It was clear that humanity would have to begin anew its weary struggle out of the difficulties it had slowly overcome. Everything of a high order that had been done from the beginning, under great, devoted, far-seeing religious leaders, and by unknown millions who had fought for liberty, would have to be given up. Recognition of the potency of peaceful methods in government and industry; the contribution of the individual to his own progress and that of mankind; the gradual triumph of an ordered freedom over tyranny and anarchy; all the achievements, that have gradually made the world over, would have had to be undertaken again, and that, too, without the free contribution from every quarter, which, in the varied history of men, had assured the one great triumph which is civilization. The dream of individual and national conquest--the cause of so much suffering and bloodshed--was again to be repeated. This attack has demanded thus far, as it will demand until the end, the united efforts of practically all the people of the earth in order to defeat this the most desperate attempt at conquest, undertaken under the most favorable conditions, and after the most perfect preparation known to history. If hesitation or treachery had arisen at any important point the well-laid plot would have succeeded. Nothing in the history of Europe, or of all the peoples that sprang from it in other parts of the world, is more creditable to humanity than the united resistance which this attempt aroused. All that it meant was attacked without mercy or shame. Its religious teachings and practices, the result of many centuries of growth and experience were defied by one of the nations professing the same creed. Its political development, the result of a struggle under which industry, family, and social growth had proceeded in regular order was defied. Its humane policies were to be replaced by the dictates of might--mercilessly executed. Its small peoples were to be crushed, and its greater ones reduced to the status of vassals. In a word, all its civilization was to be thrown away. But, at the first cry of alarm every threatened people rose as if by magic. No surprise was effective, no lack of preparation deterred, no peril brought hesitation. One by one, all jealousies were dissipated, all past differences were forgotten, the common danger was recognized, and they united, as humanity had never done before, in that resistance to German ambitions which the world now sees as its one great event, past or present.