nts of the
German government have been a good enough reason for the United
States to have declared war?
8. How did the voyages of the Deutschland prove that the United
States wanted to be fair to both sides in the war?
9. What reasons had Austria and Germany for wishing peace in December
1916?
10. Why did President Wilson ask the warring nations to state their
aims in the war?
11. How did Germany try to justify the sinking of ships without
warning?

CHAPTER XXII

Another Crown Topples

The unnatural alliance of the Czar and the free peoples.--The first
Duma and the revolt of 1905.--The Zemptsvos and the people against the
pro-German officials.--The death of Rasputin and other signs of
unrest.--The revolution of March 1917.--The Czar becomes Mr.
Romanoff.--Four different governments within eight months.--Civil war
and a German effort for peace.

It will be recalled that the great war was caused in the first place
by the unprovoked attack of Austria on Serbia and the unwillingness of
Russia to stand by and see her little neighbor crushed, and that
England came in to make good her word, pledged to Belgium, to defend
that small country from all hostile attacks. Thus the nations of the
Entente posed before the world as the defenders of small nations and
as champions of the rights of peoples to live under the form of
government which they might choose. You will remember that when the
central powers said that they were ready to talk peace terms the
nations of the Entente replied that there could be no peace as long as
the Danes, Poles, and Alsatians were forcibly held by Germany in her
empire and as long as Austria denied the Ruthenians, Roumanians,
Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, and Italians in their empire the right either
to rule themselves or to join the nations united to them by ties of
blood and language. France and Great Britain especially were fond of
saying that it was a war of the free peoples against those enslaved by
military rule--a conflict between self-governed nations and those
which were oppressing their foreign subjects. Replying to this the
central powers would always point to Russia. Russia, said they,
oppressed the Poles and Lithuanians, the Letts, the Esthonians, the
Finns. She, as well as Austria-Hungary, has hundreds of thousands of
Roumanians within her territories. Her people had even less political
freedom than the inhabitants of Austria and Germany.

The nations