acy, this liberation will bring into play far more
power than all the men killed in the war could have had under the
pre-war regime. I observe this with every year of my
observation--there's no substitute for common-sense.

The big results of the war will, after all, be the freedom and the
stimulation of men in these weary Old-World lands--in Russia,
Germany itself, and in England. In five or ten years (or sooner,
alas!) the dead will be forgotten.

If you wish to make a picture of the world as it will be when the
war ends, you must conjure up such scenes as these--human bones
along the Russian highways where the great retreat took place and
all that such a sight denotes; Poland literally starved; Serbia,
blasted and burned and starved; Armenia butchered; the horrible
tragedy of Gallipoli, where the best soldiers in the world were
sacrificed to politicians' policies; Austria and Germany starved
and whipped but liberalized--perhaps no king in either country;
Belgium--belgiumized; northern France the same and worse; more
productive Frenchmen killed in proportion to the population perhaps
than any other country will have lost; Great Britain--most of her
best men gone or maimed; colossal debts; several Teutonic countries
bankrupt; every atrocity conceivable committed somewhere--a
hell-swept great continent having endured more suffering in three
years than in the preceding three hundred. Then, ten years later,
most of this suffering a mere memory; governments reorganized and
liberalized; men made more efficient by this strenuous three years'
work; the fields got back their bloom, and life going on much as it
did before--with this chief difference--some kings have gone and
many privileges have been abolished. The lessons are two--(1) that
no government can successfully set out and conquer the world; and
(2) that the hold that privilege holders acquire costs more to
dislodge than any one could ever have guessed. That's the sum of
it. Kings and privilege mongers, of course, have held the parts of
the world separate from one another. They fatten on provincialism,
which is mistaken for patriotism. As they lose their grip, human
sympathy has its natural play between nations, and civilization has
a chance. With any Emperor of Germany left the war will have bee