Electric lights, such as we use indoors, were invented by Thomas Alva Edison. Edison is called a wizard, because in the Middle Ages wizards were supposed to be able to do and to make all sorts of wonderful and impossible things, to turn lead into gold, to make people invisible, and that sort of thing. But Edison has done things that no wizard of a fairy-tale had ever even thought of. Edison was a poor boy who sold newspapers and magazines on a train. He was interested in all sorts of experiments and fitted up a place in the baggage-car where he could make experiments. But he made so much of a mess in the car that at last the baggage-man kicked Edison’s whole outfit off the train. Edison invented many things connected with the phonograph and the movies, and he has probably made more useful and important inventions than any other man who has ever lived, so that he is much greater than those mere kings who have done nothing but quarrel and destroy--without whom the world would have been much better off if they had never lived! Thousands of people who have lived in the past ages have tried to fly and failed. Millions of people have said it was impossible to fly and foolish to try. Some have even said it was wicked to try, that God meant that only birds and angels should fly. At last, after long years of work and thousands of trials, two American brothers named Wright did the impossible. They invented the airplane and flew. An Italian named Marconi invented the radio, and others every day are still making wonderful inventions, but you will have to read about these yourself, for we are near the end of our history. Here is a good subject for an argument or debate: Are we any happier _with_ all these inventions than people were a thousand years ago _without_ them? Life is faster and more exciting; but it is more difficult and more dangerous. Instead of enjoying a book curled up in the corner of a sofa by a crackling fire, we leave a steam radiator and go out to the movies. Instead of singing or playing the violin, we turn on the graphophone or the player-piano and miss the chief joy in music, the joy of making it ourselves. Instead of the jogging drive in an old buggy behind a horse that goes along through the country-side almost by himself, we speed on in dangerous autos, to which we must pay constant, undivided attention or be wrecked. [Illustration: 1905] 78 GERMANY FIGHTS THE WORLD The last chapter was one of the few without a fight in it. But now, to make up for that, I must tell you about the greatest and the worst fight in history. There is a little country in Europe called Serbia. It is next door to Austria. A young man who lived in Serbia shot an Austrian prince. Little Serbia apologized to Austria for what one of her people had done. But Austria insisted that the Serbian nation was to blame for what had been done; she refused to accept the apology and started in to punish Serbia.