WHAT THE GREAT WAR REALLY MEANS The history of the human race has been the history of man’s struggle toward freedom. Because certain nations have seen the light sooner than others, they have been the object of attack by these others, primarily because the rulers of the latter have been shrewd enough to see that revolution is contagious. A free neighbor threatens the existence of a monarch who derives his power from the force with which he has surrounded himself and from the blindness of his own people. A free neighbor is therefore a menace to autocracy, and something to be crushed. When the people of France, inspired by the example of the United States, arose in revolution against their monarch, the revolution shook the thrones of Europe. The King of France was closer in blood to other royal families of Europe than he was to the people whom he had governed. The Queen of France was a Hapsburg, of the royal family of Austria, whose representatives were in almost every royal house of the Continent of Europe. The success of the French Revolution was the handwriting on the wall; and every Belshazzar on a throne had a Daniel of statesmanship to tell him what it meant. Almost at once the Kings of Europe rallied against France, because free France threatened the existence of the Kings. France fought valiantly. The military establishment which she had to assume to protect her rights, however, swung her out of the republican form of government she had set up, and Napoleon Bonaparte, who won her wars, became her Emperor. The change, however, did not swing back the French people into any slavish acceptance of royalty. They held, in spite of Bonaparte’s court, their fundamental democracy; and it was a democratic army which France sent across Europe. Napoleon himself said that every private carried a field-marshal’s bâton in his knapsack. Every man had a chance for promotion. Every man had a chance to better his life. And, because France remained fundamentally democratic, the Kings battled against Bonaparte. They defeated him, finally; but they did not defeat France, for its spirit remained free. Germany, nearest neighbor to France, had never known democracy. Once part of the vast kingdom known as the Holy Roman Empire, she had disintegrated into little states, kingdoms, duchies, and archbishoprics, each ruled by one-man power. Sometimes a King, stronger than the others, drew the kingdoms together for purposes of warfare against other countries. Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, fought against Austria. With him the power of Prussia rose. After his death it declined so that Napoleon found the conquest of Prussia easy, and went about it so thoroughly that he made the French conquest a profound humiliation to the Prussians. Even his defeat at Waterloo failed to pay the debt Prussia cherished against the French.