There is evidence that in each of these struggles the humane men then living were filled with the same longing for permanent peace that many men feel today.[2] The feeling was especially strong during the last stages of the Napoleonic wars and immediately after they ended. Singularly enough it was strongest in Russia, due, however to the accident that an enthusiastic and idealistic tsar was ruling in that country. He had received his ideals from a French tutor who was deeply imbued with the equality theories of the revolution that swept over his own country. The tsar accepted them with sincerity and spent several years of conscientious effort in his attempts to have them adopted. More singularly still, they found their only sincere indorsement, among the rulers who had the right to indorse or reject, with the king of Prussia, who at that time was a very religious man. Most peculiar of all they found very strong opposition in England, where practical statesmen were in power. As I read the history of that day and reflect on what has been the train of events from the battle of Waterloo to the invasion of Belgium in 1914, it is hard to keep from wishing that a better effort had been made in 1815 to carry out the suggestion which the tsar urged on his royal brothers in Europe. [2] See below, pp. 46-62. The defeat of Napoleon was purchased at immense sacrifices. To the people of the day the most desirable thing in the world seemed to be a prevention of his reappearance to trouble mankind. They took the greatest care to keep his body a prisoner until he was dead; but they did not seriously try to lay his ghost. Probably they did not think, being practical men, that his spirit would walk again in the earth. They were mistaken; for not only has the ghost come back, but it has come with increased power and subtlety. In fact, it was an old ghost, and having once inhabited the bodies of Louis XIV, Augustus Cæsar, and Alexander of Macedon, as well as that of Napoleon I, it knew much more than the grave gentlemen who undertook to arrange the future of Europe in practical ways in 1815. As we approach again the re-making of our relations after a world war, it is worth while to glance over the things that were done in 1815, to understand what choice of events was presented to the men of that day, and what results came from the course they deliberately decided to follow. Thus we may know whether or not the course proved a happy one, and whether or not it is the course that we, also, should follow. And if it is not such a course, we ought as thinking people to try to adopt a better.