and firm principles. The French soldier has written about
liberty, the German soldier has had considerable to say about a Kultur
war. An American volunteer in the British army has written, "I find
myself among the millions of others in the great allied armies
fighting for all I believe right and civilized and humane against a
power which is evil and which threatens the existence of all the right
we prize and the freedom we enjoy" (24). But in general the
consciousness of the soldier, from all the evidence we have, was
concerned, as presumably was that of most of us, mainly with the most
obvious qualities of opposing forces, their concrete actions, and the
personal motives of rulers.

Leaving aside so far as one can one's own partisanship and mores
(which is not a very easy task), what causes can we say, with a
considerable degree of certainty, have actually been issues in the
present war? To some extent what one thinks these causes are will
remain matters of personal opinion and preference. Are there also
principles which, when once observed, will be accepted as the
fundamental "causes" of the war? There seem to be three at least which
characterize wide differences in the ideals and the civilization of
the opposing forces.

There is, first of all, an issue between the ideals of a relatively
autocratic form of government and a relatively more democratic form of
government. This was a cause of the intellectuals, but it was also a
popular cause. Men in general like the form of government under which
they live. From the standpoint of those who hold that a democratic
form of government is right, the war seemed to be a conflict between a
modern and progressive regime and an old and vicious one. So far as
this autocratic principle aimed to suppress the rights of individuals,
or to menace the liberties of small nations, so far as it was
aggressively militaristic and had imperial ambitions, which could be
achieved only by force, it stood clearly opposed to democracy.
Democracy and autocracy were plainly at war with one another, and yet
if we look closely we shall see that neither one can offer any actual
demonstration of its validity as the most superior or the final form
of government. In part they may appeal to the observable course of
history for their justification, but the final source of judgment
seems to rest in the mass of opinion in the world. Questions of form
and taste are not wholly absent. But the believer in dem