red that Europe, like India, is built upon conquest, and the
earlier populations were reduced to the condition of slaves and serfs to
the conquering races. True, there was not the extreme opposition of
white and colored races which distinguished the conquests of India, and
this is also one of the reasons why slavery and serfdom gradually gave
way and races coalesced. Nevertheless, the peasantry of Europe to-day is
in large part the product of serfdom and of that race-subjection which
produced serfdom. Herein we may find the source of that arrogance on the
one hand and subserviency on the other, which so closely relate class
divisions to race divisions. The European peasant, says Professor
Shaler,[2] "knows himself to be by birthright a member of an inferior
class, from which there is practically no chance of escaping.... It is
characteristic of peasants that they have accepted this inferior lot.
For generations they have regarded themselves as separated from their
fellow-citizens of higher estate. They have no large sense of citizenly
motives; they feel no sense of responsibility for any part of the public
life save that which lies within their own narrow round of action."

How different from the qualities of the typical American citizen whose
forefathers have erected our edifice of representative democracy! It was
not the peasant class of Europe that sought these shores in order to
found a free government. It was the middle class, the merchants and
yeomen, those who in religion and politics were literally "protestants,"
and who possessed the intelligence, manliness, and public spirit which
urged them to assert for themselves those inalienable rights which the
church or the state of their time had arrogated to itself. With such a
social class democracy is the only acceptable form of government. They
demand and secure equal opportunities because they are able to rise to
those opportunities. By their own inherent nature they look forward to
and aspire to the highest positions.

But the peasants of Europe, especially of Southern and Eastern Europe,
have been reduced to the qualities similar to those of an inferior race
that favor despotism and oligarchy rather than democracy. Their only
avenues of escape from their subordinate positions have been through the
army and the church, and these two institutions have drawn from the
peasants their ablest and brightest intellects into a life which
deprived them of offspring. "Among