destructive processes of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries, simultaneously though in apparent opposition, explains why,
when the war broke out, imperialism and democracy synchronized so
exactly: on the one hand, imperial states, industry, commerce, and
finance; on the other, a swiftly accelerating democratic system that was
at the same time the effective means whereby the dominant imperialism
worked, and the omnipresent and increasing threat to its further
continuance.

A full century elapsed before victory became secure, or even proximate.
Republicanism rapidly extended itself to all the governments of western
Europe, but it could not maintain itself in its primal integrity. Sooner
here, later there, it surrendered to the financial, industrial,
commercial forces that were taking over the control and direction of
society, becoming partners with them and following their aims, conniving
at their schemes, and sharing in their ever-increasing profits. By the
end of the first decade of the twentieth century these supposedly "free"
governments had become as identified with "special privilege," and as
widely severed from the people as a whole, as the autocratic governments
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while they failed
consistently to match them in effectiveness, energy and efficiency of
operation.

For this latter condition democracy was measurably responsible. For
fifty years it had been slowly filtering into the moribund republican
system until at last, during the same first decade of the present
century, it had wholly transformed the governmental system, making it,
whatever its outward form, whether constitutional monarchy, or republic,
essentially democratic. So government became shifty, opportunist,
incapable, and without the inherent energy to resist, beyond a certain