wounding. When a regiment of Austrians were ordered to charge the
Russian trenches, they shot and bayoneted the Russians because they
were told to do so by their officers, and the Russian soldiers shot
the Austrians because their captains so ordered them. The officers on
each side were only obeying orders received from their generals. The
generals were only obeying orders from the government.

In the end, then, we come back to the governments, and we wonder what
has caused these nations to fly at each other's throats. The question
arises as to what makes up a government or why a government has the
right to rule its people.

In the United States, the government officials are simply the servants
of the people. Practically every man in our country, unless he is a
citizen of some foreign nation, has a right to vote, and in many of
the states women, too, have a voice in the government. We, the people
of the United States, can choose our own lawmakers, can instruct them
how to vote and, in some states, can vote out of existence any law
that they the people have made which we do not like. In all states, we
can show our disapproval of what our law-makers have done by voting
against them at the next election. Such is the government of a
republic, a "government of the people, by the people, and for the
people," as Abraham Lincoln called it. In the leading British
colonies, the people rule. Australian citizens voted against forcing
men to serve in the army. The result was very close and the vote of
the women helped to decide it. Canada, on the contrary, voted to
compel her men to go. How is it in Europe? Have the people of Germany
or Austria the right to vote on war? Were they consulted before their
governments called them to arms and sent them to fight each other? It
is plain that in order to understand what this war is about, we must