revolutions.

Bismarck now set out to strengthen Germany by making alliances with
other European states. He first made up with his old enemy, Austria.
Thanks to the liberal treatment that he had given this country after
her disastrous war of 1866, he was able to get the Austrians to join
Germany in an alliance which states that if two countries of Europe
should ever attack one of the two allies, the other would rush to her
help.

The Italians were friendly to Germany, for they remembered that they
had gotten Venetia from Austria through the help of the Prussians, but
they had always looked upon the Austrians as their worst enemies. It
was a wonderful thing, then, when Bismarck finally induced Italy to
join with Austria and Germany in a "Dreibund" or "Triple Alliance."

The Italian people had been very friendly to the French, and this
going over to their enemies would never have been possible but for an
act of France which greatly angered Italy. For many years, France had
been in control of Algeria on the north coast of Africa. This country
had once been a nest of pirates, and the French had gone there
originally to clean them out. Next to Algeria on the east is the
county of Tunis, which, as you will see by the map, is very close to
Sicily and Italy. The Italians had been looking longingly at this
district for some time, intending to organize an expedition and
forcibly annex it to their kingdom. They waited too long, however, and
one fine day in 1881 they found the prize gone,--France had seized
this county for herself. It was Italy's anger over this act of France
more than anything else that enabled Bismarck to get her into an
alliance with Germany and her ancient enemy, Austria.

France now saw herself hemmed in on the east by a chain of enemies. It
looked as though Bismarck might declare war upon the republic at any
time, and be perfectly safe from interference, with Austria and Italy
to protect him. Russia, smarting under the treatment which she had
been given by the Congress of Berlin, was full of resentment against
Germany. Both the French and the Russians felt themselves threatened
by Bismarck's Dreibund, and so, in self-defense each country made
advance toward the other. The result was the "Dual Alliance" between
France and Russia, which bound either country to come to the aid of
the other in case of an attack by two powers at once.

In this way, the balance of power, disturbed by Bismarck's "Dreibund,"
was again restored. Many people thought the forming of the two
alliances a fine thing, "for," said they, "each party is now too
strong to be attacked by the other. Therefore, we shall never again
have war among the great powers."

England was not tied up with either alliance. On account of her
position on an island, and because of her strong navy, she did not
feel obliged to keep a large standing army such as the great powers on
the continent maintained.

These nations were kept in constant fear of war. As soon as France
equipped her army with machine guns, Germany and Austria had to do the
same. As soon as the Germans invented a new magazine rifle, the
Russians and French had to invent similar arms for their soldiers. If
Germany passed a law compelling all men up to the age of forty-five to
report for two weeks' military training once every year, France and
Russia had to do the same. If Italy built some powerful warships,
France and Russia had to build still more powerful ones. This led to
still larger ships built by Germany and Italy. If France built a fleet
of one hundred torpedo boats, the Triple Alliance had to "go her one
better" by building one hundred and fifty. If Germany equipped her
army with war balloons, Russia and France had to do the same. If
France invented a new kind of heavy artillery, Germany and Austria
built a still bigger gun.

This mad race for war equipment was bad enough when it had to do only
with the five nations in the two alliances about which you have been
told. However, the death of the old emperor of Germany in 1888 brought
to the throne his grandson, the present Kaiser,[5] and he formed a
plan for making Germany the leading nation on the sea as Bismarck had
made her on the land. He saw France and England seizing distant
colonies and dividing up Africa between them. He at once announced
that Germany, too, must have colonies to which to export her
manufactures and from which to bring back tropical products. This
meant a strong navy to protect these colonies, and the race with
England was on. As soon as Germany built some new battleships, England
built still others, larger and with heavier guns. The next year,
Germany would build still larger ships, and the next England would
come back with still heavier guns. As fast as England built ships,
Germany built them. Now, each battleship costs from five to fifteen
million dollars, and it does not take long before a race of this kind
sends the taxes too high for people to stand. There was unrest
throughout Europe and murmurs of discontent were heard among the
working classes.

[5]The present Kaiser's father reigned only ninety-nine days, as he was
a very sick man at the time of the old emperor's death.

Questions for Review

1. How did France pay off her war indemnity so promptly?
2. Why did Bismarck's three-emperor-alliance fail?
3. What is meant by "the balance of power"?
4. What was the condition of the Serbs, Bulgarians, etc. before 1878?
5. Why did Russia covet Constantinople?
6. Why did the powers prevent the treaty of San Stephano from being
carried out?
7. What wrongs were done by the Congress of Berlin?
8. Why did Bismarck form the Triple Alliance?
9. How was he able to induce Italy to join her old enemy, Austria?
10. What was the effect of the formation of the Triple Alliance on
France and Russia?
11. What result had the formation of the two alliances on the
gun-industry?
12. How was England brought into the race for war equipment?

CHAPTER XIV

The "Entente Cordiale"

Ancient enemies.--England and France in Africa.--A collision at
Fashoda.--Germany offers to help France.--Delcassé the peacemaker.--A
French-English agreement.--Friendship takes the place of
hostility.--England's relations with Italy, Russia, and
Germany.--Germans cultivate the friendship and trade of Turkey.--The
Morocco-Algeciras incident.--The question of Bosnia and
Herzegovina.--England joins France and Russia to form the "Triple
Entente."--The Agadir incident.

England and France had never been friendly. There had been wars
between them, off and on, for five hundred years. The only time that
they had fought on the same side was in the campaign against Russia in
1855, but even then there was no real sympathy between them.

In the year 1882, events happened in Egypt which gave England an
excuse for interfering with the government of that country. Egypt was
a part of the Turkish empire, but so long as it paid a certain amount
of money to Constantinople, the Turks did not care very much how it
was governed. But now a wild chief of the desert had announced himself
as the prophet Mohammed come to earth again, and a great many of the
desert tribesmen had joined him. They cut to pieces one or two English
armies in Egypt, and killed General Gordon, a famous English soldier.
It was 1898 before the English were able to defeat this horde. Lord
Kitchener finally beat them and extended the English power to the city
of Khartoom on the Nile.

[Illustration: An Arab Sheik and His Staff]

In the meantime, the English millionaire, Cecil Rhodes, had formed a
plan for a railroad which should run the entire length of Africa from
the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo. It was England's ambition to control
all the territory through which this road should run. But the French,
too, were spreading out over Africa. Their expeditions through the
Sahara Desert had joined their colonies of Algeria and Tunis to those
on the west coast of Africa and others along the Gulf of Guinea. In
this same year, 1898, while Lord Kitchener was still fighting the
Arabs, a French expedition under Major Marchand struggled across the
Sahara and reached the Nile at Fashoda, several miles above Khartoom.
Marchand planted the French flag and announced that he took possession
of this territory for the republic of France.

The English were very indignant when they heard of what Marchand had
done. If France held Fashoda, their "Cape to Cairo" railroad was cut
right in the middle, and they could advance their territory no farther
up the valley of the Nile. They notified France that this was English
land. Marchand retorted that no Englishman had ever set foot there,
and that the French flag would never be hauled down after it had once
been planted on the Nile. Excitement ran high. The French people had
no love for England, and they encouraged Marchand to remain where he
was. The English newspapers demanded that he be withdrawn. Germany,
which had already begun its campaign to wrest from England the leading
place on the ocean, was delighted at the prospect of a war between
France and the British. The German diplomats patted France on the
back, and practically assured her of German help in case it came to a
war with England.

Germany now felt that she had nothing more to fear from France. The
French population was not increasing, while Germany was steadily
growing in numbers. It was England whom Germany saw across her path
toward control of the sea.

There was a man in France, however, who had no thought of making up
with Germany. The memory of the war of 1870 and of the lost provinces
of Alsace and Lorraine was very strong with him. This was Théophile
Delcassé, a little man with a large head and a great brain. He refused
to be tempted by the offers of German help, thinking that England,
with its free government, was a much better friend for the republic
than the military empire of Germany could be.

Just when the trouble was at its height, the English ambassador came
to see Mr. Delcassé, who at that time was in charge of the French
foreign office. He had in his pocket an ultimatum, that is to say, a
final notice to France that she must give in or England would declare
war on her. As he walked into Delcassé's presence, he began fumbling
with the top button of his coat. "Don't touch that button," said
Delcassé quickly. "Drop your hand. You have something in your pocket
which must not be taken out. It is a threat, and if I see it, France
will fight. Sit down. Let us talk this matter over coolly. Matters
will adjust themselves all right in the end." And they did. Delcassé
was finally able to quiet the French people, to recall Marchand from
Fashoda and to persuade France to refuse the offer of German
friendship. England was given a free hand in Egypt, without any
interference from the French. Naturally the English were very grateful
to Delcassé for having refused to profit by German help and declare
war. In return for the French agreement to stay out of Egypt, the
English promised to help France get control of Morocco.

Very soon after this, Queen Victoria of England died, and her son,
Edward VII, became king. He had spent a great deal of time in France,
and was very fond of the French and was popular with them. He saw the
growing power of Germany, and knew that England could not afford to be
without a friend in Europe. He did his best to bring about a feeling
of friendship between the English and the French, and was very
successful in doing so. He made frequent visits to France, where he
was received with great cordiality. In return the English entertained
the president of France in London in a princely fashion. French
warships paid friendly visits to English waters, and the sailors
mingled with each other and did their best to understand each other's
language. All France, and England as well, welcomed the beginning of
the "Entente Cordiale," or friendly understanding between the two
nations.

England also went out of her way to cultivate a friendly understanding
with Italy. With the other nations of Europe England had no great
friendship. Between England and Russia, there had been a hostile
feeling for a long time, for the British felt that the Russians would
like nothing better than to stretch their empire from Siberia, down to
include British India, or at least Afghanistan and Baluchistan, where
the British were in control.

The emperor of Germany, on the other hand, was planning for the future
growth of the trade of his country. Since his coming to the throne,
Germany had made wonderful progress in the direction of manufactures.
She had become one of the leading nations of the world. One of her
chief questions was, where to market these goods. In 1896 the emperor
paid a visit to Syria and Turkey. He was received with great
enthusiasm by the Turks, who were glad to have one strong friend among
the powers of Europe. Soon afterwards the Germans began to get more
and more of the trade of the Ottoman Empire. A German company was
given permission by the Turks to build a railroad across Turkey to the
Persian Gulf through Bagdad. German railways ran through
Austria-Hungary, which was Germany's ally, to Constantinople and
Salonika, the two greatest ports of Turkey in Europe. This short
overland route to Persia was looked upon with suspicion and distrust
by the English, whose ships up to this time had carried on almost all
of Europe's commerce with India and the neighboring countries.

[Illustration: A Scene In Constantinople]

Germany was reaching out for colonies. She secured land on the west
coast of Africa and, on the east as well. A tract of land in the
corner of the Gulf of Guinea also fell to her share. Islands in the
Pacific Ocean were seized. Her foreign trade was growing by leaps and
bounds, and she threatened to take away from England a great deal of
the latter's commerce.

The German emperor announced that he must always be consulted whenever
any changes of territory took place, no matter in what part of the
earth. Therefore in 1905 when France, with the help of Great Britain
and Spain, told the sultan of Morocco that he had to behave himself,
the German emperor in person made a visit to Morocco and assured the
sultan that he didn't have to pay any attention to France.

There was a great deal of excitement over this incident, and a meeting
was held at Algeciras, Spain, where representatives of all the great
powers came together. In the end, France and England were upheld, for
even Italy, Germany's ally, voted against the Germans. On the other
hand, Delcassé, the Frenchman who settled the Fashoda trouble, was
compelled to resign his position as minister of foreign affairs
because the Germans objected to him, and the French felt that Germany
had humiliated them.

In 1908, the "young Turk" party in Constantinople (the party which
stood for progress and for more popular government) drove the old
sultan off his throne, and announced that there should be a Turkish
parliament, or congress, to which all parts of the empire should send
representatives.

You will remember that two counties of the Turkish empire, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, had been turned over to Austria to rule by the Congress
of Berlin in 1878. Austria at the time solemnly promised that she
would never try to annex these provinces. In 1908, however, she forgot
all about her promise. When Bosnia and Herzegovina wanted to elect men
to represent them in the new Turkish parliament, Austria calmly told
them that after this they should consider themselves part of the
Austrian Empire, that they belonged to Turkey no longer.

The two provinces were inhabited largely by Serbs, and all Serbia had
looked forward to the day when they should once more be joined to
herself. These states, like Montenegro, had been part of the ancient
kingdom of Serbia. As long as they were in dispute between Austria and
Turkey, Serbia had hopes of regaining them, but when Austria thus
forcibly annexed them, it seemed to the Serbs that they were lost
forever.

Serbia appealed to Russia, for as was said, all the Slavic states look
upon Russia as their big brother. The Russians were highly indignant
at this breaking of her promises by Austria, and the czar talked of
war. His generals and war ministers, however, dissuaded him. "Oh, no,
your majesty," said they, "we are in no shape to fight Austria and
Germany. Our army was badly disorganized in the Japanese war three
years ago, and we shall not be ready for another fight for some time
to come." Russia protested, but the German emperor notified her that
he stood by Austria, and asked Russia if she was ready to fight.
Russia and France were not ready, and so they were obliged to back
down, but did so with a bitter feeling toward the "central empires,"
as Germany and Austria are called.

It has already been shown that England for a long time had been
suspicious of Russia, fearing that the northern power was aiming at
control of India. Of late this hostile feeling had been dying out,
especially as the friendship between France and Great Britain grew
stronger. It was impossible for Russia, France's partner in the Dual
Alliance, to remain unfriendly to England, France's ally in the
"Entente Cordiale." Both England and Russia felt that the growth of
Germany and the ambition of her war chiefs threatened them more than
they had ever threatened each other.

In 1907 Russia and England reached an understanding by which they
marked off two great parts of Persia for trading purposes, each
agreeing to stay in her own portion, and not disturb the traders of
the other country in theirs. After this Russia, England, and France
were usually found acting together in European diplomacy, under the
name of the "Triple Entente." The "balance of power" had been leaning
toward Germany and her allies, but the English navy, added to the
scales on the other side, more than balanced the advantage in land
forces of the Triple Alliance.

Three years later, Morocco again gave trouble, and France, with
England's backing and Spain's friendship, sent her troops among the
Moors to enforce law and order. Any one could see that with Tunis and
Algeria already in French hands, it was only a question of a little
while before Morocco would be theirs also.

This time Germany rushed her warship Panther to the Moorish port of
Agadir. This was a threat against France, and the French appealed to
England to know whether they could look to her for support. Russia was
now in much better shape for war than she had been three years before,
and notified France that she was ready to give her support. Therefore,
when Mr. Lloyd-George, the little Welshman who was really the leader
of the British government, stood up before a big crowd of English
bankers and told the world that "to the last ship, the last man, the
last penny," England would support France, it was plain that somebody
would have to back down or else start a tremendous European war.

It was now Germany's turn to give way. Strong as she was, she did not
propose to fight France, Russia, and England combined. So, although
the French gave Germany a few square miles of land in central Africa
in return for the Kaiser's agreement to let France have her way in
Morocco, the result was a backdown for Germany, and it left scars
which would not heal.

During all this period from 1898 to 1914 there were incidents
happening, any one of which might have started the world war. Fashoda,
Algeciras, Bosnia, Agadir--each time it seemed as if only a miracle
could avert the conflict. Europe was like a powder magazine. No man
knew when the spark might fall that would bring on the explosion.

Questions for Review

1. What were the plans of the English regarding Africa?
2. How did Major Marchand threaten the peace of Europe?
3. Why was Germany ready to help France?
4. Why did Delcassé desire to keep peace with England?
5. Why was England suspicious of Russia?
6. Why did Germany cultivate the friendship of the Turks?
7. Why did not the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria
start a general European war?
8. Why did England and Russia become friendly?
9. Why did not the Agadir incident bring about a war?

CHAPTER XV

The Sowing of the Dragon's Teeth

The growth of German trade.--Balkan hatreds.--The wonderful alliance
against Turkey.--The sympathies of the big nations.--Their
interference and its results.--A new kingdom.--The second war.--The
work of diplomacy.--The wrongs and grievances of Bulgaria.

Germany's position in Europe was not favorable to her trade. Her
ships, in order to carry on commerce with the peoples of the
Mediterranean, had to go a great deal farther than those of France or
England. As a result, the Germans had been looking toward
Constantinople and southwestern Asia as the part of the world with
which their commerce ought to grow. It was Germany's plan to control
the Balkan countries and thus have a solid strip of territory,
including Germany, Austria, the Balkan states, and Turkey through
which her trade might pass to Asia Minor, Persia, and India.

The feelings of the Balkan peoples for each other has already been
explained. The Bulgarians hated the Serbians, with whom they had
fought a bloody war in 1885. The Serbians despised the Bulgarians. The
Albanians had no love for either nation, while the Greeks looked down
on all the others. Montenegro and Serbia were friends, naturally,
since they were inhabited by the same kind of people and had once been
parts of the original kingdom of Serbia.

[Map: Turkey As the Four Balkan Allies intended to divide it.
(1912-13)]

Bulgaria in 1909 announced to the world that she would pay no more
tribute to Turkey, and after this was to be counted one of the
independent nations of Europe. The Bulgarians had grown so strong and
the Turks so weak, that Turkey did not dare go to war, so permitted
the matter to go unnoticed. The only thing on which all the Balkan
nations and Greece could agree was their bitter hatred of the Turks,
who had oppressed and wronged them cruelly for the last three hundred
and fifty years.

Russia, always plotting to overthrow Turkey, at last accomplished a
wonderful bit of diplomacy. She encouraged Bulgaria, Serbia,
Montenegro, and Greece to forget their old time dislike of each other,
for the time being, and declare war jointly on Turkey. In order that
there should not be any quarreling over the spoils when the war was
over, the four little nations agreed, in a secret treaty, that when
they got through with Turkey, they would divide up the carcass as
shown in the opposite map. The head, including Constantinople, was to
be left for Russia, of course. Bulgaria was to take the back and the
great part of the body, Greece was to annex the drumsticks and the
second joint. The rest of the body was to go to Serbia with the
exception of the very tail, including the city of Scutari, which was
to be given to Montenegro. Serbia was at last to have a seacoast and a
chance to trade with other nations than Austria. The Serbs had a
grudge against the Austrians, for the latter, taking advantage of the
fact that all Serbian trade with Europe had to go through their
country, had charged them exorbitant prices for manufactured goods and
paid them very little for their own products in return. Bulgaria was
to have Kavala (kȧ va'lȧ) as a seaport on the Aegean and all the
coast of that sea as far as the Gallipoli (găl ĭ'po li)
peninsula. Greece was to have the important city of Salonika
(sȧlōni'kȧ), southern Macedonia, and southern Albania.

With this secret agreement between them, the four little states went
to war with Turkey. In accordance with the new friendship sprung up
between Germany and the Ottomans, German officers and generals were
sent to Constantinople to drill the Turkish troops. Cannon and machine
guns were sent them from German factories, and their rifles were fed
with German bullets. The four little countries, accordingly, turned to
France and Russia for assistance. Their troops were armed with French
cannon and machine guns, and their military advisers were French and
Russians. While the big nations managed to keep out of the war
themselves, all were strongly interested in one side or the other.

The result was a complete surprise to Austria and Germany. To their
consternation and disgust, the four little nations made short work of
the Turkish troops. In eight months, Turkey was thoroughly beaten, and
the allies were ready to put through their program of dividing up the
spoils.

And now, once more, the great powers meddled, and by their
interference laid the foundation for future wars and misery. Austria
and Germany saw their path to Constantinople and the east cut right in
two. Their railroads, instead of passing through a series of countries
under German control, now were to be cut asunder by an arm of Slavic
states under Russian protection, which would certainly stop German
progress toward Asia.

With the map as it had been before the war of 1912, there was one
little strip of territory, called the Sanjak of Novibazar, between
Serbia and Montenegro, which connected Turkey with Austria. To be
sure, this country was inhabited almost entirely by Serbians, but so
long as it was under the military control of Austria and Turkey,
German railway trains bound for the east could traverse it. Now Serbia
and Montenegro proposed to divide this country up between themselves.
Serbia, by gaining her seaport on the Adriatic, could send her trade
upon the water to find new markets in Italy, Spain, and France.

[Illustration: Durazzo]

The Italians had always wanted to control the Adriatic Sea. They
longed for the time when the cities of Trieste and Pola should be
turned over to them by Austria. The cities of Durazzo (dū rȧt'zō)
and Avlona on the Albanian coast were inhabited by many Italians, and
Italy had always cherished the hope that they might belong to her.
Therefore, the Italians did not take kindly to the Serbian program of
seizing this coast. At any rate, as soon as the four little countries
announced their intention of dividing up Turkey in Europe among
themselves, Austria, Germany, and Italy raised a great clamor.

Another meeting of representatives of the great powers was held, and
once more the Germans were able to carry their point. Instead of
allowing the four little countries to divide up the conquered land
between them, the powers made a fifth small country, the kingdom of
Albania, and brought down from Germany a little prince to rule over
these wild mountaineers. Notice that the Albanians were not consulted.
The great powers simply took a map, drew a certain line on it and
said, "This shall be the kingdom of Albania, and its king shall be
Prince William of Wied." Again we have a king-made map with the usual
trail of grievances.

This arrangement robbed Montenegro of Scutari, robbed Serbia of its
seaport on the Adriatic, and robbed Greece of the country west of
Janina (yȧ nï'nȧ). France and Russia did not like this program, but
they did not feel like fighting the Triple Alliance to prevent its
being put into effect.

[Map: Changes as a Result of the Two Balkan Wars 1912-13]

The three little countries, separated from a great part of their new
territory, now turned to Bulgaria, and, practically, said to her,
"Since we have been robbed of Albania, we will have to divide up all
over again. You must give us part of your plunder in order to 'make it
square.'" Now was the time for the ancient ill-feeling between the
Bulgarians and their neighbors to show itself. In reply to this
invitation, Bulgaria said, in so many words, "Not a bit of it. Our
armies bore the brunt of the fight. It was really we who conquered
Turkey. Your little armies had a very insignificant part in the war.
If you want any more land, we dare you to come and take it." And the
Bulgarians made a treacherous night attack on their recent allies,
which brought a declaration of war from the three little nations.

This quarrel, of course, was exactly what Germany and Austria wanted.
It accomplished their purpose of breaking up this Balkan alliance
under the protection of Russia. So with Austria and Germany egging on
Bulgaria, and Russia and France doing their best to induce Bulgaria to
be reasonable and surrender some land to Greece and Serbia, the second
Balkan war began in 1913 almost before the last cannon discharged in
the first war had cooled.

Again, Europe was astonished, for the victorious Bulgarians, who had
been mainly responsible for the defeat of the Turks, went down to
defeat before the Serbians and Greeks on the bloody field of
Bregalnitza (brĕg'ȧl nĭt zȧ). To add to Bulgaria's troubles,
the Turks, taking advantage of the discord among their late
opponents, suddenly attacked the Bulgarians in the rear and stole back
the city of Adrianople, which had cost the Bulgarians so much trouble
to capture. In the meantime, Roumania, which up to this point had had
no part in any of the fighting, saw all of her neighbors growing
larger at the expense of Turkey. The Roumanian statesmen, asking what
was to be their share of the spoils, and moved simply by a greedy
desire to enlarge their kingdom, declared war on Bulgaria also.

Poor Bulgaria, fighting five nations at once, had to buy peace at the
best price she could make. She bought off Roumania by giving to her a
strip of land in the country called the Dobrudja (dō brood'jȧ)
between the Danube River and the Black Sea. She had to agree to a new
boundary line with Turkey by which the Turks kept Adrianople. She had
to give Kavala and the surrounding country to Greece and the territory
around Monastir (mō nȧ stïr') to Serbia, although these districts
were inhabited largely by her own people.

Bulgaria had in vain appealed to her ancient friend and protector,
Russia. The Russians were disgusted to think that the Bulgarians had
refused to listen to them when they urged them to grant some small
pieces of land to Greece and Serbia at the close of the first war.
They felt that the Bulgarians had been headstrong and richly deserved
what they got. Therefore, Russia refused to interfere now and save
Bulgaria from humiliation. In the end, Austrian diplomacy had
accomplished a great deal of mischief. The Balkan alliance under the
protection of Russia was badly broken up. The old hostility between
Serbia and Bulgaria, which had been buried for the time being during
the first Balkan war, now broke out with greater force than ever.
Bulgaria sulked, feeling revengeful against all of her neighbors, but
especially angry at Russia, who had always been her friend before.

Questions for Review

1. Why did the Germans desire a road to the east?
2. What was the one thing on which the Balkan nations were united?
3. What was Russia's purpose in helping to form the Balkan Alliance?
4. Why did the great powers interfere to prevent the four little
countries from carrying out their secret agreement?
5. What was the cause of the second Balkan war?
6. Which powers were glad and which were sorry to see it begin?
7. Why was Bulgaria angry with all her neighbors?

[Illustration: A Modern Dreadnaught]

CHAPTER XVI

Who Profits?

The race for power on the sea.--The "naval holiday" declined.--The
declining birth-rate.--The growth of the Socialists.--The militarists
of Germany.--How wars cure labor troubles.--The forces behind the war
game.--Profits and press agents.

Let us turn back to the great powers of Europe. We spoke of their mad
race, each nation trying to build more ships and bigger ships than its
neighbors and to outstrip them in cannon and other munitions of war.
The German navy had been growing by leaps and bounds. From being the
sixth largest navy in the world, within ten years it had grown to
second place. But, fast as the Germans built ships, the English built
them more rapidly still. England built a monstrous battleship called
the Dreadnaught, which was twice as heavy as any other battleship
afloat. Germany promptly replied by planning four ships of the
dreadnaught class, and England came back with some still larger
vessels which are known as super-dreadnaughts.

At last, the English first lord of the navy, Mr. Winston Churchill,
proposed to Germany that each country take a "naval holiday." In other
words, he practically said to Germany, "If you people will stop
building warships for a year, we will also. Then at the end of the
year, we shall be no worse off or better off than we were at the
beginning."

[Illustration: Submarine]

Germany laughed at this proposal. To her, it showed that England could
not stand the strain very much longer. "Besides," said the Germans,
"it is all very well for England to be satisfied with her present
navy, which is half again as large as ours. If our navy were the
strongest in the world, we too would be glad to have all nations stop
building warships," and they laid down the keels of four new
super-dreadnaughts.

But other things disturbed the peace of mind of the German
militarists. For a long time, the population of France had not been
increasing, while Germany almost doubled her numbers from 1860 to
1900. Now, to their dismay, the German birth-rate began to grow less
and they saw the population of Russia growing larger by 20% every ten
years. Again, they learned that Russia was about to build a series of
railroads near the German frontier which would enable them to rush an
army to attack Germany at very short notice. The Germans already had
such railroads in their own country, but they did not propose to let
their neighbors have this advantage also.

Again, France had recently passed a law forcing every young man to put
three years in military service instead of two. This would increase
France's standing army by 50 per cent. The German people, who up to
this time had been very docile and very obedient to the military rule,
were showing signs of discontent. The Socialists, a party who
represented the working people largely, and who were strongly opposed
to war, had been growing very fast. In the last election, they had
gained many representatives in the German congress, and had cast over
4,000,000 votes. The only thing that kept them from having a majority
in the Reichstag (the German congress) was the fact that in some
districts, the voters of the other parties combined against them. In
this way, the military class still held control of the German
government, but it was afraid that it would not be for long.

With nearly half the able-bodied men in the country spending their
time drilling and doing guard duty, the other half of the population
had to earn money enough to support their own families and also the
families of the men in the army. As one writer has put it, "Every
workingman in Europe carried a soldier on his back who reached down
and took the bread out of his platter."

The program of Bismarck was still in the minds of the military leaders
of Germany. The military class must rule Prussia, Prussia must rule
Germany, and Germany must be the greatest power in Europe. To their
minds, war between Germany and her allies and the rest of Europe must
come. Being warriors by trade and having nothing else to do, they saw
that, if the great war were postponed much longer, the chances of
Germany's winning it would grow less and less. France and Russia were
growing stronger and Germany was unable to catch up to England's navy.
It should be remembered that this class made up a small part only of
the German nation. Their influence was all out of proportion to their
numbers. They controlled the government, and the government controlled
the schools and the newspapers. The people believed what they were
told. They were simply parts of the war machine. Bismarck's policy had
been to crush his enemies one by one. He never entered a war until he
was sure that Prussia was bound to win it. In like fashion, the German
military chiefs of 1914 hoped to conquer France and Russia before
England was ready. It was the old story as told by Shakespeare. "Our
legions are brim full, our cause is ripe. The enemy increaseth every
day. We, at the height, are ready to decline."

Russia, too, was having her troubles. After the czar had promised the
nation a constitution and had agreed to allow a duma or parliament to
be called together, the military class, who were trying to keep the
common people under control and in ignorance as much as possible had
been able to prevent the duma from obtaining any power. It had much
less freedom than the German Reichstag. It was permitted to meet and
to talk, but not to pass laws. If any member spoke his mind freely, he
was sent to Siberia for life. There were murmurs and threats. There
were labor troubles and strikes. The people of Russia, especially
those living in cities, were learning how little freedom they had,
compared with citizens of other countries, and the time seemed ripe
for a revolution.

It has always been the policy of kings to take the minds of their
people off their own wrongs by giving them some foreign war to think
about. Although the Russian government did all that it could to
prevent the war without completely betraying Serbia, still the war
probably put off the Russian Revolution for two years.

It must be kept in mind that in Germany and especially in Prussia
there was a class of people who had no trade but war. These were the
so-called Junkers (Yo͝onkers), direct descendants of the old
feudal barons. They were owners of rich tracts of land which had been
handed down to them by their fore-fathers. The rent paid to them by
the people who lived on their farms supported them richly in idleness.
Just as their ancestors in the old days had lived only by fighting and
plundering, so these people still had the idea that anything that they
could take by force was theirs.

Bismarck was a Junker of Junkers. He had nothing but contempt for the
common people and their law-making bodies. In the early days when he
was Prime Minister of the Prussian kingdom, the Congress had refused
to vote to raise certain moneys through taxes that Bismarck advised,
because he wanted to spend all of it in preparations for war. In spite
of the vote of the representatives of the people, Bismarck went right
on collecting the money and spending it as he wished. Later on, after
the Prussian army had won its rapid victories, first over the Danes,
then over the Austrians, and lastly over the French, the Prussian
people, swollen with pride at what their armies had accomplished,
forgave Bismarck for riding rough-shod over their liberties. But
Bismarck was able to do what he did because he had the backing of the
king and the great land-owning Junker class.

In 1870 this was the only class in Prussia that had any power. By
1914, however, a change had come about. The wonderful development of
Germany's trade and manufacturing had brought wealth and power to the
merchant class and these had to be considered when plans for war were
being formed.

Naturally, the outbreak of war disturbs trade very much, especially
trade with foreign countries. A great deal of the German commerce,
carried on with Great Britain, the United States, South America, and
far distant colonies, had to travel over the ocean. German merchants
would never support a war cheerfully if they thought that their trade
would be interrupted for any length of time. So the Junkers, when they
made up their minds to wage war for the conquest of France and Russia,
persuaded the merchants that after these countries had been conquered
they would be forced to give a big sum of money to Germany which would
more than pay her back for the full cost of the war. Then the Russians
would be compelled, as a result of the war, to promise to trade only
with German merchants and manufacturers, and thus everybody in Germany
would be much richer.[6]

[6] When England came in, the merchants of Germany were very
down-hearted, for they saw all their over-seas trade cut off at a
blow. But the Junkers called together the leading merchants and bribed
them with promises. In the year 1918 one of the prominent
manufacturers of Germany made a statement which got out and was
published in the countries of the Entente. After telling how the blame
for the war was to be laid at the door of the land-owning, military
class, he confessed that he personally had been bribed to support the
war by the promise of thirty thousand acres of Australian land, which
was to be given to him after Germany had conquered the world. This, of
course, was pure piracy; the motto of Prussia for some time had been
that piracy pays.

There was one class of manufacturers who did not lose trade, but
gained it through a war. This was composed of the makers of guns and
munitions. They were clamorously back of the Junkers in their demands
for war. These people profited by preparation for war. They kept
inventing newer and stronger guns so that the weapons which they had
sold the governments one year would be out-of-date the next, ready to
be thrown on the scrap heap. In this way, the factories were kept
working over-time and their profits were enormous. This money, of
course, came out of the taxes of the common people.

Their surplus profits the munition makers invested sometimes in
newspapers. It was proved in the German Reichstag in 1913 that the
great gun-makers of Prussia had a force of hired newspaper writers to
keep up threats of war. They paid certain papers in Paris to print
articles to make the French people think that the Germans were about
to attack them. These same gun-makers in Berlin tried to persuade the
German people that the French were on the point of attacking them.

All of this played into the hands of the Junkers by making people all
over Europe feel that war could not be avoided. Thus when the Junkers
were ready to strike and the great war broke out, people would say,
"At last it has come, the war that we knew was inevitable."

Questions for Review

1. Why did Germany decline to take a "naval holiday"?
2. What is meant by "strategic railroads"?
3. Why were the military leaders alarmed at the growth of the
Socialist Party?
4. What was the fate of popular government in Russia?
5. How did the Junkers owe their power to the feudal system?
6. How were the German merchants won over to war?
7. What part had the gun-makers in bringing on war?

CHAPTER XVII

The Spark that Exploded the Magazine

The year 1914.--England's troubles.--Plots for a "Greater
Serbia."--The hated archduke.--The shot whose echoes shook the whole
world.--Austria's extreme demands.--Russia threatens.--Frantic
attempts to prevent war.--Mobilizing on both sides.--Germany's
tiger-like spring.--The forts of the Vosges Mountains.--The other path
to Paris.--The neutrality of Belgium.--Belgium defends herself.

The year 1914 found England involved in serious difficulties. Her
parliament had voted to give home rule to Ireland. There was to be an
Irish parliament, which would govern Ireland as the Irish wanted it
governed. Ulster, a province in the northeast of Ireland, however, was
very unhappy over this arrangement. Its people were largely of English
and Scotch descent, and they were Protestants, while the other
inhabitants of Ireland were Celts and Catholics. The people of this
province were so bitter against home rule that they actually imported
rifles and drilled regiments, saying that they would start a civil war
if England compelled them to be governed by an Irish parliament.

There were labor troubles and strikes, also, in England, and
threatened revolutions in India, where the English government was none
too popular. Altogether, the German war lords felt sure that England
had so many troubles of her own that she would never dare to enter a
general European war.

Meanwhile, the Serbians, unhappy over the loss of Bosnia and
Herzegovina to Austria, were busily stirring up the people of these
provinces to revolt. The military leaders who really ruled Austria,
were in favor of crushing these attempted uprisings with an iron hand.

One of the leaders of this party, a man who was greatly hated by the
Bosnians, was the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of the emperor and
heir to the throne. He finally announced that he was going in person
to Sarajevo (sä rä yĕ'vō) in Bosnia to look into the situation
himself. The people of the city warned him not to come, saying
that his life would be in danger, as he was so hated. Being a
headstrong man of violent temper, he refused to listen to this advice,
but insisted on going. His devoted wife, after doing her best to
dissuade him, finally refused to let him go without her.

When it was known that he was really coming, the Bosnian
revolutionists laid their plans. They found out just where his
carriage was to pass, and at almost every street corner, they had some
assassin with bomb or pistol. One bomb was thrown at him, but it
exploded too soon, and he escaped. Bursting with indignation, he was
threatening the mayor for his lax policing, when a second assassin, a
nineteen year old boy, stepped up with a pistol and shot to death the
archduke and his wife.

Many people have referred to this incident as the cause of the great
European war. As you have been shown, however, this was simply the
spark that exploded the magazine. With the whole situation as highly
charged as it was, any other little spark would have been enough to
set the war a-going.

The Austrian government sent word to Serbia that the crime had been
traced to Serbian plotters, some of them in the employ of the
government. It demanded that Serbia apologize; also that she hunt out
and punish the plotters at once. And because Austria did not trust the
Serbians to hold an honest investigation, she demanded that her
officers should sit in the Serbian courts as judges.

Imagine a Japanese killed in San Francisco, and think what the United
States would say if the Tokio government insisted that a Japanese
judge be sent to California to try the case because Japan could not
trust America to give her justice! The Serbians, of course, were in no
position to fight a great power like Austria-Hungary, and yet,
weakened as they were, they could not submit to such a demand as this.
They agreed to all the Austrian demands except the one concerning the
Austrian judges in Serbian courts. They appealed to the other powers
to see that justice was done them.

Russia growled ominously at Austria, whereupon Germany sent a sharp
warning to Russia that this was none of her affair, and that Austria
and Serbia must be left to fight it out. In the meantime, Serbia
offered to lay the matter before the court of arbitration at the
Hague. (In 1899, at the invitation of the czar of Russia,
representatives of all the great powers of Europe met at the Hague to
found a lasting court which should decide disputes between nations
fairly, and try to do away with wars, to as great an extent as
possible. The court has several times been successful in averting
trouble.)

Great Britain proposed that the dispute between Austria and Serbia
should be judged by a court composed of representatives of France,
England, Italy, and Germany. Austria's reply to the proposals of
England and Serbia was a notice to the latter country that she had
just forty-eight hours in which to give in completely to the Austrian
demands. In the mean-time, Mr. Sazanoff, the Russian minister of
foreign affairs, was vainly pleading with England to declare what she
would do in case the Triple Alliance started a war with France and
Russia.

Kings and ministers telegraphed frantically, trying to prevent the
threatened conflict. The story was sent out by Germany that Russia was
gathering her troops, mobilizing them, as it is called. As Russia has
so much more territory to draw from than any other country, and as her
railroads are not many and are poorly served, it was figured that it
would be six weeks before the Russian army would be ready to fight
anybody. Germany, on the other hand, with her wonderful system of
government-owned railroads, and the machine-like organization of her
army, could launch her forces across the frontier at two days' notice.
As soon as the Germans began to hear that the Russians were mobilizing
their troops against Austria, Germany set in motion the rapid
machinery for gathering her own army. She sent a sharp message to
Russia, warning the latter that she must instantly stop mobilizing or
Germany would declare war. Next the Germans asked France what she
intended to do in case Germany and Austria declared war on Russia.
France replied that she would act in accordance with what seemed to be
her best interests. This answer did not seem very reassuring, and
without any declaration of war, the German army rushed for the French
frontier.

Now ever since the war of 1870, France had been building a line of
great forts across the narrow stretch of ground where her territory
approached that of Germany. Belfort, Toul, Epinal, Verdun, Longwy,
they ranged through the mountains northeast of France as guardians of
their country against another German attack. To rush an army into
France over this rough country and between these great fortresses was
impossible. Modern armies carry great guns with them which cannot
climb steep grades. Therefore, if Germany wanted to strike a quick,
smashing blow at France and get her armies back six weeks later to
meet the slow-moving Russians, it was plain that she must seek some
other approach than that through the Vosges Mountains.

[Illustration: A Fort Ruined by the Big German Guns]

From Aix-La-Chapelle near the Rhine in Germany, through the northern
and western part of Belgium, there stretches a flat plain, with level
roads, easy to cross. (See map.) Now, years before, Belgium had
been promised by France, Prussia, and England that no one of them
would disturb its neutrality. In other words it was pledged that in
case of a war, no armed force of any of these three nations should
enter Belgian territory, nor should Belgium be involved in any trouble
arising among them. In case any one of the nations named or in fact
any other hostile force, invaded Belgium, the signers of the treaty
were bound to rush to Belgium's aid. Belgium, in return, had agreed to
resist with her small army any troops which might invade her country.

In spite of the fact that their nation had signed this treaty, the
Germans started their rush toward France, not through the line of
forts in the mountains, but across the gently rolling plain to the
north. They first asked permission of the Belgians to pass through
their country. On being refused, they entered Belgian territory just
east of Liége (lï ĕzh'). The Belgians telegraphed their protest
to Berlin. The Germans replied that they were sorry but it was
necessary for them to invade Belgium in order to attack France. They
agreed to do no damage and to pay the Belgians for any supplies or
food which their army might seize. The Belgians replied that by their
treaty with France, England, and Germany they were bound on their
honor to resist just such an invasion as this. They asked the Germans
how Germany would regard them if they were to permit a French army to
cross Belgian territory to take Germany by surprise. The Germans again
said that they were sorry, but that if Belgium refused permission to
their army to cross, the army would go through without permission. It
was a dreadful decision that Belgium had to make, but she did not
hesitate. She sent orders to her armies to resist by all means the
passage of the German troops. The great war had begun.

[Map: Map showing the Two Routes from Germany to Paris.]

As we look over the evidence the German war lords must bear the blame,
almost alone.

The Austrians had been eager to attack Serbia, even in 1913, thinking
that this little country had grown too powerful, as a result of her
victories in the two Balkan wars. But Austria had counted on
"bluffing" Russia to keep out, as she had been bluffed in 1908, and
when she saw that this time the Russians meant business, she became
frightened and sent word that she might be willing to settle the
question without fighting. But the Germans were bent on war, and as
they saw their ally wavering, they sent their warning that Russian
mobilization would be considered a ground for war.

Now this was ridiculous. In 1908, when the trouble over Bosnia was at
its height, both Austria and Russia had their armies mobilized and
ready for war for weeks and months. Still no war came out of it. It
looked as if Germany was hard put to it to find an excuse for
launching her plan to conquer Europe.

Questions for Review

1. Why did Ulster object to home rule?
2. What were the hopes of the Serbians regarding Bosnia?
3. Why did Russia interfere between Austria and Serbia?
4. Why did Russia mobilize her troops?
5. Why was the road through Belgium chosen?

CHAPTER XVIII

Why England Came In

The question of Italy and England.--Italy's position.--The war with
Turkey.--Italy declines to join her allies.--England is aware of the
German plans.--The treaty with Belgium.--The "defensive" war.--The
"scrap of paper."--Germany's rage at England's declaration of
war.--England does the unexpected.

France, Belgium, Russia, and Serbia were combined against Austria and
Germany. Little Montenegro also rushed to the help of her neighbor and
kinsman, Serbia. The question was, what would Italy and England do.
Italy, like Russia and Germany, had been having trouble in holding
down her people. A revolution had been threatened which would
overthrow the king and set up a republic. The Socialist Party,
representing the working class, had been growing very strong, and one
of their greatest principles was that all war is wrong. They felt that
the Triple Alliance made by the Italian statesmen had never bound the
Italian people. Throughout the entire peninsula, the Austrians were
hated.

You will remember that France had aroused the Italians' anger in 1881
by seizing Tunis. Italy had hoped to snap up this province for
herself, for the Italian peninsula was crowded with people, and as the
population increased, it was thought necessary that colonies be
established to which the people could migrate to have more room.
Finally in 1911, in order to divert the minds of the people from
revolutionary thoughts, the government organized an expedition to
swoop down on Tripoli, which, like Egypt, was supposed to belong to
Turkey.

This meant war with the government at Constantinople, and Germany and
Austria were very angry at Italy, their ally, for attacking Turkey,
with which the Austrians and Germans were trying to establish a firm
friendship. However, "self-preservation is the first law of nature,"
and the Italian king and nobles valued their leadership in the nation
much more than they dreaded the dislike of Germany and Austria.

The Germans had counted on Italy to join in the attack on Russia and
France, but the Italian statesmen knew the feelings of their people
too well to attempt this. Of late years, there had been growing up a
friendship between the people of Italy and those of France, and the
Italian generals knew that it would be a difficult task to induce
their men to fire upon their kinsmen from across the Alps. Therefore,
when Austria and Germany demanded their support in the war, they
replied by pointing out that the terms of the Triple Alliance bound
Italy to go to their help only if they were attacked. "In this case,"
said the Italians, "you are the attacking party. The treaty does not
bind us to support you in any war conquest. What is more, we were not
consulted before Austria sent to Serbia her impossible demands. Expect
no help from us."

Now the great question arose as to England. The English statesmen were
not blind to the German plan. They saw that Germany intended to crush
France first, capturing Paris and dealing the French army such an
overwhelming blow that it would take it a long time to recover. Then
the German armies were to be rushed back over their marvelous system
of government-owned railroads to meet the on-coming German tide of
Russians.

The Germans knew that they were well provided with ammunition and all
war supplies. They knew that they had invented some wonderful guns
which were large enough to batter down the strongest forts in the
world. They did not have very much respect for the ability of the
Russian generals. They had watched them bungle badly in the Japanese
war, ten years before. If once France were brought to her knees, they
did not fear Russia. Then after France and Russia had been beaten,
there would be plenty of time, later on, to settle with Great Britain.

The English statesmen, as we have said, were aware of this plan. They
saw that if they were to fight Germany, this was the ideal time.
However, Great Britain, having a government which is more in the hands
of the people than even that of republican France, did not have the
system of forcing her young men to do military service. Her little
army in England was made up entirely of men who enlisted in it because
they wished to, and because they received fair pay. If England were to
enter a great war with Germany, there must be some very good reason
for her doing so. Otherwise, her people, who really did not hate the
Germans, would never enlist to fight against them. The question was,
would anything happen to make the English people feel that they were
justified in entering the war on the side of France and Russia.

You will remember that England, France, and Prussia had promised each
other to protect Belgium from war. Even in the war of 1870, France and
Prussia had carefully avoided bringing their troops upon Belgian soil.
Now, however, with the German army invading Belgium, the English
statesmen had to decide their course. As heads of one of the nations
to guarantee Belgium's freedom, they called on Germany to explain this
unprovoked invasion. The Germans made no answer. They were busily
attacking the city of Liége. Great Britain gave Germany twenty-four
hours in which to withdraw her troops. At the end of this time, with
Germany paying no attention still, England solemnly declared war and
took her stand alongside of Russia and France.

The Germans were furious. They had no bitter feeling against the
French. They realized that France was obliged, by the terms of her
alliance, to stand by Russia, but they had confidently counted on
keeping England out of the war. In fact, the German ambassador to
England had assured the German emperor that England had so many
troubles, with her uprising in Ireland and threatened rebellions in
India and South Africa that she would never dare fight at this time.

The English people, on the other hand, were now thoroughly aroused. If
there is one thing that an Englishman prides himself on, it is keeping
his word. The word of the English had been given, through their
government, to Belgium that this little country, if it should resist
invasion, would be protected, and this word they thought must be kept
at all hazards. It made no difference that, aside from her great navy,
England was utterly unprepared for the war. Like the decision which
Belgium had had to make the day before, this was a crucial step for
the British to take, but to their everlasting honor they did not
hesitate. In the case of Germany's declaration of war the German laws
say that no war can be declared by the Kaiser alone unless it is a
defensive war. Therefore, as one American writer has pointed out, this
is the only kind of war that the Kaiser ever declares. The German
military group, having control of the newspapers, put in a lot of
stories made up for the occasion about French soldiers having crossed
the border and shot down Germans on August 2nd. They told how French
aviators had dropped bombs on certain German cities. As a matter of
fact, the French soldiers, by orders of their government, were drawn
back from the frontier a distance of six miles in order to avoid any
appearance of attacking the Germans. The City Council of Nuremburg,
one of the cities that was said to have been bombed by the French,
later gave out a formal statement saying that no bombs had fallen on
their city and no French aviators had been seen near it. But the
German government gave out this "news" and promptly declared a
"defensive" war, and the German people had to believe what they were
told.

Very different was the case in England. Here was a free people, with
free schools and free newspapers. Just as every German had been taught
in the schools of his country that Germany was surrounded by a ring of
jealous enemies and would one day have to fight them all, so the
people of England had been taught in their schools that war between
civilized peoples is a hateful thing and must finally disappear from
the earth.

The English labor leaders who themselves protested against the war at
first, in hopes that the German Socialists would do the same, were
doomed to be grievously disappointed, for in Germany the protests
against war were still more feeble. The newspapers, with few
exceptions, as was previously pointed out, were under the control of
the military leaders and the manufacturers of war materials. These
papers persuaded the German people that England, through her jealousy
of Germany's great growth in trade, had egged on Russia, France, and
Serbia to attack Germany and Austria, and then had declared war
herself on a flimsy pretext. At first the entire German nation
believed this. Until Prince Lichnowsky, the former German ambassador
to Great Britain, published a story in which he told how the German
government had forced the war in spite of all that England could do to
prevent it, the Germans thought, as their war chiefs told them, that
the war was forced upon Germany by her jealous enemies.

Thus the military leaders of Germany, descendants of the old feudal
nobles, were able to make the whole German nation hate the English
people.

When the English ambassador to Berlin went to see the chancellor (as
the prime-minister of the German Empire is called) and told him that
unless German troops were immediately withdrawn from Belgium, England
would declare war, for the Belgian government had a treaty signed by
England promising them protection, the German chancellor exclaimed.
"What! Would you plunge into this terrible war for the sake of a scrap
of paper!" The chancellor was excited. As you have been told before,
the Germans were sure that England, being unprepared for the war,
would never dare to go into it. This threatened to upset all their
well-laid plans for the conquest of France and then Russia. For the
moment the chancellor forgot his diplomacy. He blurted out the truth.
He showed the world that honor had no place in the minds of the German
war lords. To the English a treaty with Belgium was a sacred pledge;
to the Germans it was something which could be torn up at a moment's
notice if it stood in the way of their interests.

There was a violent outburst against England in all of the newspapers
of Germany. A German poet wrote a dreadful poem called "The Hymn of
Hate," in which he told how while they had no love for the Frenchman
or the Russian, they had no hate for them either. One nation alone
they hated--England! "Gott strafe England" (may God punish England)
became the war cry of the Germans.

Everything had gone according to their pre-arranged plans until
England decided that her promise given to Belgium stood first, even
before the terrible loss and suffering of a great war. That any nation
should put her honor before her comfort and profit, had never occurred
to the war leaders of Germany.

Questions for Review

1. Why did Italy make war on Turkey in 1911?
2. Why did not Italy join in the attack on France?
3. What was Germany's plan?
4. How is the English army different from others?
5. What reason had England for declaring war?
6. Had the German's expected England to attack them? Give reasons for
your answer.
7. Why did the phrase "scrap of paper" make such a deep impression on
the world?
8. Why did the war lords hate the British so deeply?

CHAPTER XIX

Diplomacy and Kingly Ambition

Turkey throws in her lot with the central empires.--The demands of
Italy.--She joins the Triple Entente.--The retreat of the
Russians.--The Balkans again.--Bulgaria's bargaining.--German princes
on Balkan thrones.--The central empires bid the highest for Bulgarian
support.--The attitude of Greece.--Roumania's hopes.

To return to the great war. The diplomats of both sides made all haste
to put pressure upon the governments of the countries which were not
engaged in the struggle, in order to win them over. Germany and
Austria worked hard with Italy, with Turkey, and with Bulgaria. The
Turks were the first to plunge in. The party headed by Enver Bey (the
young minister of war) saw that a victory for Russia and her allies
meant the final expulsion of the Turks from Europe. Only in the
victory of Germany and Austria did this faction see any hope for
Turkey. It was the latter part of October (1914) when Turkish
warships, without any provocation, sailed into some Russian ports on
the Black Sea and blazed away with their big guns.

Some of the older Turkish statesmen were terrified, and did their best
to get the government at Constantinople to disclaim all responsibility
for this act of their naval commanders. The "Young Turks," however,
were all for war on the side of Germany. What is more, Russia, always
anxious for an excuse to seize Constantinople, would not allow the
Turks to apologize for their act and keep out of trouble. She declared
war on Turkey, and was quickly followed by France and England.

Both sides now set to work on Italy. It was plain that all the
sympathies of the Italian people were with France and England. The six
grandsons of Garibaldi formed an Italian regiment and volunteered for
fighting on the French lines. Two of them were killed, and at their
funerals in Rome, nearly all the inhabitants of the city turned out
and showed plainly that they too would like to be fighting on the side
of France.

You will remember that Italy wanted very much to gain the provinces of
Trentino and Istria, with the cities of Trent, Trieste (trï
ĕs'te), Pola (pō'lä), and Fiume (fē ū'me), all inhabited by
Italian people. The possession of these counties and cities by Austria
had been the greatest source of trouble between the two nations. Italy
now came out boldly, and demanded, as the price of her keeping out of
the war, that Austria give to her this land inhabited by Italians.
Germany urged Austria to do this, and sent as her special ambassador,
to keep Italy from joining her enemies, Prince von Bulow, whose wife
was an Italian lady, and who was very popular with the Italian
statesmen.

For months, von Bulow argued and pleaded, first trying to induce Italy
to accept a small part of the disputed territory and then, when he
found this impossible, doing his best to induce Austria to give it
all. Austria was stubborn. She did not take kindly to the plan of
giving away her cities. She offered to cede some territory if Italy
should wait until the end of the war.

This did not satisfy Italy. She was by no means certain that Austria
and Germany were going to win the war and was even less sure that
Austria would be willing, in case of her victory, to give up a foot of
territory. It seemed to the Italian statesmen that it was "now or
never" if Italy wished to get within her kingdom all of her own
people. In the month of May 1915 Italy threw herself into the struggle
by declaring war on Austria and entering an alliance with Russia,
France, and England.

[Illustration: Russian peasants fleeing before the German army]

Meanwhile, the Russians were having difficulties. They had millions
and millions of men, but not enough rifles to equip them all. They had
plenty of food but very little ammunition for their cannon. Austria
and Germany, on the other hand, had been manufacturing shot and shells
in enormous quantities, and from the month of May, when the Russians
had crossed the Carpathian Mountains and were threatening to pour down
on Buda-Pest and Vienna, they drove them steadily back until the first
of October, forcing them to retreat nearly three hundred miles.

In the meantime, the Balkans again became the seat of trouble. You
will recall that Bulgaria, who had grown proud because of her victory
over Turkey in the war of 1912, was too grasping when it came to a
division of the conquered territory. Thus she brought on a second war,
in the course of which Greece and Serbia defeated her, while Roumania
took a slice of her territory and the Turks recaptured the city of
Adrianople. The czar of Russia had done his best to prevent this
second Balkan war, even sending a personal telegram to Czar Ferdinand
of Bulgaria and to King Peter of Serbia, begging them for the sake of
the Slavic race, not to let their quarrels come to blows. Bulgaria,
confident of her ability to defeat Greece and Serbia, had disregarded
the Russians' pleadings, and as a result Russia did not interfere to
save her when her neighbors were robbing her of part of the land which
she had taken from Turkey.

It will be recalled that Macedonia was the country which Bulgaria had
felt most sorry to lose, as its inhabitants were largely Bulgarian in
their blood, although many Greeks and Serbs were among them.
Therefore, just as Italy strove by war and diplomacy to add Trentino
to her nation, so Bulgaria now saw her chance to gain Macedonia from
Serbia. Accordingly, she asked the four great powers what they would
give her in case she entered the war on their side, and attacked
Turkey by way of Constantinople, while the French and English were
hammering at the forts along the Dardanelles.[7]

[7] England and France needed wheat, which Russia had in great quantities
at her ports on the Black Sea. On the other hand France and England,
by supplying Russia with rifles and ammunition, could strike a hard
blow at Germany.

The four powers, after much persuasion and brow-beating, finally
induced Serbia to agree to give up part of Serbian Macedonia to
Bulgaria. They further promised Bulgaria to give her the city of
Adrianople and the territory around it which Turkey had reconquered.
But Bulgaria was not easily satisfied. She wanted more than Serbia was
willing to give; she wanted, too, the port of Kavala, which Greece had
taken from her. This the allies could not promise.

In the meantime, Bulgaria was bargaining with Austria, Germany, and
Turkey. France, England, and Russia were ready to pay back Serbia for
the loss of Macedonia, by promising her Bosnia and Herzegovina in case
they won the war from Austria. In like fashion, Austria and Germany
promised Bulgaria some Turkish territory and also the southern part of
the present kingdom of Serbia, in case she entered the war on their
side.

Now the king of Bulgaria, or the czar, as he prefers to call himself,
is a German. (As these little countries won their independence from
Turkey, they almost always called in foreign princes to be their
kings. In this way it had come about that the king of Greece was a
prince of Denmark, the king of Roumania was a German of the
Hohenzollern family, while the czar of Bulgaria was a German of the
Coburg family, the same family which has furnished England and Belgium
with their kings.)

The Bulgarians themselves are members of the Greek Catholic Church,
and they have a very high regard for the czar of Russia, as the head
of that church. Czar Ferdinand had no such feeling, however. He wanted
to be the most powerful ruler in the Balkan states, and it made no
difference to him which side helped him to gain his object.

[Illustration: A Bomb-Proof Trench in the Western War Front]

About this time, the Russians had been forced to retreat to a line
running south from Riga, on the Baltic Sea, to the northern boundary
of Roumania. The French and English had been pounding at the
Dardanelles for some months, but the stubborn resistance of the Turks
seemed likely to hold them out of Constantinople for a long time to
come. The checked Italians had not been able to make much headway
against the Austrians through the mountainous Alpine country where the
fighting was taking place. In the west, the Germans were holding
firmly against the attacks of the British and French. The czar of
Bulgaria and his ministers, thinking that the German-Austrian-Turkish
alliance could win with their help, flung their nation into its third
war within four years. This happened in Octoher, 1915.

Now at the close of the second Balkan war, when Serbia and Greece
defeated Bulgaria, they made an alliance, by which each agreed to come
to the help of the other in case either was attacked by Bulgaria.
Roumania, too, was friendly to Greece and Serbia, rather than to
treaty Bulgaria, for the Roumanians knew that Bulgaria was very
anxious to get back the territory of which Roumania had robbed her, in
the second Balkan war. In this way, the Quadruple Entente (Russia,
Italy, France, and England) hoped that the entry of Bulgaria into the
war, on the side of Germany and Turkey, would bring Greece and
Roumania in on the other side.

The Greek people were ready to rush to Serbia's aid and so was the
Greek prime minister. The queen of Greece, however, is a sister of the
German emperor, and through her influence with her husband she was
able to defeat the plans of Venizelos (vĕn ĭ zĕl'ŏs), the prime
minister, who was notified by the king that Greece would not enter
the war. Venizelos accordingly resigned, but not until he had given
permission to the French and English to land troops at Salonika, for
the purpose of rushing to the help of Serbia. (Greece also was afraid
that German and Austrian armies might lay waste her territory, as they
had Serbia's, before England and France could come to the rescue.)

Meanwhile poor Serbia was in a desperate state. The two Balkan wars
had drained her of some of her best soldiers. Twice the Austrians had
invaded her kingdom in this war, and twice they had been driven out.
Then came a dreadful epidemic of typhus fever which was the result of
unhealthful conditions caused by the war. Now the little kingdom,
attacked by the Germans and Austrians on two sides and by the
Bulgarians on a third, was literally fighting with her back to the
wall. She had counted on Greece to stand by her promise to help in
case of an attack from Bulgaria, but we have seen how the German queen
of Greece had been able to prevent this. Serbia hoped that Roumania,
too, would come to her help. However, as you have been told, the king
of Roumania is a German of the Hohenzollern family, a cousin of the
emperor, and in spite of the sympathy of his people for Italy, France,
and Serbia, he was able to keep them from joining in the defense of
the Serbs.

Now Roumania ought to include a great part of Bessarabia (bes ȧ
rȧ'bi ȧ), which is the nearest county of Russia, and also the
greater part of Transylvania and Bukowina (boo kō vï'nȧ), which are
the provinces of Austria-Hungary that lie nearest; for a great part of
the inhabitants of these three counties are Roumanians by blood and
language. They would like to be parts of the kingdom of Roumania, and
Roumania would like to possess them. The Quadruple Entente would
promise Roumania parts of Transylvania and Bukowina in case she joined
the war on their side, while the Triple Alliance was ready to promise
her Bessarabia. Roumania, as was said before, was originally settled
by colonists sent out from Rome, and in the eleventh century a large
number of people from the north of Italy settled there. On this
account, Roumania looks upon Italy as her mother country, and it was
thought that Italy's attack upon Austria would influence her to
support the Entente.

Each country wanted to be a friend of the winning side, in order to
share in the spoils. In this way, whenever it looked as if the
Quadruple Entente did not need her help Roumania was eager to offer
it, at a price which seemed to the allies too high. When, however, the
tide turned the other way, she lost her enthusiasm for the cause of
her friends, fearing what the central empires might do to her.

Questions for Review

1. What was the motive of Turkey in joining the war?
2. Why were the Russians not sorry to have Turkey declare war on
them?
3. What were the feelings of the Italian people?
4. What were the Italian diplomats anxious to gain?
5. What were the demands of Czar Ferdinand of Bulgaria upon the
Entente powers?
6. Why did Bulgaria join the central empires?
7. Why did Greece keep out of the conflict?
8. What were Roumania's hopes?

CHAPTER XX

Back to the Balkans

The troubles of Crete.-The bigotry of the "Young Turks."--Venizelos in
Greece.--The pro-German king.--The new government at Salonika.--The
downfall of Constantine.--The ambitions of Roumania.--Pro-Germans in
Russia.--Roumania declares war.--Russian treachery and German
trickery.--The defeat of Roumania.

Greece

You will remember the name of Eleutherios Venizelos, the prime
minister of Greece, who tried to get that country to stand by her
bargain from Crete with Serbia (pages 239-240). Now Venizelos had
originally come from Crete, a large island inhabited by Greeks, but
controlled by Turkey for many years (see map). In 1897 the Turks
had massacred a number of Greek Christians on the island, and this act
had so enraged the inhabitants of Greece that they forced their king
to declare war on Turkey.

Poor little Greece was quickly defeated, but the war called the
attention of the Great Powers of Europe to the cruelties of the Turks,
and they never again allowed Crete to be wholly governed by them. For
over a year Great Britain, France, Russia, and Italy had their
warships in Cretan ports and the government of Crete was under their
protection.

Finally they called in, to rule over the island, a Greek prince,
Constantine, the son of the king. Eight years later he had become very
unpopular through meddling with Cretan politics--on the wrong
side--and had to leave.

The It was at this time that Venizelos came to the front. The Cretan
government was really independent, like a little kingdom without a
king, and he was its true ruler. Now all the Greeks had looked forward
to the time when they might be united in one great kingdom. The shores
of Asia Minor and the cities along the Aegean Sea and the Dardanelles
were largely inhabited by Greeks. Crete and the islands of the Aegean
had once been part of Greece and they never would be content until
they were again joined to it. The Cretan government was ready to vote
that the island be annexed to Greece, when in 1908 there came the
revolution of the "Young Turks" which drove the old Sultan from his
throne (page 186).

The Young Turks at the outset of their crusade against the government
were tolerant to all the other races and religions in their country.
At first the Armenians, the Jews, the Albanians, the Greeks, and the
Bulgarians in the Turkish Empire were very happy over the result of
the revolution. It looked as if a new day were dawning for Turkey,
when it would be possible for these various races and different
religions to live side by side in peace.

No sooner were the young Turks in control of the government, however,
than they began to change. "Turkey for the Turks, and for the Turks
only" became their motto. With this in mind they massacred Bulgarians
and Greeks in Macedonia (page 85) and Armenians in Asia Minor.
The thought of the loss of Crete roused their anger and they began
scheming to get it back under Turkish rule.

In 1910 Venizelos, seeing the danger of his beloved island, left for
Greece, hoping there to stir up the people to oppose the Turks and
annex Crete. His wonderful eloquence and his single-hearted love for
his country soon made him as prominent on the mainland as he had been
in his island home. Before long he was chosen as prime minister of
Greece.

He found the country in a very sad condition. The military officers
were poorly trained. What was worse, they did not know this, but
imagined that their army was the best in the world. The politicians
had plundered the people and there was graft and poor management
throughout the government.

Venizelos made a wonderful change. He sent to the French republic for
some of their best generals. These men thoroughly made over the Greek
army and taught the Greek officers the real science of war.

[Illustration: Venizelos (left) with Greek ambassador to England]

Venizelos soon showed the politicians that he could not be frightened,
controlled, or bribed. He discharged some incompetent officials and
forced the others to attend to business. In fact he reorganized the
whole government service in a way to make every department do better
work. Few countries in Europe were as well managed as was Greece with
Venizelos as its prime minister.

Every Greek hates the Turks and looks forward to the time when no man
of Greek descent shall be subject to their cruel rule. You have been
told how the Russians have looked forward to the day when Saint
Sophia, the great mosque of the Turks, shall once more become a
Christian cathedral. In the same way the Greeks have passionately
desired to see Constantinople, which was for over a thousand years the
capital of their empire, freed from the control of the Turk. Little by
little, from the time when the Greeks first won their independence
from Turkey in 1829, the boundary of their kingdom has been pushed
northward, freeing more and more of their people from the rule of the
Ottomans. Venizelos, aiming to include in the kingdom of Greece as
many as possible of the people of Greek blood, was scheming night and
day for the overthrow of the Turkish power in Europe. You have been
told how the Russian diplomats astonished the world by inducing
Bulgaria to unite with the Greeks and the Serbs, two nations for whom
she had no love, in an alliance against the Turks. Many people felt
that this combination would never have been possible without the
far-seeing wisdom of of Venizelos. In fact, some historians give him
the credit of first planning the alliance.

His greatest trouble was with his own countrymen. The Greeks, as you
have been told, have always claimed Macedonia as part of their
country, whereas, in truth, there are more Bulgarians than Greeks
among its inhabitants. Venizelos, having agreed before the attack on
Turkey that the greater part of Macedonia should be given to Bulgaria,
had hard work after the victory in convincing his countrymen that this
was fair. In fact, the claims of the three allies to this district
proved the one weak spot in the combination. The occupation of this
country by Greeks and Serbs in the course of the first war against
Turkey, while the Bulgarians were defeating the main Turkish army just
northwest of Constantinople, brought on the second war. Bulgaria was
not willing to give up Macedonia to the Greeks and Serbs, and her
troops made a treacherous attack on her former allies (June, 1913)
which brought on the declarations of war referred to.

At the close of the second war, when Bulgaria, attacked by five
nations at once, had to make peace as best she could, the Greeks took
advantage of her by insisting on taking, not only Salonika but also
Kavala, which by all rights should have gone to the Bulgars. Venizelos
was willing to be generous to Bulgaria, but the Greeks had had their
heads turned by the extraordinary successes of their armies over the
Turks and Bulgarians and as a result insisted upon being greedy when
it came to a division of the conquered lands.

Let us return now to events in Greece after the world war had begun:
In March, 1915, when the great fleets of France and England made their
violent attack on the forts of the Dardanelles, intending to break
through and bombard Constantinople, Venizelos was eager to have Greece
join the conflict against the Turks. He felt sure that Turkey, in the
end, would lose the war and that her territory in Europe would be
divided up among the conquering nations. He wanted to get for Greece
the shores of the Dardanelles and the coast of Asia Minor, where a
great majority of the inhabitants were people of Greek blood. The king
of Greece, Constantine, as has been explained, is a brother-in-law of
the German Kaiser and has always been friendly to Germany. He and
Venizelos had been good friends while both were working for the
upbuilding of Greece, but a little incident happened shortly after the
Balkan wars which led to a coolness between them.

King Constantine, while on a visit to Berlin, stood up at a banquet
and told the Kaiser and the German generals that the fine work of the
Greek soldiers in the two wars just fought had been due to help which
he had received from German military men. This statement angered the
French very much, for you will remember that it was French generals
who had trained the Greek army officers. Venizelos, very shortly after
this, made a trip to Paris and there publicly stated that all credit
for the fine condition of the Greek army was due to the Frenchmen who
had trained its officers before the war of 1912. This was a direct
"slap in the face" of the king but it was the truth and everyone in
Greece knew it. From this time on it was evident to everybody that
Venizelos was friendly to the French and English, while the King was
pro-German.

Accordingly, in March, 1915, when Venizelos urged the Greek government
to join the war on Turkey, the king refused to give the order.
Venizelos, who was prime minister, straightway resigned, broke up the
parliament, and ordered a general election. This put the case squarely
up to the people of Greece and they answered by electing to the Greek
parliament one hundred eighty men friendly to Venizelos and the Triple
Entente as against one hundred forty who were opposed to entering the
war.

Venizelos, once more prime minister as a result of this election,
ordered the Greek army to be mobilized. At this time the fear was that
Bulgaria, in revenge for 1913, would join the war on the side of the
Germans and Turks and attack Greece in the rear. In order to keep
peace with Bulgaria Venizelos was willing to give to her the port of
Kavala, which Greece had cheated her out of at the close of the second
Balkan war. He felt that his country would gain so much by annexing
Greek territory now under the rule of the Turks that she could afford
to give up this seaport, whose population was largely Bulgarian.
Constantine opposed this, however, and the majority of the Greeks, not
being as far-sighted as their prime minister, backed the king. When
the attack by the Central Powers on Serbia took place, as has been
told, Venizelos a second time tried to get the Greek government to
join the war on the side of France and England. He said plainly to the
king that the treaty between Greece and Serbia was not a "scrap of
paper" as the German Chancellor had called the treaty with Belgium,
but a solemn promise entered into by both sides with a full
understanding of what it meant. The king, on the other hand, insisted
that the treaty had to do with Bulgaria alone and that it was not
intended to drag Greece into a general European war. As a result, he
dismissed Venizelos a second time, in spite of the fact that twice, by
their votes, the Greeks had shown that they approved of his policy.

Now Greece is a limited monarchy. By the terms of the constitution the
king must obey the will of the people as shown by the votes of a
majority of the members of parliament. In spite of the vote of
parliament the king refused to stand by the Serbian treaty. From this
time on he was violating the law of his country and ruling as a czar
instead of a monarch with very little power, as the Greek constitution
had made him.

Things went from bad to worse. In the meantime the French and English
had landed at Salonika in order to rush to the aid of the hard-pressed
Serbs. You have already been told how Venizelos arranged this. Their
aid, however, had come too late. Before they could reach the gallant
little Serbian army it had been crushed between the Austrians and
Germans on one side and the Bulgarians on the other, and its survivors
had fled across the mountains to the coast of Albania. The French and
English detachments were not strong enough to stand against the
victorious armies of Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria. They began to
retreat through southern Serbia. King Constantine notified the Allied
governments that if these troops retreated upon Greek soil he would
send his army to surround them and hold them as prisoners for the rest
of the war. France and England replied by notifying him that if he did
this they would blockade the ports of Greece and prevent any ships
from entering her harbors. This act on the part of France and England,
while it seemed necessary, nevertheless angered the proud Greeks and
strengthened the pro-German party in Athens. The king took advantage
of this feeling to appoint a number of pro-Germans to important
positions in the government. Constantine allowed German submarines to
use certain ports in Greece as bases of supply from which they got
their oil and provisions. The Greek army was still mobilized, and the
small force of French and English, which had retreated to Salonika,
were afraid that at any moment they might receive a stab in the back
by order of the Greek king.

In May, 1916, the Germans and Bulgarians crossed the Greek frontier
and demanded the surrender of several Greek forts. When the commander
of one of them proposed to fight, the German general told him to call
up his government at Athens over the long distance telephone. He did
so and was ordered to give up the fort peaceably to the invaders. We
have already seen what the answer of the Belgians had been on a like
occasion. To be sure, the French and English were already occupying
Greek soil, but they had come there under permission of the prime
minister of Greece to do a thing which Greece herself had solemnly
promised that she would do, namely, to defend Serbia from the Bulgars.

This surrender of Greek territory to the hated Bulgarians was too much
for Venizelos. He gave out a statement to the Greek people in which he
declared that the king had disobeyed the constitution and was ruling
as a tyrant; that he was betraying his country to the Germans and
Bulgars and that all loyal Greeks should refuse to obey him. At
Salonika, under the protection of the British and French, together
with the admiral of the Greek navy and one of the chief generals in
the army, Venizelos set up a new government--a republic of Greece.

Shortly after this the commander of a Greek army corps in eastern
Macedonia, acting under orders from King Constantine, surrendered his
men to the Germans, along with all their artillery, stores, and the
equipment which had been furnished to them by the French to defend
themselves against the Germans! In the meantime, the Bulgarians had
seized Kavala.

The control of the Adriatic Sea had been a matter of jealousy between
the Italians and Austrians even during the years when they were
partners in the Triple Alliance. Even before Italy entered the war on
the side of France and England, her government, fearing the Austrians,
had sent Italian troops to seize Avlona. The Prince of Albania,
finding that he was not wanted, had deserted that country, and there
had been no government at all there since the outbreak of the great
war. However, the presence of this Italian garrison prevented the
forces of the central powers from advancing southward along the
Adriatic coast.

Gradually, France and England increased their forces at Salonika. The
gallant defender of Verdun, General Sarrail, was sent to command the
joint army. During the summer of 1916, Italians came there to join the
French and British. A hundred thousand hardy young veterans, survivors
of the Serbian army, picked up by allied war ships on the coast of
Albania, were refitted and carried by ship around Greece to Salonika.
Here they joined General Sarrail's army, rested and refreshed, and
frantic for revenge on the Germans and Bulgars. Several thousands of
the Greek troops, following the leadership of Venizelos, deserted the
king and joined the allies.

Meanwhile, in Athens one prime minister after another tried to steer
the ship of state. The people of Greece were in a turmoil. The great
majority of them were warm friends of France and England--all of them
hated the Turks. The pro-German acts of the king, however, provoked
the French and English to such an extent that they frequently had to
interfere in Athens. The Greek people resented this interference and
on one or two occasions fights broke out when allied sailors marched
through the streets of the capital. Matters reached a climax in June,
1917. The governments of France, England, and Italy felt that they
could stand the treacherous conduct of King Constantine no longer.
They knew that he was assisting Germany in every possible way. They
knew that their camp was full of spies who were reporting all their
movements to the Bulgarians. They felt that at the first chance he
would order his army to attack Sarrail in the rear. They finally sent
an ultimatum to him ordering him to give up the throne to his second
son. The oldest son, the crown prince, having been educated in Germany
and sharing King Constantine's pro-German sentiments, was barred from
succeeding his father. This seemed a high-handed thing to do but there
was no other way out of a difficult situation. Constantine had allowed
his sympathies with his wife's brother to prevent his country from
carrying out her solemn treaty; had ruled like an absolute monarch;
had plotted with all his power for the overthrow of Russia, France,
and England, the three countries which had won Greece its independence
in the first place and which still desired its people to have the
right to rule themselves.

The guns of the allied fleet were pointed at Athens. More than half of
the Greek people favored Venizelos and the Entente as against the king
and Germany. A second[8] time within four months a European
monarch who was out of sympathy with his subjects was forced to resign
his crown.

[8] The first was the Czar of Russia, as is told in a later chapter.

With Constantine out of the way, there was nothing to prevent the
return to Athens of Venizelos. With great enthusiasm the people hailed
his coming, as, once more prime minister, he summoned the members of
parliament lawfully elected in 1915, and took control of the
government.

In July, 1917, the Greek government announced to the world that,
henceforth, Greece would be found in the war on the side of France,
Great Britain, and the other nations of the Entente.

Roumania

You will recall that when Bulgaria attacked Serbia the Serbs hoped for
help from Roumania. For they knew that Bulgaria had a grudge against
Roumania also, because of the Bulgarian territory which she had been
compelled to give up to her neighbor on the north at the close of the
second Balkan war. They expected this fear of Bulgarian revenge to
bring the Roumanians to the rescue.

You have read how Roumania wished for certain lands in Russia as well
as in Hungary that are inhabited by her own people. For a long time
the government at Bukharest hesitated, fearing to plunge into the war
before the time was ripe, and dreading the danger of choosing the
wrong side.

The key to the situation was Russia. If Roumania were to go to war she
would have to count strongly on the help of her great neighbor to the
north.

Meanwhile, strange things were happening in Russia. You will remember
that there are two million Germans living in that part of the Russian
domain which borders the Baltic Sea. (The states of Livonia and
Courland were ruled in the olden times by the "Teutonic knights.")
These Germans are much better educated, on the whole, than the
Russians; they are descendants of old feudal warriors and as such are
men of force and influence in the Russian government. It was a common
thing to find German names, like Witte, Von Plehve, Rennenkampf, and
Stoessel among the list of high officials and generals in Russia. In
this way there were a great many people prominent in the Russian
government, who secretly hoped that Germany would win the war and were
actively plotting with this in view. "There is a secret wire from the
czar's palace to Berlin," said one of the most patriotic Russian
generals, explaining why he refused to give out his plans in advance.
Graft and bad management, as well as treachery, were all through the
nation. Train-loads of ammunition intended for the Russian army were
left piled up on the wharves at the northern ports. Guns sent by
England were lost in the Ural mountains. Food that was badly needed by
the men at the front was hoarded by government officials in order to
raise prices for their friends who were growing rich through
"cornering" food supplies.[9]

[9] When a group of men buy a sufficient amount of any one article so as
to keep it from being sold in great quantities and make it appear that
there is not enough to go around, they are said to "corner" the
market. Three or four men in America at various times have been able
to corner the wheat market or the corn market or the market for
cotton.

The czar of Russia truly desired his country to win the war. On the
other hand his wife was a cousin of the Kaiser, a German princess
whose brothers were fighting in the German army, and she had little
love for her adopted country. The poor little Czarevitch, eleven years
old, remarked, early in the war, "When the Russians are beaten, papa
weeps; when the Germans are beaten, mamma weeps." In spite of her
German sympathies the Czarina had great influence with her husband,
and the scheming officials who were secretly plotting the downfall of
Russia were able to use this influence in many ways.

In 1916, a new prime minister was appointed in Russia--a man named
Sturmer, of German blood and German sympathies. The Russians, after
their long retreat in 1915 had gradually gotten back their strength,
and had piled up ammunition and gathered guns for a new attack. This
began early in June, 1916, when General Brusiloff attacked the
Austro-Hungarians in Galicia and Bukowina and drove them back for
miles and miles, capturing hundreds of thousands of prisoners. You
will remember that the Bohemians, although subjects of Austria-
Hungary, are Slavs and have no love for the Austrians of German blood
who rule them. Two divisions made up of Bohemian troops helped General
Brusiloff greatly by deserting in a body and afterwards re-enlisting
in the Russian army.

In northern France, the British and French had at last gained more
guns and bigger guns than the Germans had, and by sheer weight of
metal were pushing the latter out of the trenches which they had held
for over two years. It seemed to Roumania that the turning point of
the war had come. With the Russians winning big victories over
Austria, and the French and English pushing back the Germans in the
west, it certainly looked as though the end were in sight.

Now the king of Roumania, as you have been told is a Hohenzollern, a
distant cousin of the Kaiser of Germany, but, just the opposite from
the case in Greece and Russia, his wife was an English princess, and
she was able to help the party that was friendly to France and Great
Britain. The man who had and worked early and late to get his
countrymen to join the Entente was Take Jonescu, the wisest of the
Roumanian statesmen, the man who predicted at the close of the second
Balkan war that the peace of Europe would again be broken within
fourteen months.[10]

[10] As an actual fact, there was only twelve and a half months between
wars.

[Map: What The Allies Wished]

By the summer of 1916, the Roumanians had at last decided that if they
wanted to get a slice of Bessarabia from Russia and the province of
Transylvania from Hungary, they must jump into the war on the side of
the Entente. It is claimed by some that they had planned to wait until
the following winter in order to get their army into the best of
condition and training, but that the treacherous prime minister of
Russia, Sturmer, when he found that they were determined to make war
on Germany and Austria, persuaded them to plunge in at once, knowing
that they were unprepared and that their inexperienced troops would be
no match for the veterans of the central powers. At any rate, about
the first of September Roumania declared war on Austria and joined the
Entente.

The French and English had wished the Roumanians to declare war first
on Bulgaria and, attacking that country from the north while General
Sarrail attacked it from the south, crush it before help could arrive
from Germany, much in the fashion in which poor Serbia had been caught
between Austria and Bulgaria a year previously. The Roumanians,
however, were eager to "liberate" their brothers in Transylvania, and
so, urged on by bad advice from Russia, they rushed across the
mountains to the northwest instead of taking the easier road which led
them south to the conquest of Bulgaria. (See maps.)

[Map: How Roumania was crushed]

Germania, Turkey, and Bulgaria at once declared war on Roumania. The
battle-field in France, owing to continued rains and wet weather, had
become one great sea of slimy mud, through which it was impossible to
drag the cannon. General Brusiloff in Galicia had pushed back the
Austrians for many miles but a lack of ammunition and the arrival of
strong German re-inforcements had prevented his re-capturing Lemberg.
The Russian generals on the north, under the influence of the
pro-German prime minister, were doing nothing. The Italians and
Austrians had come to a deadlock. The country where they were fighting
was so mountainous that neither side could advance. North from
Salonika came the slow advance of General Sarrail. His great problem
was to get sufficient shells for his guns and food for his men. All
the time, too, he had to keep a watchful eye on King Constantine, lest
the latter launch the Greek army in a treacherous attack on his rear.
For the time being, then, the central powers were free to give their
whole attention to Roumania.

Profiting by the mud along the western front and trusting to the
Russians to do nothing, they drew off several hundred thousand men
from France and Poland and hurled them all together upon the
Roumanians. At the same time, another force composed of Turks,
Bulgarians, and some Germans marched north through the Dobrudja to
attack Roumania from the south. Thus, the very trick that the French
wished Roumania to work upon Bulgaria was now worked upon her by the
central powers. France and England were helpless. They sent one of the
best of the French generals to teach the Roumanians the latest science
of war, but men and guns they could not send. Look at the map and see
how Roumania was shut off from all help except what came from Russia.
Here Sturmer was doing his part to help Germany. Ammunition and troops
which were intended to rescue Roumania, never reached her. The Germans
had spies in the Roumanian army and before each battle, knew exactly
where the Roumanian troops would be and what they were going to do.

The German gun factories had sold to Roumania her cannon. On each gun
was a delicate sight with a spirit level--a little glass tube supposed
to be filled with a liquid which would not freeze. Slyly the Germans
had filled these tubes with water, intending, in case Roumania entered
the war on their side, to warn them about the "mistake." When the guns
were hauled up into the mountains and freezing weather came, these
sights burst, making the guns almost useless. Overwhelmed from both
the northwest and the south, the Roumanian army, fighting gallantly,
was beaten back mile after mile. Great stores of grain were either
destroyed or captured by the Germans. The western part of Roumania
where the great oil wells are, fell into the hands of the invaders, as
did Bukharest, the capital.

Sturmer had done his work well. Germany, instead of being almost
beaten, now took on fresh courage. Thanks to Roumanian wheat,
Roumanian oil, and above all, the glory of the victories, the central
powers were now in better shape to fight than if Roumania had kept out
of the war. The German comic papers were full of pictures which
declared that as England and France had always wanted to see a
defeated Hohenzollern they might now take a long look at King
Ferdinand of Roumania.

Questions for Review

1. What was the great disappointment connected with the rise to power
of the "young Turks"?
2. What would you say was the secret of the success of Venizelos in
Greece?
3. What mistake did the Greeks make at the close of the war of 1913?
4. What was the real cause of the strife between Venizelos and King
Constantine?
5. Would King Constantine have been justified in holding as prisoners
the French and British troops who were driven back upon Greek
soil?
6. What right had Venizelos to set up a republic?
7. Was it right for the Entente to force the resignation of King
Constantine?
8. What made Roumania decide to join the Entente?
9. How was the Roumanian campaign a great help to the Central Powers?

CHAPTER XXI

The War Under the Sea

Britannia rules the waves.--Enter the submarine.--The blockade of
Germany.--The sinking of the Lusitania and other ships.--The trade in
munitions of war.--The voyages of the Deutschland.--Germany ready for
peace (on her own terms).--The reply of the allies.--Germany's amazing
announcement.--The United States breaks off friendly relations.

You will remember how hard the Germans had worked, building warships,
with the hope that one day their navy might be the strongest in the
world. At the outbreak of the great war in 1914 they were still far
behind England in naval power. On the other hand, it was necessary for
the English to keep their navy scattered all over the world. English
battleships were guarding trade routes to Australia, to China, to the
islands of the Pacific. The Suez Canal, the Straits of Gibraltar, the
Island of Malta--all were in English hands, and ships and guns were
needed to defend them.

The German navy, on the other hand, with the exception of a few
cruisers in the Pacific Ocean and two warships in the Mediterranean,
was gathered in the Baltic Sea, the southeastern part of the North
Sea, and the great Kiel Canal which connected these two bodies of
water. It was quite possible that this fleet, by making a quick dash
for the ports of England, might find there only a portion of the
English ships and be able to overwhelm them before the rest of the
English navy should assemble from the far parts of the earth.

Winston Churchill, whose name you have read before, had the foresight
to assemble enough English vessels in home waters in the latter part
of the month of July, 1914, to give England the upper hand over the
fleet of Germany. As a result, finding the British too strong, the
Germans did not venture out into the high seas to give battle. A few
skirmishes were fought between cruisers, then some speedy German
warships made a dash across the North Sea to the coast of England,
shelled some small towns, killed several men, women, and children and
returned, getting back to the Kiel Canal before the English vessels
arrived in any number.

A second raid was attempted a few weeks later but by this time the
British were on the watch. Two of the best German cruisers were sunk
and the others barely escaped the fire of the avengers.

About the first of June, 1916, a goodly portion of the German fleet
sailed out, hoping to catch the British unawares. They were successful
in sinking several large ships, but when the main British fleet
arrived they began in turn to suffer great losses, and were obliged to
retire. With the exception of these two fights and two other battles
fought off the coast of South America (in the first of which a small
English fleet was destroyed by the Germans, and in the second a larger
British fleet took revenge), there have been no battles between the
sea forces.

The big navy of England ruled the ocean. German merchant vessels were
either captured or forced to remain in ports of neutral nations.
German commerce was swept from the seas, while ships carrying supplies
to France and the British Isles sailed unmolested--for a time. Only in
the Baltic Sea was Germany mistress. Commerce from Sweden, Norway, and
Denmark was kept up as usual. Across the borders of Holland and
Switzerland came great streams of imports. Merchants in these little
countries bought, in the markets of the world, apparently for
themselves, but really for Germany.

However, not for long did British commerce sail unmolested. A new and
terrible menace was to appear. This was the submarine boat, the
invention of Mr. John Holland, an American, but improved and enlarged
by the Germans. In one of the early months of the war three British
warships, the Hogue, the Cressy, and the Aboukir, were cruising about,
guarding the waters of the North Sea. There was the explosion of a
torpedo, and the Hogue began to sink. One of her sister ships rushed
in to pick up the crew as they struggled in the water. A second
torpedo struck and a second ship was sinking. Nothing daunted by the
fate of the other two, the last survivor steamed to the scene of the
disaster--the German submarine once more shot its deadly weapon, and
three gallant ships with a thousand men had gone down.

This startled the world. It was plain that battleships and cruisers
were not enough. While England controlled the surface of the
sea, there was no way to prevent the coming and going of the German
submarine beneath the waters. All naval warfare was changed in a
moment; new methods and new weapons had to be employed.

At the outset of the war the English and French fleets had set up a
strict blockade of Germany. There were certain substances which were
called "contraband of war" and which, according to the law of nations,
might be seized by one country if they were the property of her enemy.
On the list of contraband were all kinds of ammunition and guns, as
well as materials for making these. England and France, however, added
to the list which all nations before the war had admitted to be
contraband substances like cotton, which was very necessary in the
manufacture of gun-cotton and other high explosives, gasoline--fuel
for the thousands of automobiles needed to transport army supplies,
and rubber for their tires. Soon other substances were added to the
list.

An attempt was made to starve Germany into making peace. The central
empires, in ordinary years, raise only about three-fourths of the food
that they eat. With the great supply of Russian wheat shut off and
vessels from North America and South America not allowed to pass the
British blockade, Germany's imports had to come by way of Holland,
Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries. When Holland in 1915
began to buy about four times as much wheat as she had eaten in 1913,
it did not take a detective to discover that she was secretly selling
to Germany the great bulk of what she was buying apparently for
herself. In a like manner Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries
suddenly developed a much greater appetite than before the war! The
British blockade grew stricter. It was agreed to allow these countries
to import just enough food for their own purposes. The British trusted
that they would rather eat the food themselves than sell it to Germany
even at very high prices. The Germans soon began to feel the pinch of
hunger. They had slaughtered many of their cows for beef and as a
result grew short of milk and butter.

To strike back at England, Germany announced that she would use her
submarines to sink ships carrying food to the British Isles. This
happened in February, 1915. There was a storm of protest from the
world in general, but Germany agreed that her submarine commanders
should warn each ship of its danger and allow the captain time to get
the passengers and crew into boats before the deadly torpedo was shot.
Still the crew, exposed to the danger of the ocean in open boats, and
often cast loose miles from shore, were in serious danger.

The laws of nations, as observed by civilized countries in wars up to
this time, have said that a blockade, in order to be recognized by all
nations, had to be successful in doing the work for which it was
intended. If England really was able to stop every boat sailing for
German shores, then all nations would have to admit that Germany was
blockaded; but if the Germans were able to sink only one ship out of
every hundred that sailed into English ports, Germany could hardly be
said to be carrying on a real blockade of England. In spite of
protests from neutral nations who were peaceably trying to trade with
all the countries at war, this sinking of merchantmen by submarines
went on.

In May, 1915, the great steamship Lusitania was due to sail from New
York for England. A few days before her departure notices signed by
the German ambassador were put into New York papers, warning people
that Germany would not be responsible for what happened to them if
they took passage on this boat. Very few people paid any attention to
these warnings. With over a thousand persons on board the Lusitania
sailed, on schedule time. Suddenly the civilized world was horrified
to hear that a German submarine, without giving the slightest warning,
had sent two torpedoes crashing through the hull of the great steamer,
sending her to the bottom in short order. A few had time to get into
the boats, but over eight hundred men, women, and children were
drowned, of whom over one hundred were American citizens. Strange as
it may seem, this action caused a thrill of joy throughout Germany.
Some of the Germans were horrified, as were people in neutral
countries, but on the whole the action of the German navy was approved
by the voice of the German people. With a curiously warped sense of
right and wrong the Germans proclaimed that the English and Americans
were brutal in allowing women and children to go on this boat when
they had been warned that the boat was going to be sunk! They spoke of
this much in the manner in which one would speak of the cruelty of a
man who would drive innocent children and women to march in front of
armies in order to protect the troops from the fire of their enemies.

A storm of indignation against Germany burst out all over the United
States. Many were for immediate war. Calmer plans, however, prevailed,
and the upshot of the matter was that a stern note was sent to Berlin
notifying the Kaiser that the United States could not permit vessels
carrying Americans to be torpedoed without warning on the open seas.
The German papers proceeded to make jokes about this matter. They
pictured every French and English boat as refusing to sail until at
least two Americans had been persuaded to go as passengers, so that
the boat might be under the protection of the United States.

However, in spite of Germany's solemn promise that nothing of the sort
would happen again, similar incidents kept occurring, although on a
smaller scale. The American steamers Falaba and Gulflight were
torpedoed without warning, in each case with the loss of one or two
lives. Finally, the steamer Sussex, crossing the English Channel, was
hit by a torpedo which killed many of the passengers. As several
Americans lost their lives, once more the United States warned Germany
that this must not be repeated. Germany acknowledged that her
submarine commander had gone further than his orders allowed him and
promised that the act should not be repeated--provided that the United
States should force England to abandon what Germany called her illegal
blockade. The United States in reply made it plain that while the
English blockade was unpleasant to American citizens, still it was
very different from the brutal murder of women and children on the
high seas. England, when convinced that an American ship was carrying
supplies which would be sold in the end to Germany, merely took this
vessel into an English port, where a court decided what the cargo was
worth and ordered the British government to pay that sum to the
(American) owners.

This was resented by the American shippers, but it was not anything to
go to war over. The United States gave warning that she would hold
Germany responsible for any damage to American ships or loss of
American lives.

All of this time the Germans were accusing the United States of
favoring the nations of the Entente because they were selling
munitions of war to them and none to Germany. They said that it was
grossly unfair for neutral nations to sell to one side when, owing to
the blockade, they could not sell to the other also. When a protest
was made by Austria, the United States pointed out that a similar case
had come up in 1899. At that time the empire of Great Britain was at
war with two little Dutch Republics in South Africa. The Dutch,
completely blockaded, could not buy munitions in the open market.
Nevertheless, this fact did not prevent both Austria and Germany from
selling guns and ammunition to Great Britain. (It must be made plain
that the United States government was not selling munitions of war to
any of the warring nations. What Germany wanted and Austria asked was
that our government should prevent our private companies, as, for
example our steel mills, from shipping any goods which would
eventually aid in killing Germans. The United States made it plain
that our people had no feeling in the matter--that they were in
business, and would sell to whomsoever came to buy; that it was not
our fault that the British navy, being larger than the German,
prevented Germany from trading with us.)

In the meanwhile explosions kept occurring in the many munition
factories in the United States that were turning out shells and guns
for the Allies. Several hundred Americans were killed in these
explosions, and property to the value of millions of dollars was
destroyed. It was proved that the Austrian ambassador and several of
the German diplomats had been hiring men to commit these crimes. They
were protected from our courts by the fact that they were
representatives of foreign nations, but the President insisted that
their governments recall them.

The Germans made a great point about the brutality of the English
blockade. They told stories about the starving babies of Germany, who
were being denied milk because of the cruelty of the English. As a
matter of fact, what Germany really lacked was rubber, cotton,
gasoline, and above all, nickel and cobalt, two metals which were
needed in the manufacture of guns and shells.

Finally, in the summer of 1916, came a world surprise. A large German
submarine, the Deutschland, made the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean
and bobbed up unexpectedly in the harbor of Baltimore. In spite of all
the trouble that the United States had had with Germany over the
sinking of ships by submarines, the crew of this vessel was warmly
received, and the cargo of dyes which she brought was eagerly
purchased. The Germans, in return, loaded their ship with the metals
and other products of which Germany was so short. As one American
newspaper said, the Deutschland took back a cargo of nickel and rubber
to the starving babies of Germany. Once more the Deutschland came,
this time to New London, and again her crew was welcomed with every
sign of hospitality.

[Illustration: The Deutschland in Chesapeake Bay]

In December, 1916, at the close of the victorious German campaign
against Roumania, the central powers, weary of war and beginning to
feel the pinch of starvation and the drain on their young men, made it
known that as they had won the war they were now ready to treat for
peace. This message carried with it a threat to all countries not at
war that if they did not help to force the Entente to accept the
Kaiser's peace terms, Germany could not be held responsible for
anything that might happen to them in the future.

President Wilson, always apprehensive that something might draw the
United States into the conflict, grasped eagerly at this opportunity,
and in a public message he asked both sides to state to the world on
what terms they would stop the war.

The Germans and their allies did not make a clear and definite
proposal. On the other hand, the nations of the Entente, in no
uncertain terms, declared that no peace would be made unless the
central powers restored what they had wrongfully seized, paid the
victims of their unprovoked attack for the damage they had done, and
guaranteed that no such act should ever be committed in the future.
They also declared that the Poles, Danes, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians,
Alsatians, and Serbs should be freed from the tyrannous governments
which now enslaved them. In plain language this meant that the central
powers must give back part of Schleswig to Denmark, allow the kingdom
of Poland to be restored as it once had been; permit the Bohemians and
Slovaks to form an independent nation in the midst of Austria-Hungary;
allow the people of Alsace and Lorraine the right of returning to
France; annex the Italians in Austria-Hungary to Italy, and permit the
Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina to join their cousins to the southeast
in one great Serbian nation.

When these terms were published the German government exclaimed that
while they had been willing to make peace and perhaps even give back
the conquered portions of Belgium and northern France in return for
the captured German colonies in Africa and the Pacific Ocean, with the
payment of indemnities to Germany, now it was plain that the nations
of the Entente intended to wipe out utterly the German nation and
dismember the empire of Austria-Hungary; and that since Germany had
offered her enemies an honorable peace and they had refused, the only
thing left for the central powers to do was to fight to the bitter end
and use any means whatsoever to force their enemies to make peace.

In other words, here were the two conflicting claims: Germany said,
"We have won the war. Don't you recognize the fact that you have been
beaten? Give us back our colonies, organize a kingdom of Poland, out
of the part of Russian Poland which we have conquered, as a separate
kingdom under our protection, but don't expect us to join to this any
part of Austrian or Prussian Poland. (Prussian and Austrian Poland are
ours. You wouldn't expect us to give up any part of them, would you?)
Allow us to keep the port of Antwerp and maintain our control over the
Balkan peninsula. We will restore to you northern France, most of
Belgium, and even part of Serbia. See what a generous offer we are
making!"

The Allied nations replied, in effect: "You now have gotten
three-fourths of what you aimed at when you began the war. If we make
peace now, allowing you to keep the greater part of what you have
conquered, you will be magnanimous and give back a small portion of it
if we in turn surrender all your lost colonies. Hardly! We demand, on
the other hand, that you recompense, as far as you can, the miserable
victims of your savage attack for the death and destruction that you
have caused; that you put things back as you found them as nearly as
possible; that you make it plain to us that never again will we have
to be on guard against the possibility of a ruthless invasion by your
army; that you give to the peoples whom you and your allies have
forcibly annexed or retained under your rule a chance to choose their
own form of government."

Then said the Germans to the world, "You see! They want to wipe us out
of existence and cut the empire of our allies into small bits. Nothing
is left but to fight for our existence, and, as we are fighting for
our existence, all rules hitherto observed in civilized warfare are
now called off!"

In the latter part of January, 1917, the German government announced
that, inasmuch as they had tried to bring about an honorable peace
(which would have left them still in possession of three-fourths the
plunder they had gained in the war) and this peace offer had been
rejected by the Entente, all responsibility for anything which might
happen hereafter in the war would have to be borne by France, England,
etc., and not by Germany. It was stated that Germany was fighting for
her existence, and that when one's life is at stake all methods of
fighting are permissible. Germany proposed, therefore, to send out her
submarines and sink without warning all merchant ships sailing toward
English or French ports.

In a special note to the United States, the German government said
that once a week, at a certain time, the United States would be
permitted to send a passenger vessel to England, provided that this
boat were duly inspected and proved to have no munitions of war or
supplies for England on board. It must be painted all over with red,
white, and blue stripes and must be marked in other ways so that the
German submarine commanders would know it. (It must be remembered that
Germany insisted that she was fighting for the freedom of the seas!)

Now, at all times, it has been recognized that the open seas are free
to all nations for travel and commerce. This proposal, to sink without
warning all ships on the ocean, was a bit of effrontery that few had
imagined even the German government was capable of.

President Wilson had been exceedingly patient with Germany. In fact, a
great majority of the newspaper and magazine writers in the country
had criticized him for being too patient. The great majority of the
people of the United States were for peace, ardently. The government
at Washington knew this. Nevertheless, this last announcement by
Germany that she proposed to kill any American citizens who dared to
travel on the sea in the neighborhood of England and France seemed
more than a self-respecting nation could endure. The Secretary of
State sent notice to Count Von Bernstorff, the German ambassador, to
leave this country. Friendly relations between the imperial government
of Germany and the United States of America were at an end.

Questions for Review

1. How did the submarine boat change methods of warfare?
2. What is contraband of war?
3. Was it right to prevent the importation of food into Germany?
4. Why would a nation which manufactured a great deal of war material
object to the sale of such material to fighting nations by nations
at peace?
5. Show how this rule, if carried out, would have a tendency to make
all nations devote too much work to the preparation of war
supplies.
6. Show the difference between the British blockade and the sinking
of ships by German submarines.
7. Would the blowing up of American factories by paid agents of the
German government have been a good enough reason for the United
States to have declared war?
8. How did the voyages of the Deutschland prove that the United
States wanted to be fair to both sides in the war?
9. What reasons had Austria and Germany for wishing peace in December
1916?
10. Why did President Wilson ask the warring nations to state their
aims in the war?
11. How did Germany try to justify the sinking of ships without
warning?

CHAPTER XXII

Another Crown Topples

The unnatural alliance of the Czar and the free peoples.--The first
Duma and the revolt of 1905.--The Zemptsvos and the people against the
pro-German officials.--The death of Rasputin and other signs of
unrest.--The revolution of March 1917.--The Czar becomes Mr.
Romanoff.--Four different governments within eight months.--Civil war
and a German effort for peace.

It will be recalled that the great war was caused in the first place
by the unprovoked attack of Austria on Serbia and the unwillingness of
Russia to stand by and see her little neighbor crushed, and that
England came in to make good her word, pledged to Belgium, to defend
that small country from all hostile attacks. Thus the nations of the
Entente posed before the world as the defenders of small nations and
as champions of the rights of peoples to live under the form of
government which they might choose. You will remember that when the
central powers said that they were ready to talk peace terms the
nations of the Entente replied that there could be no peace as long as
the Danes, Poles, and Alsatians were forcibly held by Germany in her
empire and as long as Austria denied the Ruthenians, Roumanians,
Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, and Italians in their empire the right either
to rule themselves or to join the nations united to them by ties of
blood and language. France and Great Britain especially were fond of
saying that it was a war of the free peoples against those enslaved by
military rule--a conflict between self-governed nations and those
which were oppressing their foreign subjects. Replying to this the
central powers would always point to Russia. Russia, said they,
oppressed the Poles and Lithuanians, the Letts, the Esthonians, the
Finns. She, as well as Austria-Hungary, has hundreds of thousands of
Roumanians within her territories. Her people had even less political
freedom than the inhabitants of Austria and Germany.

The nations of the Entente did not reply to these charges of the
Germans. There was no reply to make; it was the truth. In fact there
is no doubt that French and British statesmen were afraid of a Russian
victory. They did not want the war to be won by the one nation in
their group which had a despotic form of government. On the other hand
the high officials in Russia were not any too happy at the thought of
their alliance with the free peoples of western Europe. Germany was
much more their ideal of a country governed in the proper manner than
was France. As you have been told, many of the nobles of the Russian
court were of German blood and secretly desired the victory of their
fatherland, while many Russians of the party who wanted to keep all
power out of the hands of the common people were afraid of seeing
Germany crushed, for fear their own people would rise up and demand
more liberty.

You will recall that there had been unrest in Russia at the time of
the outbreak of the war; that strikes and labor troubles were
threatened, so that many people thought the Czar had not been at all
sorry to see the war break out, in order to turn the minds of his
people away from their own wrongs.

At the close of the disastrous war with the Japanese in 1905, the cry
from the Russian people for a Congress, or some form of elective
government, had been so strong that the Czar had to give in. So he
called the first Duma. This body of men, as has been explained, could
talk and could complain, but could pass no laws. The first Duma had
had so many grievances and had talked so bitterly against the
government, that it had been forced to break up, and Cossack troops
were called in to put down riots among the people at St. Petersburg,
which they did with great ferocity. All this time there had been
growing, among the Russian people, a feeling that they were being
robbed and betrayed by the grand dukes and high nobles. They
distrusted the court. They felt that the Czar was well-meaning, but
weak, and that he was a mere puppet in the hands of his German wife,
his cousins the grand dukes, and above all a notorious monk, called
Rasputin. This strange man, a son of the common people, had risen to
great power in the court. He had persuaded the Empress that he alone
could keep health and strength in the frail body of the crown prince,
the Czarevitch, and to keep up this delusion he had bribed one of the
ladies in waiting to pour a mild poison into the boy's food whenever
Rasputin was away from the court for more than a few days. The poor
little prince, of course, was made sick; whereupon, the Empress would
hurriedly send for Rasputin, upon whose arrival the Czarevitch
"miraculously" got well. In this manner this low-born fakir obtained
such a hold over the Czar and Czarina that he was able to appoint
governors of states, put bishops out of their places, and even change
prime ministers. There is no doubt that the Germans bribed him to use
his influence in their behalf. It is a sad illustration of the
ignorance of the Russian people as a whole, that such a man could have
gotten so great a power on such flimsy pretenses.

The real salvation of the Russians came through the Zemptsvos. These
were little assemblies, one in each county in Russia, elected by the
people to decide all local matters, like the building of roads,
helping feed the poor, etc. They had been started by Czar Alexander
II, in 1862. Although the court was rotten with graft and plotting,
the Zemptsvos remained true to the people. They finally all united in
a big confederation, and when the world war broke out, this body,
really the only patriotic part of the Russian government, kept the
grand dukes and the pro-Germans from betraying the nation into the
hands of the enemy.

It was a strange situation. The Russian people through the
representatives that they elected to these little county assemblies
were patriotically carrying out the war, while the grand dukes and the
court nobles, who had gotten Russia into this trouble, were, for the
most part, hampering the soldiers, either through grafting off the
supplies and speculating in food, or traitorously plotting to betray
their country to the Germans. With plenty of food in Russia, with
millions of bushels of grain stored away by men who were holding it in
order to get still higher prices, there was not enough for the people
of Petrograd to eat.

As you were told in a previous chapter, the German, Sturmer, was made
prime minister, probably with the approval of the monk, Rasputin.
Roumania, depending on promises of Russian help, was crushed between
the armies of the Germans on the one side and the Turks and Bulgars on
the other, while trainload after trainload of the guns and munitions
which would have enabled her armies to stand firm was sidetracked and
delayed on Russian railroads. "Your Majesty, we are betrayed," said
the French general who had been sent by the western allies to direct
the army of the king of Roumania, when his pleas for ammunition were
ignored and promise after promise made him by the Russian prime
minister was broken.

Of all the countries in Europe, with the possible exception of Turkey,
Russia had been the most ignorant. The great mass of the people had
had no schooling and were unable to read and write. It was easier for
the grand dukes and nobles to keep down the peasants and to remain
undisturbed in the ownership of their great estates if the people knew
nothing more than to labor and suffer in silence. There was a class of
Russians, however, the most patriotic and the best educated men in the
state, who were working quietly, but actively, to make conditions
better. Then too, the Nihilists, anarchists who had been working
(often by throwing bombs) for the overthrow of the Czar, had spread
their teachings throughout the country. Students of the universities,
writers, musicians, and artists, had preached the doctrines of the
rights of man. While outwardly the government appeared as strong as
ever, really it was like a tree whose trunk has rotted through and
through, and which needs only one vigorous push to send it crashing to
the ground.

It is generally in large cities that protests against the government
are begun. For one thing, it is harder, in a great mob of people, to
pick out the ones who are responsible for starting the trouble. Then
again it is natural for people to make their protests in capital
cities where the government cannot fail to hear them. A third reason
lies in the fact that in large cities there are always a great number
of persons who are poor and who are the first ones to feel the pinch
of starvation, when hard times arise or when speculators seize upon
food with the idea of causing the prices to rise. Starvation makes
these people desperate--they do not care whether they live or
not--and, as a result, they dare to oppose themselves to the police
and the soldiers.

There had been murmurs of discontent in Petrograd for a long time.
This was felt not only among the common people, but also among the
more patriotic of the upper classes. In the course of the winter of
1916-17, the monk, Rasputin, as a result of a plot, was invited to the
home of a grand duke, a cousin of the Czar. There a young prince,
determined to free Russia of this pest, shot him to death and his body
was thrown upon the ice of the frozen Neva.

About this time the lack of food in Petrograd, the result largely of
speculation and "cornering the market," had become so serious that the
government thought it wise to call in several regiments of Cossacks to
reinforce the police.

These Cossacks are wild tribesmen of the plains who enjoy a freedom
not shared by any other class in Russia. They are warriors by trade
and their sole duty consists in offering themselves, fully equipped,
whenever the government has need of their services in war. They were
of a different race, originally, than the Russians themselves,
although by inter-marrying they now have some Slavic blood in their
veins. Their appearance upon the streets of Petrograd was almost
always a threat to the people. Enjoying freedom themselves and liking
nothing better than the practice of their trade--fighting--they had
had little or no sympathy with the wrongs of the populace, and so were
the strongest supporters of the despotic rule of the Czar. At times
when the Czar did not dare to trust his regular soldiers to enforce
order in Petrograd or Moscow, for fear the men would refuse to fire
upon their own relatives in the mob, the Cossacks could always be
counted upon to ride their horses fearlessly through the people,
sabering to right and left those who refused to disperse.

[Illustration: Crowd in Petrograd during the Revolution]

The second week of March, 1917, found crowds in Petrograd protesting
against the high prices of food and forming in long lines to demand
grain of the government. As day succeeded day, the crowds grew larger
and bolder in their murmurings. Cossacks were sent into the city, but
for some strange reason they did not cause fear as they had in times
past. Their manner was different. Instead of drawing their sabers,
they good naturedly joked with the people as they rode among them to
disperse the mobs, and were actually cheered at times by the populace.
The crowds grew larger and more boisterous. Regiment after regiment of
troops was called in. The police fired upon the people when the latter
refused to go home. Then a strange thing happened. A Cossack, his eyes
flashing fire, rode at full tilt up the street toward a policeman who
was firing on the mob, and shot him dead on the spot. A shout went up
from the people: "The Cossacks are with us!" New regiments of troops
were brought in. The men who composed them knew that they were going
to be ordered to fire upon their own kind of people--their own kin
perhaps, whose only crime was that they were hungry and had dared to
say so. One regiment turned upon its officers, refusing to obey them,
and made them prisoners. Another and another joined the revolting
forces. It was like the scenes in Paris on the 14th of July, 1789. The
people had gathered to protest, and, hardly knowing what they did,
they had turned their protests into a revolution. Regiments loyal to
the Czar were hastily summoned to fire upon their revolting comrades.
They hesitated. Leaders of the mob rushed over to them, pleading with
them not to fire. A few scattering volleys were followed by a lull,
and, then with a shout of joy, the troops last remaining loyal threw
down their arms and rushed across to embrace the revolutionists. At a
great meeting of the mob a group of soldiers and working men was
picked out to call upon the Duma and ask this body to form a temporary
government. Another group was appointed to wait upon Nicholas II and
tell him that henceforth he was not the Czar of all the Russias, but
plain Nicholas Romanoff. Messengers were sent to the fighting fronts
to inform the generals that they were no longer to take orders from
the Czar, but from the representatives of the free people of Russia.
With remarkable calmness, the nation accepted the new situation.
Within two days a new government had been formed, composed of some of
the best men in the great empire. The Czar signed a paper giving up
the throne in behalf of himself and his young son and nominating his
brother Michael to take his place. Michael, however, was too wise. He
notified the people that he would accept the crown only if they should
vote to give it to him; and this the people would not do.

[Illustration: Revolutionary soldiers holding a conference in the
Duma]

The government, as formed at first, with its ministers of different
departments like the American cabinet, was composed of citizens of the
middle classes--lawyers, professors of the universities, land-owners,
merchants were represented--and at the head of the ministry was a
prince. This arrangement did not satisfy the rabble. The radical
socialists, most of whom owned no property and wanted all wealth
divided up among all the people, were not much happier to be ruled by
the moderately well-to-do than they were to submit to the rule of the
nobles. The council of workingmen and soldiers, meeting in the great
hall which had formerly housed the Duma, began to take upon themselves
the powers of government. Someone proclaimed that now the Russian
people should have peace, and when Prof. Milioukoff, foreign minister
for the new government, assured France and England that Russia would
stick by them to the last, a howling crowd of workingmen threatened to
mob him. "No annexations and no indemnities," was the cry of the
socialists. "Let us go back to conditions as they were before the war.
Let each nation bear the burden of its own losses and let us have
peace." After a stormy session, the new government agreed to include
in its numbers several representatives of the soldiers and workingmen.
Prof. Milioukoff resigned and Alexander Kerensky, a radical young
lawyer, became the real leader of the Russian government.

[Illustration: Kerensky (standing in automobile) reviewing Russian
troops]

Germany and Austria, meanwhile, had eagerly seized the advantage
offered by Russia's internal troubles. Their troops were ordered to
make friends with the Russians in the trenches opposite. They played
eagerly upon the new Russian feeling of the brotherhood of man and
freedom and equality, to do away with fighting on the east, thus being
able to transfer to the western front some of their best regiments. As
a result the French and English, after driving the Germans back for
many miles in northern France were at last brought to a standstill.
The burden of carrying the whole war seemed about to fall more heavily
than ever upon the armies in the west. Talk of a separate peace
between Russia and the central powers grew stronger and stronger. The
Russian troops felt that they had been fighting the battles of the
Czar and the grand dukes and they saw no reason why they should go on
shooting their brother workingmen in Germany.

At this point Kerensky, who had been made minister of war, set out to
visit the armies in the field. Arriving at the battle grounds of
eastern Galicia he made rousing speeches to the soldiers and actually
led them in person toward the German trenches. The result was a
vigorous attack all along the line under Generals Brusiloff and
Korniloff which swept the Germans and Austrians back for many miles,
and threatened for a time to recapture Lemberg. German spies, however,
and agents of the peace party were busy among the Russian soldiers.
They soon persuaded a certain division to stop fighting and retreat.
The movement to the rear, begun by these troops, carried others with
it, and for a time it seemed as though the whole Russian army was
going to pieces. Ammunition was not supplied to the soldiers. The
situation was serious and called for a strong hand. Kerensky was made
prime minister and the members of the government and the council of
workingmen and soldiers voted him almost the powers of a Czar. He was
authorized to give orders that any deserters or traitors be shot, if
need be, without trial. Under his rule the Russian army began to
re-form, and the situation improved.

In November, 1917, a faction of the extreme Socialists called the
Bolsheviki (Bŏl-shĕ-vï'kï) won over the garrisons of Petrograd
and Moscow, seized control of the government, forcing Kerensky
to flee, and threatened to make peace with Germany. These
people are, for the most part, the poor citizens of large cities. They
have few followers outside of the city population, for the average
Russian in the country is a land owner, and he does not take kindly to
the idea of losing his property or dividing it with some landless
beggar from Petrograd.

The revolt of the Bolsheviki, then, simply added to the confusion in
the realm of Russia. That unhappy country was torn apart by the fights
of the different factions. Finland demanded its independence, and
German spies and agents encouraged the Ruthenians living in a great
province called the Ukraine, to do the same. The Cossacks withdrew to
the country to the north of the Crimean peninsula, and the only
Russian armies that kept on fighting were those in Turkey. These
forces had been gathered largely from the states between the Black and
Caspian Seas. Having suffered persecution in the old days, they had
hated the Turks for ages and needed no orders from Petrograd to induce
them to take revenge.

Finally the Bolshevik government agreed to a peace with the central
powers which gave Germany and Austria everything that they wanted. The
Russian armies were disbanded and the Germans and Austrians were free
to turn their fighting men back to the western front. In the meantime,
the Ruthenian republic, now called the Ukraine, was allowed by the
Bolsheviki to make a separate peace with Germany and Austria. The
troops of the Germans and Austrians began joyously to pillage both
Russia and the Ukraine, hunting for the food that was so scarce in the
central empires. However, for a whole year hardly anybody in Russia
had been willing to do a stroke of work. The fields had gone untilled
while the peasants, drunk with their new freedom, and without a care
for the morrow, lived off the grain that had been saved up during the
past years. As a result, whatever grain the enemy found proved spoiled
and mouldy, hardly fit to feed to hogs. As the Germans went about,
taking anything that they wished and as food grew scarce, the unrest
in Russia grew greater.

The Bolshevik government had not set up a democracy--a government
where all the people had equal rights: they had set up a tyranny of
the lower classes. The small land owners, the tradesmen, the middle
classes were not allowed any voice in the government. When the first
National Assembly or Congress was elected and called together, the
Bolsheviki finding that they did not control a majority of its
members, disbanded it by force.

Little by little people began to oppose this rule. They objected to
being robbed of their rights by the rabble just as much as by the
Czar.

When the Russian armies were disbanded, there were some troops that
refused to throw down their arms. Among them were the regiments of
Czecho-Slovaks. These men had been forced, against their will, to
serve in the Austrian army. They were from the northern part of the
Austrian empire, Bohemia and Moravia. They were Slavs, related to the
Russians, speaking a language very much like Russian, hating the
Germans of Austria and anxious to free their country from the empire
of the Hapsburgs. When General Brusiloff made his big attack in June,
1916, these men had deserted the Austrian army and re-enlisted as
Russians. They could not get back to Austria for the Austrians would
shoot them as deserters. Of course, the Austrian and the German
generals would make no peace with them. Therefore, this army, 200,000
strong, kept their own officers and their order and their arms and
refused to have anything to do with the cowardly peace made by the
Bolsheviki. Several thousand of them made their way across Siberia,
across the Pacific Ocean, across America, across the Atlantic to
France and Italy, where they are fighting by the thousands in the
armies of the Entente. The main body of them, however, are still in
Russia (August 1, 1918), holding the great Siberian railway, fully
ready to renew the war against the central powers at any time when the
patriotic Russians will rise and help them. The problem of how to get
aid to the Czechs without angering the Russian people is a big one for
the allied statesmen.

The trouble with the Russians is that they are not educated; the
result of this is that they readily believe the lies of spies and
tricksters, that would never deceive an educated man.

Questions for Review

1. Was the Russian government as harsh as that of Germany?
2. Why was Russia a source of weakness to the Entente?
3. Why was Rasputin killed?
4. Why did the Czars prefer the Cossacks?
5. What classes fought after the Czar's downfall?
6. How did the central powers take advantage of Russia's troubles?
7. How did the peace with the Bolsheviki help Germany?
8. Explain where the Czecho-Slovak army came from.

CHAPTER XXIII

The United States at War--Why?

Germany throws to the winds all rules of civilized war.--Dr.
Zimmermann's famous note.--Congress declares war.--Other nations
follow our example.--The plight of Holland, Denmark, and
Norway.--German arguments for submarine warfare shown to be
groundless.--German agents blow up American factories.--German threats
against the United States.--Germany and the Monroe Doctrine.--A
government whose deeds its people cannot question.--Why American
troops were sent to Europe.--Why the war lords wanted peace in
January, 1918.

In the meantime, two months had elapsed from the time when the German
ambassador, Count Von Bernstorff, had been sent home by the United
States. The Germans, true to their word, had begun their campaign of
attacking and sinking without warning ships of all kinds in the waters
surrounding Great Britain and France. Even the hospital ships, marked
plainly with the red cross, and boats carrying food to the starving
people of Belgium, were torpedoed without mercy. The curious state of
public feeling in Germany is well illustrated by an incident which
happened at this time. It so happened that an English hospital ship,
crossing the channel, was laden with about as many German wounded as
British. These men had been left helpless on the field of battle after
the Germans had retreated, and had been picked up and cared for by the
British, along with their own troops. A German submarine with its
deadly torpedo sent this vessel to the bottom. The wounded men, German
and British alike, sank without the slightest chance for their lives.
A burst of indignation came from all over Germany against the
"unspeakable brutality" of the British who dared to expose German
wounded men to the danger of travel on the open sea! The British were
warned that if this happened again the Germans would make reprisals
upon British prisoners in their hands.

[Illustration: Flight from a Torpedoed Ocean Liner]

Week followed week and still there was no declaration of war between
the United States and Germany. But in the latter part of February, the
United States government made public a note which its secret agents
had stopped from being delivered to the German ambassador in Mexico.
It was signed by Dr. Zimmermann, German minister of foreign affairs,
and it requested the ambassador as soon as it was certain that there
would be an outbreak of war with the United States as a result of the
sinking of ships without warning, to propose to Mexico that she ally
herself with Germany. "Together we will make war on the United
States," said Dr. Zimmermann, "and together we will make peace. Mexico
will receive as her reward her lost provinces of Arizona, Texas, and
New Mexico." "Ask the Mexican government," said Dr. Zimmermann, "to
propose to the Japanese that Japan break away from her alliance with
England and join Mexico and Germany in an attack upon the United
States."

The publication of this note made a tremendous change in feeling in
the United States. Up to this time a great portion of the people had
felt that perhaps we were hasty in breaking off relations with
Germany, and in their earnest desire for peace had been willing to put
up with injury and even insults on the part of the Germans, excusing
them on the grounds of their military necessity. The publication of
Dr. Zimmermann's note, however, showed the people of the United States
the true temper of the government at Berlin. It showed them that the
German war lords had no respect for anything but brute force, that the
language of cannon was the only language which they could understand,
and that any further patience on the part of this country would be
looked upon as weakness and treated with scorn and contempt.

On the sixth of April, 1917, Congress, called into session by the
President, by an overwhelming vote declared that a state of war
existed between the United States of America and the Imperial
Government of Germany.

At this point it may be well to sum up the causes that brought the
United States into the great war. These causes may be given under two
heads: (1) the war waged upon us by submarines; and (2) the German
plots and threats against our country at a time when we were at peace
with them. The latter, as given in pages to follow, comprise: (a) The
Kaiser's threat, (b) Admiral Von Tirpitz's threat, (c) the blowing up
of American factories and death of American workingmen, (d) the
attempt to get us into war with Japan and Mexico, and (e) the spending
of the German government's money in an attempt to make our congressmen
vote as Germany wished.

[Illustration: President Wilson reading his War Message to Congress]

The Submarine War

Up to the time when the United States declared war, two hundred and
twenty-six Americans, men, women, and infants, had met their death
through the sinking of ships, torpedoed without warning, under orders
of the German government. These people were peaceable travelers, going
about their business on the high seas in passenger steamers owned by
private companies. According to the law observed by all nations up to
this time there was no more reason for them to fear danger from the
Germans than if they had been traveling on trains in South America or
Spain, or any other country not at war. The attack upon these ships,
to say nothing about the brutal and inhuman method of sinking them
without warning, was an act of war on the part of Germany against any
country whose citizens happened to be traveling on these ocean
steamers. That the action of the United States in calling the
submarine attacks an act of war was only justice is proved by the fact
that several other nations, who had nothing to gain by going to war
and had earnestly desired to remain neutral, took the same stand.
Brazil, Cuba, and several other South and Central American republics
found that they could not maintain their honor without declaring war
on Germany. German ambassadors and ministers have been dismissed from
practically every capital in Spanish America.

In Europe, also, neutral nations like Holland, Denmark, and Norway saw
their ships sunk and their citizens drowned. In spite of their wrongs,
however, the first two did not dare to declare war on Germany, as the
Germans would be able to throw a strong army across the border and
overrun each of these two little countries before the allies could
come to their help. With the fate of Belgium and Serbia before them,
the Danes and the Dutch swallowed their pride and sat helplessly by
while Germany killed their sailors and defenseless passengers. After
the failure of the Entente to protect Serbia and Roumania, no one
could blame Denmark and Holland.

Norway, too, was exposed to danger of a raid by the German fleet.
Commanding the Skager Rack and Cattegat as they did, with the Kiel
Canal connecting them, the Germans could bombard the cities on the
Norwegian coast or even land an army to invade the country. The three
little countries together do not have an army any larger than that of
Roumania, and it would have been out of the question for them to
declare war on Germany without seeing their whole territory overrun
and laid waste.

Nevertheless public opinion in Norway was so strong against Germany
that the Norwegian government, on November first, 1917 sent a vigorous
protest to Berlin, closing with these words:

"The Norwegian government will not again state its views, as it has
already done so on several occasions, as to the violation of the
principles of the freedom of the high seas incurred by the
proclamation of large tracts of the ocean as a war zone and by the
sinking of neutral merchant ships not carrying contraband.

"It has made a profound impression on the Norwegian people that not
only have German submarines continued to sink peaceful neutral
merchant ships, paying no attention to the fate of their crews, but
that even German warships adopted the same tactics. The Norwegian
government decided to send this note in order to bring to the
attention of the German government the impression these acts have made
upon the Norwegian people."

The two arguments that the Germans used in trying to justify
themselves for their inhuman methods with the submarine are: (1) that
on these ships which were sunk were supplies for the French and
British armies, the arrival of which would aid them in killing
Germans, and (2) that the English, by their blockade of Germany, were
doing something which was contrary to the laws of nations and starving
German women and children, and, therefore, since England was breaking
some rules of the war game, Germany had the right to go ahead and
break others.

The trade of the United States in selling war supplies to France and
England was a sore spot with Germany. They claimed that the United
States was unfair in selling to the Entente and not to them. Of
course, this was foolish, as has been pointed out, for the United
States was just as ready to sell to Germany as to the Allies, as was
shown by the two voyages of the Deutschland. If our government had
forbidden our people to sell war supplies at all, and if other neutral
countries had done the same thing, then the result would be that all
wars would be won by the country which made the biggest preparation
for war in times of peace. A law passed by neutral countries
forbidding their merchants from selling munitions would leave a
non-military nation, which had not been getting ready for war,
absolutely at the mercy of a neighbor who for years had been storing
up shells and guns for the purpose of unrighteous conquest. So clear
was this right to sell munitions that Germany did not dare protest,
but ordered Austria to do so instead. In reply, our government was
able to point out cases where Austrian firms had sold guns, etc., to
Great Britain during the Boer War as you have already been told, and
Austria had no answer to give.

What is more, at all of the meetings of the diplomats of different
nations at the Hague, called for the purpose of trying to prevent
future wars, if possible, or at least to make them more humane and
less brutal to the women and children and others who were not actually
fighting, Germany had always upheld the right of neutral nations to
sell arms. Moreover, her representatives had fought strongly against
any proposals to settle disputes by arbitration and peaceful
agreements. At a time when many European nations signed treaties with
the United States agreeing to allow one year to elapse between a
dispute which might lead to war and the actual declaring of war
itself, Germany positively refused to consider such an agreement.

As for the English blockade, England was doing no more to Germany than
Germany or any other country would have done to England if the English
navy had not been so strong. In our own Civil War the North kept up a
like blockade of the South and no nation protested against it, for it
was recognized as an entirely legal act. In the Franco-Prussian war of
1871, the Germans were blockading the city of Paris and the country
around it. The Frenchmen tried to send their women and children
outside the lines to be fed. The Germans drove them back at the point
of the bayonet, and told them that they might "fry in their own fat."
According to the laws of war they were perfectly justified in what
they did. Then, too, the English blockade, which stopped ships which
were found to be loaded with supplies for Germany and took them
peaceably to an English port, where it was decided how much the owners
should be paid for the cargoes, was a very different matter from the
brutal drowning of helpless men, women, and children by the German
submarines. In one case, owners of the goods were caused a great deal
of annoyance and in some instances did not get their money promptly.
On the other side, there was murder of the most fiendish kind, an act
of war against neutral states.

Plots and Threats Against the United States

[Illustration: American Grain Set on Fire by German Agents]

Let us turn now to the second cause for grievance that the United
States had against Germany. At a time when American citizens who
sympathized with Germany were subscribing millions of dollars for the
relief of the German wounded, it is strongly suspected that this was
the very money, which, collected by the German government's own
agents, was being spent in plots involving the destroying of the
property of some American citizens and the death of others. The German
ambassador and his helpers were hiring men to blow up American
factories, to destroy railroad bridges, and to kill Americans who were
making war supplies for the armies of Europe. Factory after factory
was blown up with considerable loss of life. Bombs, with clock work
attachment to explode them at a certain time, were found on ships
sailing for Europe. Money was poured out in great quantities to
influence members of the United States Congress to vote against the
shipment of war supplies to France and England. Revolts paid for by
German money were organized in Mexico and the Islands of the West
Indies. For a long time there had been a series of stories and
newspaper and magazine articles trying to prove to the American people
that Japan was planning to make war on us. The same sort of stories
appeared in Japan, persuading the Japanese that they were in danger of
being attacked by the United States. It now appears that the great
part of these stories were started by the Germans, who hoped to get us
into a war with Japan and profit by the ill will which must follow
between the two countries.

At first, Americans were inclined to think that all of these things
could be traced to German-Americans, whose zeal for their Fatherland
caused them to go too far. But it has been proved beyond a doubt that
all of these acts, which were really acts of war against the United
States, were ordered by the government at Berlin and paid for by
German money, or by American money which had been contributed for the
benefit of the German Red Cross service.

In addition to these facts there were threats against the United
States which could not be ignored. The Kaiser had told our ambassador
at Berlin, Mr. Gerard, that "America had better beware after this war"
for he "would stand no nonsense from her." Admiral Von Tirpitz, the
German Secretary of the Navy, also told Mr. Gerard that Germany needed
the coast of Belgium as a place from which to start her "future war on
England and America."

American statesmen were seriously concerned at threats of this kind,
for they knew that the government in power at Berlin could absolutely
command its people, and by forbidding certain kinds of news and
substituting other things in the German newspapers could make the
German people think anything which the war lords wished them to think.
Thus there was great danger that, having won the war from the Entente
or having stood them off successfully until the fight was declared a
draw, Germany would next attack the United States with the idea of
collecting from this comparatively defenseless and very rich country
the huge indemnity which she had planned to assess upon France and
Russia. With this money and with the breaking down of the Monroe
Doctrine, Germany could set up a great empire in South America which
would make her almost as powerful as she would have been had her first
plans for crushing France and Russia been successful.

You will recall, from your study of United States history, that
President Monroe had warned European governments to keep their hands
off South America, for the United States would act as big brother to
any of the little republics there who might be attacked by a European
foe. Germany in recent years has resented this very vigorously. There
were nearly half a million Germans in the southern part of Brazil.
Uruguay and the Argentine Republic also had large German settlements.
If the Monroe Doctrine were out of the way, Germany hoped that she
would be able to get a footing in these countries in which she had
colonists and gradually to gain control of the entire country. In the
fall of 1917 there was uncovered a plot among the German residents of
certain states in the southern part of Brazil to make this territory a
part of the German Colonial Empire. This discovery, along with the
sinking of Brazilian ships by submarines, drove Brazil into war with
Germany.

To sum up: The United States entered the war: first, because German
submarines were killing her peaceful citizens and stopping her lawful
trade; second, because paid agents of the German government were
destroying American property in the United States, killing American
citizens, and creating discord in our political life; they were
pretending to be friendly and yet were trying to enlist Japan and
Mexico in war against us; third, for the reason that because of
Germany's threats and her well-known policy in South America there was
grave danger that it would be our turn next if the central powers
should come out of the European war uncrushed.

The American government has made it plain that we are not moved by any
desire for gain for ourselves. We have nothing to win through the war
except the assurance that our nation will be safe. If Germany had a
government which the people controlled, then the United States could
trust promises of that government. But, as President Wilson has
pointed out, no one can trust the present government of Germany, for
it is responsible to no one for what it does. It has torn up sacred
promises, which its Chancellor called "scraps of paper"; it has broken
its word; it has ordered "acts of frightfulness" in the lands which it
has conquered and on the high seas, with the idea of brutally forcing
its will upon enemies and neutral countries alike. It has deceived its
own people, persuading them that they were attacked by France and
Russia, while all the time it was plotting to rule the world through
force of arms.

President Wilson has said that the object of the United States in this
war is "to make the world safe for democracy." This means that a free
people, who have no desire to interfere with any of their neighbors or
to make conquests by force of arms, shall be allowed to live their
lives without preparation for war and without fear that they may be
attacked by a nation with military rulers.

We have seen how France, attacked in 1870 and threatened by Germany in
1875, 1905, of war and 1911 was obliged to match gun for gun and ship
for ship with her warlike neighbor to the east. The dread of an attack
by the military party of Germany hung over France like a shadow
throughout forty-three years of a peace which was only a little better
than war, because of the vast amount of money that had to be spent and
the attention that had to be given to preparation for the war that all
felt would one day come.

When once the German people have a controlling voice in the
government, then, and not till then, can other governments believe the
word of the statesmen at Berlin. But at present the citizens of
Germany have little real power. For, while they can elect members of
the Reichstag, the Reichstag can pass no laws, for above this body is
the national council, whose members are appointed by the Kaiser and
the other kings and grand dukes. The power of declaring war and making
peace lies practically in the hands of the Kaiser alone, and at any
moment he can set aside any of Germany's laws, under the plea that
"military necessity" calls for certain things to be done. In this way,
he has thrown into prison those who dared to speak against the war,
and has either suppressed newspapers or ordered them to print only
what he wished printed; thus the German people have let him do their
thinking for them.

They are a docile people. One of the first words that a German baby is
taught to say is "Kaiser," and all of the schools, which are run by
the government, have taught nothing but respect for the present form
of government, and almost a worship of the Kaiser himself. What it is
hoped that this war will bring about is the freeing of the German
people from their blind obedience to the military power, which for its
own glory and pride has hurled them by the millions to death.

The United States has adopted plans in this war which are very
different from any hitherto used. With the exception of some troops
raised for a few months during the dark days of the War of the
Rebellion, all of our armies have been recruited from men who enlisted
of their own free will. In this great conflict in which we are now
engaged, the government has drawn its soldiers by lot from a list of
all the young men in the country between the ages of twenty-one and
thirty-one. Thus, rich and poor alike are fighting in our ranks.

For the first time in our history our troops have been sent to fight
on another continent. Many persons have felt that we should keep our
young men at home and wait for Germany to cross the Atlantic in order
to attack us. Our statesmen, on the other hand, saw that the peace of
the world was at stake. If Germany, Austria, and Turkey, the three
countries whose people have no voice in the question of peace or war,
come out of this conflict victorious, or even undefeated, the world
will see again the mad race for armaments which resulted in the war of
1914. If, on the other hand, the people of these nations realize that
it is true today, as in the olden times, that those people who take up
the sword shall perish by the sword, they will overthrow their leaders
and agree to disarm and live at peace in future with their neighbors.

The military parties in Austria and Germany wanted war. The only way
by which these people can be convinced is by brute force. When they
realize that they have not gained by war, but have lost, not only a
great deal of their wealth, through the terrific cost of the war, but
the friendship and respect of the whole world, when they realize that
the nations allied against them will push the war relentlessly until
these military chiefs confess that they never want to hear the word
"war" again, then, and only then, will they be ready to throw down
their arms and agree to join a league of the nations whose object
shall be to prevent any future wars.

As long as Germany was victorious and her people thought that they
were going to come out of the conflict with added territory and big
money indemnities, war was popular. But with the flower of their young
men slain, and the prospect of conquest and plunder growing smaller
and smaller with each passing month, the Germans, too, are beginning
to hate the thought of war.

The American army can give the finishing touch to the German downfall
along the western front, and the sooner the Germans realize that they
cannot win from the rapidly growing number of their enemies, the
sooner will come the the end of this greatest tragedy in the civilized
world.

The war lords knew that if the war lasted long enough they must be
defeated and they were striving hard all through the years 1916 and
1917 to make peace while they had possession of enough of the enemy's
lands so that they could show their own people some gain in territory
to pay them back for their terrible sufferings. The German war debt
was so great that the war lords dreaded to face their own people after
the latter realized that they had been deceived as well as defeated.
The government had told them (1) that England, France, and Russia
forced this war upon Germany, (2) that the German armies would win the
war in short order, and (3) that a huge sum of money would be
collected from France, Belgium, and Russia to pay the expenses of the
war. The war lords dreaded to think of the time when their people,
knowing that they themselves will have to bear the fearful burden of
war debt, learned also that the whole tragedy was forced upon the
world by the pride and ambition of their own leaders. By Christmas
1917, the Kaiser was once more hinting that Germany was ready to talk
peace. He was wise, for if peace could have been made then it would
have left Germany absolute mistress of all of middle Europe. Austria,
Bulgaria, and Turkey were more under the control of the Kaiser and his
war lords than were parts of his own empire like Bavaria and Saxony.
In Belgium, Serbia, Poland, Lithuania, Roumania, and northern France
the central powers had over forty millions of people who were
compelled to work for them like slaves. The plunder collected from
these countries ran into billions of dollars. The road to the east,
cut asunder by the results of the second Balkan war (see map),
had been forced open by the rush of the victorious German armies
through Serbia and Roumania. A peace at this time would have been a
German victory. With the drain on the man power of the central powers,
with dissatisfaction growing among their people, with the steady
increase in the armies of the United States, time was fighting on the
side of the allies.

Questions for Review

1. Does the Zimmermann note show that the German government
understood conditions in Mexico and the United States?
2. Why did the Zimmermann note have so strong an effect upon American
public opinion?
3. What were the steps by which the United States was forced into
war?
4. Why did not Holland and Denmark declare war on Germany also?
5. What was the main difference between the English blockade of
Germany and the German submarine war on England?
6. Was the German government responsible for the acts of its agents
in this country?
7. What is the Monroe Doctrine?
8. Why could not the Imperial Government of Germany be trusted?
9. How was this war different for the United States from any previous
conflict?
10. What was the greatest obstacle to peace?

CHAPTER XXIV

Europe as it Should Be

Natural boundaries of nations in Europe.--Peoples outside of the
nations with whom they belong.--The mixture of peoples in
Austria-Hungary, and Russia.--The British Isles.--The Balkan
states.--Recent changes in the map.--The wrongs done by mighty nations
upon their weak neighbors bring no happiness.

We have several times shown you, in the course of this little history,
maps drawn by kings and marked off by diplomacy and through bloodshed.
Let us now examine a map of Europe divided according to the race and
language of its various peoples. It often happens that the boundaries
set by nature, like seas, high mountains, and broad rivers, divide one
people from another. It is natural that the people of Italy, for
instance, hemmed in by the Alps to the north and by the water on all
other sides, should grow to be like each other and come to talk a
common language.

In the same way, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Spain, France, Great
Britain, and Switzerland have boundaries largely set by nature. On
this account, it is not surprising that the map of "Europe as it
should be" which unites people of the same blood under the same
government, agrees rather closely in some places with the map of
Europe as it is.

The boundaries of the kingdom of Spain and those of the kingdom of
Portugal fit pretty closely the countries inhabited by Spanish and
Portuguese peoples.

There are a few Italians in France, also a few Walloons and Flemish.
Otherwise France is largely a unit. Some of the French people are
found in Switzerland and others in that part of the German Empire
which was taken away from France after the Franco-Prussian war of
1870.

The Danes are not all living in Denmark. A great many of them inhabit
the two provinces of Schleswig and Holstein which were torn away from
Denmark by Prussia in 1864. The high mountains of the Scandinavian
peninsula separate the Norwegians from the Swedes about as well as
they divide the countries geographically.

The Hollanders make a nation by themselves, but part of the
northwestern corner of the German Empire is also peopled by Dutch. The
territory around Aix-La-Chapelle, although part of the German Empire,
is inhabited by Walloons, a Celtic people who speak a sort of French.
Belgium, small as it is, contains two different types of population,
the Walloons and the Flemish.

The German Empire does not include all of the Germans. A great many of
these are to be found in Austria proper, Styria (sty̆'rĭȧ), and the
northern Tyrol (ty̆'rol) (western counties of the Austrian Empire),
as well as in the eastern half of Switzerland and the edges of Bohemia.
Germans are also to be found in parts of Hungary; and in the Baltic
provinces of Russia there are over two million of them.

All of the Italians are not in the kingdom of Italy. The Island of
Corsica, which belongs to France, is inhabited by Italians. The
province of Trentino (trĕn ti'nō) (the southern half of the
Austrian Tyrol) is inhabited almost entirely by Italians, as is also
Istria, which includes the cities of Trieste, Pola, and Fiume. Certain
islands off the coast of Dalmatia are also largely Italian in their
population.

The republic of Switzerland is inhabited by French, Italians, and
Germans. Besides the languages of these three nations, a fourth tongue
is spoken there. In the valleys of the southeastern corner of
Switzerland are found people who talk a corruption of the old Latin,
which they call Romaunsch or Romansh.

Austria-Hungary, as has already been said, is a jumble of languages
and nationalities. This empire includes nearly a million Italians in
its southwestern corner, and three million Roumanians in Transylvania.
It has as its subjects in Bosnia and Herzegovina several million
Serbians. In Slavonia (slȧ vō'nĭ ȧ), Croatia (crō a'tia),
and Dalmatia (dăl mā tia), it has two or three million Slavs,
who are closely related to the Serbians. In the north, its government
rules over several million Czechs (chĕcks) (Bohemians and
Moravians) who strongly desire to have a country of their own. It
controls also two million Slovaks, cousins of the Czechs, who also
would like their independence. In the county of Carniola (car ni
ō'lȧ), there are one and a half million Slovenes, another Slavic
people belonging either by themselves or with their cousins, the
Croatians and Serbs.

The German Empire includes several hundred thousand Frenchmen, who
want to get back under French control, a million or two Danes, who
want once more to belong to Denmark, and several million Poles, who
desire to see their country again united.

[Map: Europe as It Should Be]

Russia rules over a mixture of peoples almost as numerous as those
composing Austria-Hungary. The Russians themselves are not one people.
The Red Russians or Ruthenians are quite different from the people of
Little Russia, and they in turn are different from the people of Great
Russia, to the north. The Baltic provinces are peopled, not by
Russians, but by two million Germans, an equal number of Letts and a
somewhat greater number of Lithuanians. North of Riga are to be found
the Esthonians, cousins of the Finns. North-west of Petrograd lies
Finland, whose people, with the Esthonians, do not belong to the
Indo-European family, and who would dearly love to have a separate
government of their own.

[Illustration: Polish children]

You have already been told in Chapter V that the country of the
English, if limited by race, does not include Wales, Cornwall, or the
north of Scotland, but instead takes in the north-eastern part of
Ireland and the southern half of the former Scottish kingdom.

Turning to the Balkan states, we find our hardest task, for the reason
that peoples of different nationalities are hopelessly mixed and
jumbled. There are Turks and Greeks mixed in with the Roumanians and
Bulgarians in the Dobrudja. Parts of southern Serbia and portions of
Grecian Macedonia are inhabited by people of Bulgarian descent.
Transylvania, with the exception of the two little mixture islands
mentioned before is inhabited by Roumanians. The southern half of the
Austrian province of Bukowina also ought to be part of Roumania, as
should the greater part of the Russian state of Bessarabia. Whereas
Roumania now has a population of 7,000,000, there are between five and
six million of her people who live outside her present boundaries.

The shores and islands of the Aegean Sea should belong to Greece.
Greek people have inhabited them for thousands of years. The Albanians
are a separate people, while Montenegro and Bosnia should be joined to
Serbia.

Turn back to previous maps of Europe in this volume and you will see
that most of the changes that have been made of late years are
bringing boundaries nearer where they should be. You will also note
that wherever there have been recent changes contrary to this plan,
they have always resulted in more bloodshed. The partition of Poland,
the annexation of Schleswig, Alsace, and Lorraine to Germany, the
division of Bulgarian Macedonia between Serbia and Greece, and the
seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria are good examples.

Questions for Review

1. What countries of Europe have fairly well-marked natural
boundaries?
2. Who are the Walloons?
3. Who are the Romansh people?
4. To what other people are the Esthonians related?

[Illustration: The price of the war]

CHAPTER XXV

The Cost of It All

What war debts mean--The devastation of farms and villages--Diseases
which travel with war--The men picked to die first--The survivors and
their children--The effect on France of Napoleon's wars--What Hannibal
did to Rome--What happened to the Franks--Sweden before and after the
wars of Charles XII--Europe at the close of the Great War

In the meanwhile, all the countries in the war were rapidly rushing
toward bankruptcy. England spent $30,000,000 a day; France, Germany,
and Austria nearly as much apiece. Thus in the course of a year, a
debt of $300 was piled upon every man, woman, and child in the British
kingdom. The average family consists of five persons, so that this
means a debt of $1500 per family for each year that the war lasted.
The income of the average family in Great Britain is less than $500 in
a year, and the amount of money that they can save out of this sum is
very small. Yet the British people are obliged to add this tremendous
debt to the already very large amount that they owe, and will have to
go on paying interest on it for hundreds of years.

In the same fashion, debts piled up for the peoples of France,
Germany, Austria, Russia and all the countries in the war. In spite of
what we have said above of the average income of English families,
Great Britain is rich when compared with Austria and Russia. What is
more, Great Britain is practically unscarred, while on the continent
great tracts of land which used to be well cultivated farms have been
laid waste with reckless abandon. East Prussia, Poland, Lithuania,
Galicia, part of Hungary, Alsace, Serbia, Bosnia, northern France,
south-western Austria-Hungary, and all of Belgium and Roumania, a
territory amounting to one-fifth of the whole of Europe, were scarred
and burned and devastated.

It will be years and years before these countries recover from the
effects of war's invasion. For every man killed on the field of
battle, it is estimated that two people die among the noncombatants.
Children whose fathers are at the front, frail women trying to do the
work of men, aged inhabitants of destroyed villages die by the
thousands from want of food and shelter.

In the trail of war come other evils. People do not have time to look
after their health or even to keep clean. As a result, diseases like
the plagues of olden times, which civilization thought it had killed,
come to life again and destroy whole cities. The dreadful typhus fever
killed off one-fifth of the population of Serbia during the winter of
1914. Cholera raged among the Austrian troops in the fall of the same
year. For every soldier who is killed on the field of battle, three
others die from disease or wounds or lack of proper care.

[Illustration: Rendered Homeless by War]

In time of war, the first men picked are the very flower of the
country, the strong, the athletic, the brave, the very sort of men who
ought to be carefully saved as the fathers of the people to come. As
these are killed or disabled, governments draw on the older men who
are still vigorous and hardy. Then finally they call out the unfit,
the sickly, the weak, the aged, and the young boys. As a general rule,
the members of this last class make up the bulk of the men who survive
the war. They, instead of the strong and healthy, become the fathers
of the next generation of children.

In the days of the Roman republic, 220 years B.C., there stood on the
coast of North Africa a city named Carthage, which, like Rome, owned
lands far and near. Carthage would have been satisfied to "live and
let live," but Rome would not have it so. As a result, the two cities
engaged in three terrible wars which ended in the destruction of
Carthage. But before Carthage was finally blotted off the map, her
great general, Hannibal, dealt Rome a blow which brought her to her
knees, and came very near destroying her completely. Five Roman
armies, averaging 30,000 men apiece, he trapped and slaughtered. The
death of these 150,000 men was a loss from which Rome never recovered.
From this time on, her citizens were made of poorer stuff, and the old
Roman courage and Roman honor and Roman free government began to
decline.

The Germanic tribes (the Goths, Franks, Lombards, etc.) who swarmed
into the Roman Empire about the year 400 A.D., although they were
barbarians, nevertheless had many excellent qualities. They were
brave, hardy men and stood for freedom from tyrants. However, they
fought so many wars that they were gradually killed off. Take the
Franks, for example; the three grandsons of Charlemagne, who had
divided up his great empire, fought a disastrous war with one another,
which ended in a great battle that almost wiped out the Frankish
nation. This happened about 840 A.D.

Sweden was once one of the great powers of Europe. However, about 1700
A.D., she had a king named Charles XII, who tried to conquer Russia
and Poland. He was finally defeated at a little town in the southern
part of Russia nearly a thousand miles away from home, and his great
army was wiped out. After his time, Sweden sank to the level of a
second class nation. The bodies of her best men had been strewn on
battlefields reaching from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Black Sea.

[Illustration: Charles XII of Sweden]

For eighty years after the time of Napoleon, the French nation showed
a lower birth rate and produced smaller and weaker men than it had one
hundred years previously. The reason for this is easily found. During
the twenty-three years of terrible fighting which followed the
execution of the king, France left her finest young men dead all over
the face of Europe. They died by the thousands in Spain, in Italy, in
Austria, in Germany, and above all, amidst the snows and ice of
Russia. Only within the last twenty years have the French, through
their new interest in out-of-door sports and athletics, begun once
more to build up a hardy, vigorous race of young men. And now came
this terrible war to set France back where she was one hundred years
ago.

Picture Europe at the close of this great war; the flower of her young
manhood gone; the survivors laden with debts which will keep them in
poverty for years to come; trade and agriculture at a standstill; but
worst of all, the feeling of friendship between nations, of world
brotherhood, postponed one hundred years. Hatred of nation for nation
is stronger than ever.

Questions for Review

1. How does a nation at war increase its debts?
2. Why do diseases thrive in war time?
3. What became of the Goths and Franks?
4. Why was the reign of Charles XII disastrous to Sweden?
5. What was the effect of Napoleon's many wars upon the strength of
the French nation?
6. Is war growing more humane?

CHAPTER XXVI

What Germany Must Learn

The German plot.--What the Czar's prohibition order did.--Where
Germany miscalculated.--Where England and America failed to
understand.--An appeal to force must be answered by force.--Effect of
the Russian revolution.--"It never must happen again."--The league to
enforce peace.--The final lesson.

Before 1914 friends of peace in all countries, but especially in
English speaking lands, had hoped that there would never again be a
real war between civilized nations.

Among the people of the United States and Great Britain it was
unbelievable that any group of responsible rulers would deliberately
plot, in the twentieth century, the enslaving of the world through
military force, as we now know that the war lords of Prussia and
Austria planned it. However, the plot was not only made but was almost
successful. They made, though, a great mistake in the case of England.
They were sure that she would not enter the war. Her turn was to come
later on, after France and Russia had been crushed. The German leaders
were also mistaken in calculating the time that Russia would take to
mobilize her troops. In 1904, at the outbreak of the war against
Japan, the Russian soldiers had become so drunk that it was many weeks
before they could be gotten into any kind of military shape. But at
the outbreak of the great "world-war" the order of the Czar which
stopped the sale of strong drink changed all of Prussia's plans.
Instead of taking two or three months to assemble her army, Russia had
her troops marching in a mighty force through the German province of
East Prussia three weeks after the war had opened. The result was that
the German soldiers had to be sent back from northern France to stop
the victorious march of the Slavs. The battle of the Marne, fought in
the first week of September, 1914, decided the fate of the world. It
hung in the balance long enough to prove that a small addition to the
forces on either side might have made all the difference in the world
in the final outcome. The little British army, which was less than
one-eighth of the force of the Allied side, probably furnished the
factor that defeated the Germans. The presence in the battle of the
German troops who had been withdrawn to stop the Russians, might have
given victory to the invaders.

Germany made a mistake, also, in expecting Italy to join in the attack
on France. Any one of these three factors might have won the war in
short order for the forces of Austria and Germany. With France
crushed, as she might have been, in spite of her heroic resistance,
without the help of the tiny British army, or with the intervention of
Italy on the side of her former allies, it would have been no
difficult task for the combined forces of Germany and Austria to pound
the vast Russian armies into confusion, collect a big indemnity from
both France and Russia, and be back home, as the Kaiser had promised,
before the leaves fell from the trees.

As has been said, the great majority of the citizens in nations where
the people rule, could not believe that in this day and age the rulers
of any civilized country would deliberately plot robbery and piracy on
so grand a scale. They had looked forward to the time when all nations
might disarm and live in peace with their neighbors. In France alone,
of all the western nations, was there any clear idea of the Prussian
plan. France, having learned the temper of the Prussian war lords in
1870, France, burdened by a national debt heaped high by the big
indemnity collected by the Germans in '71, looked in apprehension to
the east and leaped to arms at the first rattling of the Prussian
saber.

Germany, up to 1866 renowned chiefly for her poets, musicians, and
thinkers, had since been fed for nearly fifty years upon the doctrine
that military force is the only power in the world worth considering.
Some of the German people still cling to the high ideals of their
ancestors, but the majority had drunk deeply of the wine of conquest
and were intoxicated with the idea that Germany's mission in life was
to conquer all the other nations of the world and rule them for their
own good by German thoroughness and by German efficiency. It may take
many years to stamp this feeling out of the German nation. As they
have worshipped force and appealed to force as the settler of all
questions, so they will listen to reason only after they have been
thoroughly crushed by a superior force. The sufferings brought upon
the German nation by the war have had a great effect in making them
doubt whether, after all, force is a good thing. As long as the people
could be kept enthusiastic through stories of wonderful victories over
the Russians, the Serbians, and then the Roumanians, they were
contented to endure all manner of hardships.

Someone has said that no people are happier than those living in a
despotism, if the right kind of man is the despot. So the German
people, although they were governed strictly by the military rule,
nevertheless, were contented as long as they were prosperous and
victorious in war. With the rumors and fears of defeat, however, they
began to doubt their government. There are indications that sweeping
reforms in the election of representatives in the Reichstag and in the
power of that body itself will take place before long.

The Russian revolution was in some respects a blow to the central
powers. In the first place the fact that Russia had a despot for a
ruler while England, France, and Italy were countries where the people
elected their law makers, made it impossible that there should be the
best of understanding between the allies. Then, again, the various
peoples of Austria-Hungary, while they were not happy under the rule
of the Hapsburg family, were afraid lest, if they became subjects of
the Czar, it would be "jumping from the frying pan into the fire."
They would rather bear the evils of the Austrian rule than risk what
the Czar and the grand dukes might do to them. Turkey, likewise, was
bound to stick to Germany to the end, because of her fear that Russia
would seize Constantinople. When the new government of Russia, then,
announced that they did not desire to annex by force any territory,
but only wished to free the peoples who were in bondage, it removed
the fear of the Turks as far as their capital city was concerned; it
showed the Poles, Ruthenians, and Czechs of Austria that they were in
no danger of being swallowed up in the Russian empire, but that, on
the other hand, the Russians wanted them to be free, like themselves;
it showed the German people how easily a whole nation, when united,
could get rid of its rulers, and encouraged the bold spirits who had
never favored the military rule.

The nations of the Entente, including the United States, are now
united in an effort to stamp out the curse of feudalism in Austria and
in Germany--a curse which has disappeared from all other parts of the
civilized world. They are united to crush the military spirit of
conquest which exists among the war leaders of the Prussians. They are
pledged "to make the world safe for democracy" as President Wilson has
said; to do away with the rule of force. So long as the governments of
Germany, Austria, and Turkey place the military power at all times
above the civil power, so long will it be necessary to police the
world. There must be no repetition of the savage attack of August,
1914. There was a time when many of us believed that some one nation,
by disbanding its army and refusing to build warships, might set an
example of disarming which all the world would finally follow. It now
is plain that there must be a "League to Enforce Peace" as
Ex-President Taft and other American statesmen have declared. The
United States, Great Britain, Russia, France, Italy, Belgium,
Portugal, Serbia, Greece, together with Spain, Holland, Norway,
Sweden, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and other nations where the will of
the people is the law, must unite in an alliance which will insist on
arbitration as a means of settling disputes.

In 1870, Great Britain and the United States had a dispute which might
well have led to war. Instead of fighting over it, however, they laid
their trouble before a court of five men, a Swiss, an Italian, a
Brazilian, an Englishman, and an American. This court, by a vote of
four to one, decided against England, and England accepted the
decision as final, although it cost her many millions of dollars.

The League to Enforce Peace must insist that each nation in the world
maintain only a small force of soldiers, to be used as police for its
own affairs, and there must be an international police to settle all
differences between nations and to enforce the orders of the court of
arbitration. In time (no one knows how soon) the people of Germany and
Austria will be freed from the military rule which now has the power
to hurl them into war. When that day arrives and they learn that they
have been led astray by Treitschke and Bernhardi, who preached that
war was a blessing to a nation and that only the powerful nations had
the right to survive, they will know that "Thou shalt not kill" is
just as strong a commandment today as when it first was uttered.

Sometime, nations will learn that other nations have the right to
live, and that no country can wrong another through force of arms
without suffering for it in the end. In a blunted conscience, in the
loss of the sympathy of the rest of the world, in a lessening of the
Christ-spirit of doing good to others, the nation which resorts to
force to gratify its own selfish ends, like the individual, pays the
full penalty for its misdeeds. It, was a great American who said, "The
world is my country and mankind are my brothers."

Questions for Review

1. Why did England and the United States fail to understand Germany?
2. What right would Germany have had to an indemnity?
3. What great change took place in Germany after 1866?
4. Why must the war go on till Germany is crushed?
5. What lesson must Germany learn?
6. Why have the South American republics fought so many wars?
7. Suggest some solution for the problem of war.
8. What is meant by arbitration?
9. What was the greatest mistake of those who planned the war?
10. How did the Russian Revolution help the cause of the Entente?
11. What is the greatest lesson taught by the war?

PRONOUNCING GLOSSARY

In this glossary it will be noted that as a general rule the English
pronunciation is given for names that have become at all familiar in
history or geography. Thus the English Crā'cōw is given instead of
the Polish Krȧ'ko͝of or the German Krä'kau.

On the other hand names like Koumanova or Dobrudja must be given as
the natives of these places pronounce them, as there is no recognized
English pronunciation.

In certain cases where there are several current pronunciations, the
author has been forced to make a selection, arbitrarily. Thus a
seaport in Greece, which has changed hands recently, has no less than
five names. Its Greek name is pronounced Thĕssȧlōnyi'ki, while
other nations term it variously Sȧlōni'kā, Sĕlȧnïk', Sō'lōn,
Sȧlōni'ki or Salō'nicȧ.

Some sounds, again, it is almost impossible for English speaking
people to reproduce. These are indicated by English syllables which
approximate them as nearly as possible.

Not every proper noun which is used in the text will be found
pronounced in the glossary. It is assumed that such names as Austria,
Bismarck, etc., can hardly be mispronounced.

Aboukir (ä'bö̈ kïr)
Aegean (ē jē'ăn)
Agadir (ȧ gȧ dïr')
Aix-la-Chapelle (āks lä shȧpĕl')
Albania (ăl bā'nï ȧ)
Algeciras (ăl jĕ si'rȧs) or (ȧljĕ sï'rȧs)
Alsace (ȧl sȧs')
Andrassy (ȧn drȧs'sy̆)
Aragon (ă'rȧ gŏn)
Armada (är mä'dȧ)
Armenians (är mē'nï ȧns)
Arminius (är mĭn'ï ŭs)
Avlona (ȧv lō'ṅa)
Baden (bä'dĕn)
Balkan (bȧl kän') or (bôl'kän)
Banat (bȧn'ȧt)
Basques (bȧsks)
Bastille (bȧ stïl')
Bavaria (bȧ vā'rï ȧ)
Belfort (bĕl'fôr)
Bernadotte (bēr'nȧ dŏt)
Bessarabia (bĕs sȧ rā'bï ȧ) or (bĕs sȧ rä'bï ȧ)
Bismarck-Schönausen (shẽn how'zĕn)
Blenheim (blĕn'ĕm) or (blĕn'hīm)
Boer (bo͞or)
Bohemia (bōhē'mīȧ)
Bonaparte (bō'nȧ pärt)
Bosnia (bŏz'ni̇ ȧ)
Bourbon (bo͞or'bŭn)
Brandenburg (brăn'dĕn bûrg)
Breton (brē'ton) or (brĕt'ŭn)
Brusiloff (brū si'lŏff)
Bukowina (bo͝o kō vï'nȧ)
Bulgaria (bŭl gā'ri̇ ȧ)
Burgundians (bûr'gŭn'dï ȧns)
Burgundy (bûr'gŭn dy)
Byzantium (by̆ zăn'tï ̆um)
Caesar (sēz'ēr)
Carniola (cȧr nï ō'lȧ)
Carpathian (cãr pā'thï ȧn)
Carthage (cȧr'thāj)
Castile (cȧs til')
Castlereagh (căs'l rā)
Cavour (cȧ vo͞or')
Charlemagne (shär lĕ mān')
Chauvinists (shō'vĭn ĭsts)
Cicero (sĭs'ē rō)
Cimbri (sĭm'brï)
Cincinnatus (sĭn sĭn nä'tŭs)
Constantine (cŏn'stăn tïn)
Cracow (crā'cō)
Crimea (crĭ mē'ȧ)
Croatia (crō ä'tï ȧ) or (crōä'shȧ)
Czech (chĕk)
Dacians (dā'shŭnz)
Dalmatia (dăl mā'shï ȧ)
Théophile Delcassé (tā'ō fïl dĕl cȧ sä')
Deutschland (doitsh'lȧnd)
Devonshire (dĕv'ŏn shïr)
Disraeli (dĭz rā'lĭ)
Dobrudja (dō bro͝od'jȧ)
Dreibund (drī'bo͝ond)
Durazzo (dū rȧt'zö)
Emmanuel (ĕm măn'ū ĕl)
Entente Cordiale (ȧn tȧnt'côr dyȧl')
Enver Bey (ĕn'vẽr bā')
Epinal (ĕp'ï nȧl)
Epirus (ĕp ī'rŭs)
Erse (ērs)
Esthonians (ĕs thō'nï ănz)
Etruscans (ē trŭs'cănz)
Euphrates (ū frā'tēz)
Fashoda (fȧ shō'dȧ)
Fiume (fï ū'me)
Gaelic (gā'lĭc)
Galicia (găl ĭ'shȧ)
Gallipoli (găl ĭ'pōlï)
Garibaldi (gȧr ï bȧl'dï)
Gerard (jĕr ärd')
Germanic (jẽr măn'ĭc)
Glamis (glăm'ĭs)
Gortchakoff (gôr'chȧ kŏf)
Goths (gŏths)
Granada (grȧ nä'dȧ)
Hannibal (hăn'nĭ bl)
Hanover (hăn'ō vẽr)
Herzegovina (hārt'sĕ gō vï'nȧ)
Hesse-Darmstadt (hĕs sĕ därm'stȧt)
Hindustan (hĭn do͞o stän')
Hohenzollern (hō ĕn tsŏl'ẽrn)
Holstein (hōl'stīn)
Illyrians (ĭ ly̆r'ĭ ȧns)
Istria (ĭs'trï ȧ)
Janina (yȧ nï'nȧ)
Janus (jā'nŭs)
Jonescu (jō nĕs'ko͞o)
Jutes (jūts)
Kaiser (kī'zẽr)
Kaspar (kăs'pär)
Kavala (kȧ vä' lȧ)
Kerensky (kĕ rĕn'skĭ)
Khartoom (kär to͞om')
Korea (kō rē'ȧ)
Kȯrniloff (kor nï'lŏff)
Koumanova (ko͞o mä'nō vȧ)
Lamar (lȧ mär')
Leon (lē'ŏn)
Liege (lï ĕzh')
Lithuania (lĭth o͞o ā'nīȧ)
Longwy (lŏng'vy̆)
Lorraine (lôr rān')
Macedonia (mă sē dō'nï ȧ)
Magyar (mŏd'yär)
Manchuria (măn chū'rï ȧ)
Marathon (măr'ȧ thŏn)
Marchand (mär shän')
Maria Theresa (mä rī'ä tĕr ēs'ä)
Marlborough (märl'bō rō)
Marsala (mär sä'lȧ)
Marseillaise (mär sĕl yāz')
Mazzini (mȧt sï'nï)
Mesopotamia (mĕs ō pō tā'mĭ ä)
Metternich (mĕt'tẽr nĭkh)
Milioukoff (mĭl yo͞o'kŏff)
Mirabeau (mĭr'ȧ bō)
Modena (mō dē'nȧ) or (mō'dā nȧ)
Mohammedan (mō hăm'mĕd ȧn)
Moltke (mōlt'kȧ)
Monastir (mō nȧ stïr')
Montenegrin (mŏn tē nē'grĭn)
Montenegro (mŏn tē nē'grō)
Moslems (mŏz'lĕmz)
Murat (mü'rä)
Napoleon (nȧ pō'lē ŏn)
Nice (nïs)
Northumberland (nôrth ŭm'bẽr lănd)
Novibazar (nō'vĭ bȧ zär')
Ostrogoths (ŏs'trō gŏths)
Ottoman (ŏt'tō mȧn)
Parma (pär'mȧ)
Piedmont (pēd'mŏnt)
Pola (pō'lä)
Poland (pō'lănd)
Pomerania (pŏm ĕr ā'nï ȧ)
Pyrenees (pĭr'ĕn ēēz)
Rasputin (räs po͞o'tïn)
Reichstag (rīkhs'tägh)
Riga (rï'gȧ)
Romansh (rō mȧnsh')
Roon (rōn)
Roumani (ro͞o mä'nï)
Roumania (ro͞o mā'nï ȧ)
Ruthenian (ro͝o thē'nï ȧn)
Sadowa (sä'dō vȧ)
Salonika (sȧ'lō nï'kȧ)
Sanjak (sȧn jȧk')
San Stephano (sȧn stĕ fä'nö)
Saône (sōn)
Sarajevo (sä rä yĕ'vō)
Sardinia (sär dĭn'i̇ ȧ)
Sarrail (sȧr rī')
Savoy (sȧ voy')
Saxony (săx'ōn y̆)
Sazanof (sä'zä nŏff)
Scandinavian (scăn dĭ nā'vĭ ȧn)
Schleswig (shlĕs'vĭg)
Scutari (sko͞o'tä rï)
Serbia (sẽr'bĭ ȧ)
Silesia (sĭl ē'shȧ)
Skipetars (skïp'ĕ tarz)
Slavic (slä'vĭc)
Slavonia (slȧ vō'nï ȧ)
Slavonic (slȧ vŏn'ĭc)
Slavs (slävz)
Slovak (slō väk')
Slovenes (slō vēnz')
Slovenian (slō vē'nï ȧn)
Sobieski (sō bĭ ĕs'kĭ)
Stoessel (stēs'sĕl)
Strasbourg (strȧs'bo͝org)
Styria (sty̆'rĭ ȧ)
Suevi (swē'vï)
Syria (sy̆r'ï ȧ)
Take (tä kā)
Talleyrand (tȧl'lā rȧn)
Teutones (tū tō'nēz)
Teutonic (tū tŏn'ĭc)
Thessaly (thĕs'sȧ ly̆)
Thracians (thrā'shŭnz)
Tigris (tī'grĭs)
Toul (to͞ol)
Transylvania (trăn sy̆l vā'nï ȧ)
Trentino (trĕn tī'nō)
Trieste (trï ĕst') or (trï ĕs'tā)
Tripoli (trĭp'ō lĭ)
Tuscany (tŭs'cȧ ny̆)
Tyrol (ty̆'rōl)
Tzernagorah (tzēr nä'gō'rȧ)
Vandals (văn'dlz)
Venetia (vĕn ē'shȧ)
Venizelos (vĕn ĭ zĕl'ŏs)
Vercingetorix (vēr sĭn jĕt'ö rĭks)
Verdun (vār dŭn')
Volgars (vŏl'gärz)
Von Bernstorff (fŏn bārns'torf)
Von Plehve (fŏn plā'vē)
Von Tirpitz (fŏn tïr'pĭts)
Vosges (vōzh)
Walloon (wäl lo͞on')
Westphalia (wĕst fā'lï ȧ)
Wied (we͞ed)
Wilhelmine (wĭl'hĕl mïn)
Yorkshire (yôrk'shīr)

INDEX

Adriatic Sea, question of the control of.
Agadir incident.
Albania, formation of the kingdom of.
Albanians,
language of;
habits of.
Alexander the Great.
Algeciras incident.
Alliance, the Holy.
Alliance, the Triple.
Alliance, the Dual.
Alliance, the Balkan.
Alsace.
Ambassador.
Angles, the, invade Britain.
Arbitration of national disputes.
Arminius.
Armor, value of.
Austria-Hungary,
origin of;
helps to divide Poland;
at war with France;
at war with Sardinia and France;
at war with Prussia and Italy;
refuses to arbitrate Serbian trouble.
Austrians in Italy.

Balance of Power.
Balkan problem.
Barons.
Bastille, fall of the.
Belgium,
joined to Holland to form the Netherlands;
independent;
guaranteed its freedom by three powers.
Bernadotte.
Bismarck-Schönausen.
Blenheim, battle of (poem).
Blockade of Germany.
Bohemia,
part of the Holy Roman Empire;
part of the Hapsburg domains.
Bolsheviki, revolt of the.
Bonaparte, Louis Napoleon.
Bonaparte, Napoleon.
Bosnian problem.
Bourbon family.
Brandenburg;
rise of.
Brazil declares war on Germany.
Britons.
Bulgaria,
freed by Russia;
left partially under the control of Turkey;
independent;
at war;
with five nations;
plunges into world war;
treacherously orders an attack on Greece and Serbia.
Bulgars,
origin of;
in Macedonia.
Bulow, Prince von.
Burgundians.
Byzantium becomes Constantinople.

Caesar, Julius.
Cape to Cairo Railroad.
Catharine II of Russia.
Cavour, Count, prime minister of Sardinia.
Celtic languages, disappearance of.
Celts.
Charlemagne.
Charles V.
Charles XII of Sweden.
Chauvinists.
Churchill, Winston.
Cincinnatus.
Constantine,
prince in Crete;
king of Greece.
Constantinople.
Contraband of war.
Cracow, Republic of.
Crete.
Czechs.

Danes,
in Schleswig.
Dark Ages.
Delcassé.
Denmark,
loses Norway;
defeated by Prussia and Austria;
injured by submarine campaign.
Deutschland, voyages of the.
Dialects.
Dictator, Roman.
Divine right of kings.
Dukes vs. Kings.
Duma, the Russian;
asked to form a government.

Edward VII.
Elba, Napoleon's return from.
Elector, the Great.
Electors of the Holy Roman Empire.
England,
power of the king of;
in Egypt;
troubles of, in 1914.
Entente Cordiale.
Entente, the Triple.
Esthonians.
Etruscans.

Fashoda incident.
Ferdinand of Bulgaria;
enters war on side of Germany and Austria;
attacks Serbia;
ambitions of.
Feudal system.
Finland annexed to Russia.
Finns;
conquered by the Swedes.
Flemish.
France,
power of king of;
execution of king of;
in Africa;
wars of.
Franks.
Franz Ferdinand.
Frederick the Great.
French Revolution.

Gaelic language.
Gaels.
Garibaldi.
Gauls.
German Confederation.
German secret agents
set fire to American property and kill Americans;
try to stir up war between the U. S. and Japan;
stir up trouble in Russia.
German tribes.
Germanic languages.
Germany, the Holy Roman Empire of.
Germany,
the modern Empire of;
encourages France to declare war on England;
makes friends with Turkey;
policy toward Balkan nations;
warns Russia;
attacks France through Belgium.
Goths.
Government,
by the people;
based on the consent of the governed;
limited to the ruling class.
Governments, newness of European.
Great Britain
offers to judge Serbian trouble;
declares war on Germany.
Greece,
treaty of, with Serbia;
Greek Empire,
origin of;
fall of.
Greeks;
ungenerous to Bulgarians,
desert to Venizelos;
join the Entente.

Hague, court of the.
Hannibal's war against Rome.
Hapsburgs, the.
Hohenzollern family.
Holstein.
Homage.
Hungarians.
Huns.

Indemnity.
Indo-European family of languages.
Istria.
Italy,
a battle ground of nations;
becomes a nation;
makes war on Turkey;
declines to support Austria and Germany;
declares war on Austria.

Kavala.
Kent, William, on Mexican intervention.
Kerensky, leader of the Russian government.
Kings, origin of.
Koumanova, battle of.

Labor troubles,
in England;
in Russia.
Language, relationship shown by.
Latin tongues.
Lithuania.
Lombards.
Lorraine.
Louis XIV of France.
Lusitania, sinking of the.

Macedonia.
Magyars.
Marathon, battle of.
Marchand, Major.
Maria Theresa,
Empress of Austria;
helps to divide Poland.
Marlborough, Duke of.
Mazzini.
Metternich.
Middle Ages.
Military service,
owed to rulers;
in Prussia;
in France.
Mirabeau.
Moltke.
Montenegro,
origin of;
declares war on Austria.
Monroe Doctrine.
Moors.
Murat.

Napoleon III.
Netherlands, foundation of kingdom of.
Newspapers, control of.
Normans.
Norway,
joined to Sweden;
danger from Germany;
vigorously protests submarine warfare.
Novibazar, the Sanjak of.

Ostrogoths.

Paris, siege of.
Peace,
German offer of;
Allies' terms of;
United States' desire for;
Russo-German conference toward;
German desire for.
Peasants,
attached to the land;
support fighting classes.
Peter the Great.
Poland,
kingdom of;
partition of;
given largely to Russia;
revolutions in.
Preparation for war
Prussia,
origin of kingdom of;
crushed by Napoleon;
dominated by Bismarck.

Rasputin;
assists Sturmer;
is killed.
Reichstag.
Reign of Terror.
Republic,
first French;
second French;
third French.
Robber chiefs.
Roman Empire, beginnings of.
Romansh people.
Rome, wars of, with Carthage.
Roon.
Rothschild, the banking house of.
Roumani.
Roumania;
hopes of;
population of;
declares war on Austria;
is crushed between two armies.
Russia,
rise of;
attacks Turkey;
policy of;
relations with Bulgaria;
defends Serbia;
ignorance of the people of;
revolution in;
controlled by the Bolsheviki.
Ruthenians.

Sarrail,
sent to Salonika;
watching Bulgars and Greeks.
Saxons.
Saxony,
annexed in part to Prussia;
allied to Austria.
Salonika, Spanish Jews in.
Sardinia, kingdom of.
Schleswig.
Scutari.
Serbia,
trade with Austria;
relations with Bulgaria;
trouble with Austria;
attacked on three sides.
Serbs,
origin of;
lands of;
language of.
Sicilies, Kingdom of the Two.
Silesia, seizure of.
Slavic tribes.
Slovaks.
Slovenes.
Sobieski, John, king of Poland.
Socialists,
in Germany;
in Italy.
Spain,
origin of;
drives out "unbelievers,";
becomes a republic.
Submarine boats
sink British warships;
sink merchant ships;
sink the Lusitania;
cross the Atlantic;
begin to sink all ships without warning;
kill Americans;
sink Norwegian ships.
Suevi.
Sturmer chosen prime minister of Russia.
Sweden, decline of.

Talleyrand.
Trentino.
Tunis, seized by France.
Turkey,
defended by France and England;
attacks Russia.
Turks;
capture Constantinople;
driven back from Vienna;
the young Turks;
tolerance of the young;
bigotry of the young.

Ulster trouble, the.
United States,
indignant over the Lusitania;
warns Germany;
defends munitions trade in reply to Austria;
receives Deutschland hospitably;
sends the German Ambassador home;
declares war;
desires nothing but to be safe from attack;
sends an army to Europe.

Vandals.
Venice, Republic of.
Venizelos,
prime minister of Greece;
comes from Crete;
opposes King Constantine;
once more prime minister.
Vercingetorix.
Victor Emmanuel.
Vienna, Congress of.

Walloons.
War,
four causes of;
cost of;
diseases caused by;
increasing horror of.
Warsaw, Grand-Duchy of.
Waterloo, battle of.
William of Normandy.
Wilson, President,
patient with Germany;
asks both sides to name their terms;
calls Congress to declare war.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe" ***

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