tralians, who
had just been re-discovered by Captain Cook, whom they killed for his
trouble,) never heard of it at all. But it carried across the Atlantic
Ocean. It landed in the powder house of European discontent and in
France it caused an explosion which rocked the entire continent from
Petrograd to Madrid and buried the representatives of the old statecraft
and the old diplomacy under several tons of democratic bricks.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PROCLAIMS THE PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY,
FRATERNITY AND EQUALITY UNTO ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH

BEFORE we talk about a revolution it is just as well that we explain
just what this word means. In the terms of a great Russian writer (and
Russians ought to know what they are talking about in this field) a
revolution is "a swift overthrow, in a few years, of institutions
which have taken centuries to root in the soil, and seem so fixed and
immovable that even the most ardent reformers hardly dare to attack them
in their writings. It is the fall, the crumbling away in a brief
period, of all that up to that time has composed the essence of social,
religious, political and economic life in a nation."

Such a revolution took place in France in the eighteenth century when
the old civilisation of the country had grown stale. The king in the
days of Louis XIV had become EVERYTHING and was the state. The Nobility,
formerly the civil servant of the federal state, found itself without
any duties and became a social ornament of the royal court.

This French state of the eighteenth century, however, cost incredible
sums of money. This money had to be produced in the form of taxes.
Unfortunately the kings of France had not been strong enough to force
the nobility and the clergy to pay their share of these taxes. Hence
the taxes were paid entirely by the agricultural population. But the
peasants living in dreary hovels, no longer in intimate contact with
their former landlords, but victims of cruel and incompetent land
agents, were going from bad to worse. Why should they work and exert
themselves? Increased returns upon their land merely meant more taxes
and nothing for themselves and therefore they neglected their fields as
much as they dared.

Hence we have a king who wanders in empty splendour through the vast
halls of his palaces, habitually followed by hungry office seekers, all
of whom live upon the revenue obtained from peasants who are no better