Yet the German army was a mighty and effective machine in that autumn of 1914, built by men who had devoted their lives to perfecting instruments of destruction. It rolled on and on, across Belgium, southward and westward into France, crushing the small Belgian army, forcing the outnumbered British into retreat, driving back the French by sheer weight of cannon and men. The Kaiser thought to repeat the act of his grandfather and make the French sign a treaty with him at Versailles, taking more territory and wealth from them as the next step toward making the House of Hohenzollern the greatest power in the world. As the Huns drove on their over-mastering pride and self-conceit grew and grew, inflating them like over-swollen frogs, until a chorus of what the rest of the world had formerly considered intelligent professors, scientists, and writers, actually dared to announce that the German will to victory was the supreme achievement of the ages. Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, at the height of their power, never lost some sense of proportion, some human notion of justice; it was left to this Germany of 1914 to show how blind, how mad, how intolerant the mind of man can be. Rapidly the Huns marched toward Paris; and then something happened. The French turned at bay, held, drove the invaders back. Over the ground they had crossed in triumph the Huns retreated, back and back until they had reached the line of the River Marne. And when the French General Joffre drove them back to the Marne he won one of the greatest victories for civilization in the annals of history. Meantime Russia was attacking in the east and the Germans had to look to the protection of their own territory. Europe was now ablaze, England was training men, France was digging trenches, the flames of war, lighted by Germany’s reckless torch, were spreading across the world. Italy, true to the principles of her great leaders of the last century, Mazzini, Cavour, Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel, hating that power of Austria whose history had been one long record of deceit and enslavement, joined hands with the countries that stood for liberty and justice. The Turk, true to his nature, united with the Hun. The war raged back and forth, its battle-fields the greater part of Europe.