Prelude to the Great War

The year 1914 will stand out prominently in future history as the date of the most stupendous war in the history of mankind. In its special character, also, it may come to be regarded as the most atrocious of all wars, at least of all fought by civilized nations. Flashing out suddenly like a bolt from the blue, unannounced, unexpected, unexplained, unprecedented in suddenness and enormity, it hurled nearly the whole of Europe within a week's time from a state of profound peace into one of continental war. The ringing of church bells was drowned by the roar of cannon, the voice of the dove of peace by the blare of the trump of war, and throughout the world ran a shudder of terror as these unwonted and ominous sounds greeted men's ears.


But in looking back through history, tracing the course of events during the past century, following the footsteps of men in war and peace from that day of upheaval when medieval feudalism went down in disarray before the arms of the people in the French Revolution, some explanation of the great European war of 1914 may be reached. Every event in history has its roots somewhere in earlier history, and we need but dig deep enough to find them.


Such is the purpose of the present work. It proposes to lay down in a series of apposite chapters the story of the past century, beginning, in fact, rather more than a century ago with the meteoric career of Napoleon and seeking to show to what it led, and what effects it had upon the political evolution of mankind. The French Revolution stood midway between two spheres of history, the sphere of medieval barbarism and that of modern enlightenment. It exploded like a bomb in the midst of the self-satisfied aristocracy of the earlier social system and rent it into fragments which no hand could put together again. In this sense the career of Napoleon seems providential. The era of popular government had replaced that of autocratic and aristocratic government in France, and the armies of Napoleon spread these radical ideas throughout Europe until the oppressed people of every nation began to look upward with hope and see in the distance before them a haven of justice in the coming realm of human rights.


These new conceptions took time to disseminate themselves. The oppressed peoples had to fight their way upward into the light, to win their progress step by step to the heights of emancipation. It was a hard struggle. Time and again they were cast downward in their climb. The powers of privilege, of the "divine right of kings," fought hard to preserve their ascendency, and only with discouraging slowness did the people move onward to the haven they so earnestly sought.