n to
the east and leaped to arms at the first rattling of the Prussian
saber.

Germany, up to 1866 renowned chiefly for her poets, musicians, and
thinkers, had since been fed for nearly fifty years upon the doctrine
that military force is the only power in the world worth considering.
Some of the German people still cling to the high ideals of their
ancestors, but the majority had drunk deeply of the wine of conquest
and were intoxicated with the idea that Germany's mission in life was
to conquer all the other nations of the world and rule them for their
own good by German thoroughness and by German efficiency. It may take
many years to stamp this feeling out of the German nation. As they
have worshipped force and appealed to force as the settler of all
questions, so they will listen to reason only after they have been
thoroughly crushed by a superior force. The sufferings brought upon
the German nation by the war have had a great effect in making them
doubt whether, after all, force is a good thing. As long as the people
could be kept enthusiastic through stories of wonderful victories over
the Russians, the Serbians, and then the Roumanians, they were
contented to endure all manner of hardships.

Someone has said that no people are happier than those living in a
despotism, if the right kind of man is the despot. So the German
people, although they were governed strictly by the military rule,
nevertheless, were contented as long as they were prosperous and
victorious in war. With the rumors and fears of defeat, however, they
began to doubt their government. There are indications that sweeping
reforms in the election of representatives in the Reichstag and in the
power of that body itself will take place before long.

The Russian revolution was in some respects a blow to the central
powers. In the first place the fact that Russia had a despot for a
ruler while England, France, and Italy were countries where the people
elected their law makers, made it impossible that there should be the
best of understanding between the allies. Then, again, the various
peoples of Austria-Hungary, while they were not happy under the rule
of the Hapsburg family, were afraid lest, if they became subjects of
the Czar, it would be "jumping from the frying pan into the fire."
They would rather bear the evils of the Austrian rule than risk what
the Czar and the grand dukes might do to them. Turkey, likewise, was
bound to stick to Germany t