Russia. Nor yet, when we are considering the present _débâcle_ of
civilisation, need we interest ourselves overmuch in the immediate
occasions and circumstances of the huge quarrel. We want to know not how
Europe flared into war, but why. Our object is so to understand the
present imbroglio as to prevent, if we can, the possibility for the future
of any similar world-wide catastrophe.


EUROPEAN DICTATORS

Let us fix our attention on one or two salient points. Europe has often
been accustomed to watch with anxiety the rise of some potent arbiter of
her destinies who seems to arrogate to himself a large personal dominion.
There was Philip II. There was Louis XIV. There was Napoleon a hundred
years ago. Then, a mere shadow of his great ancestor, there was Napoleon
III. Then, after the Franco-German war, there was Bismarck. Now it is
Kaiser Wilhelm II. The emergence of some ambitious personality naturally
makes Europe suspicious and watchful, and leads to the formation of
leagues and confederations against him. The only thing, however, which
seems to have any power of real resistance to the potential tyrant is not
the manoeuvring of diplomats, but the steady growth of democracy in
Europe, which, in virtue of its character and principles, steadily objects
to the despotism of any given individual, and the arbitrary designs of a
personal will. We had hoped that the spread of democracies in all European
nations would progressively render dynastic wars an impossibility. The
peoples would cry out, we hoped, against being butchered to make a holiday
for any latter-day Cæsar. But democracy is a slow growth, and exists in
very varying degrees of strength in different parts of our continent.
Evidently it has not yet discovered its own power. We have sadly to
recognise that its range of influence and the new spirit which it seeks to