As to Germany's position, economists all over the world have considered her position as not only lacking soundness, but as crazy--crazy in that no attention whatever has apparently been paid to what are recognized as firmly fixed economic laws. The world has been at a loss to understand Germany's attitude, and it can only be explained by assuming that Germany was perfectly well aware of the entire unsoundness of her commercial and financial position, and was willing, or, in fact, had to risk everything with the hope of acquiring sufficient indemnity, resulting from the war, to bring her financial affairs to a sound basis. Germany's entire structure from the close of the Franco-Prussian war evidently was built upon rotten foundations. CHAPTER XVIII. THE WORLD RULERS AT WAR. WOODROW WILSON, THE CHAMPION OF DEMOCRACY--THE EGOTISTICAL KAISER--THE GERMAN CROWN PRINCE--BRITAIN'S MONARCH--CONSTANTINE WHO QUIT RATHER THAN FIGHT GERMANY--PRESIDENT POINCAIRE--AND OTHER NATIONAL HEADS. No matter what the human frailties may be there are always men who rise in the stress of circumstances to unexpected heights. They thrive upon difficulties and in the emergencies become protectors and saviors of men. In the world's greatest melting-pot--the burned and blood-stained battlefields of Europe--there were tried and tested millions of men of all nationalities and characteristics, and though the experience was one of bitterness, there was found in it the satisfaction that in their own way millions of men proved themselves great. Out of the hordes that rode over mountains, sailed the seas or picked their way through trenches and across the scarred surface of the earth there looms the figures of some whose names will go down in history for all time. Their names will be written indelibly upon the pages of life and they will be known for ages after the evidences of the great strife have been obliterated and the peace for which the world struggled has been made a permanent thing. Among those whose names will be forever linked with the terrible war as a leader of men--whose figure stands out against the mass of humanity--is Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America. Though he neither faced bullets nor tramped the historic byways of Europe in the terrible struggle, he was to all intents and purposes the commander-in-chief of all the world forces seeking to break the autocratic domination of the Hohenzollerns of Germany and give democracy its place among the nations of the world which its character justifies.