e unnecessary because a peaceful method of adjusting
international difficulties had been found and had been universally
adopted. Whether the Great War of 1914 has destroyed all that was
accomplished in the years preceding to make peace lasting, or whether it
was only one of the obstacles in the path of this revolutionary
undertaking, remains to be seen.

The international cooperation of which we have just spoken was, of
course, nothing new. For treaties have been signed and alliances
have been concluded between nations ever since they have been
developed far enough to be capable of definite, deliberate political
efforts. But never before have treaties and alliances been so
plentiful or gone so far, and only rarely have they resulted in such
a definite alignment of the European nations into two groups. The
inception of this policy the world owes to the great modern German
statesman, Bismarck. It was through his efforts that the Triple
Alliance was created soon after the Franco-Prussian War and after
the foundation of the new German Empire which chose as its
companions Austria-Hungary and Italy. That Bismarck built well then
is clearly shown by the wonderful progress that Germany especially
has been able to make since the Triple Alliance was founded and
insured European peace for a long period of years. But that either
he did not build well enough for all exigencies or else that his
successors were not as capable as he, is shown equally clearly by
the fact that at the most crucial moment in Germany's modern history
one member of the Triple Alliance, Italy, deserted. The second group
of European nations, in a way, was the logical result of the first,
for the latter, as it were, left high and dry on the sea of
international cooperation the three powerful countries of England,
France, and Russia. At the time of the formation of the Triple
Alliance France, of course, was disabled through its defeat by
Germany to such an extent that alliances were, at least temporarily,
out of the question. Its wonderfully quick recovery soon changed
that, however, and resulted in very definite efforts on the part of
French statesmen to form a defensive alliance which would insure
France from any aggressiveness on the part of the Triple Alliance.
This finally brought about the Franco-Russian Alliance. That Russia
was available then was due to the fact that Germany's old intimacy
with its eastern neighbor had received a serious setback when it