enlightening and refining agents. Out of the famines of the past came
experiences which inculcated the thrift and fore-handedness of today.

Out of man's sufferings have come knowledge and fortitude. Out of pain
and tribulation, the attribute of sympathy--the first spiritual
manifestation instrumental in elevating the human above the beast.
Things worth while are never obtained without payment of some kind.

Individual shocks stir the individual heart and conscience. Great world
shocks are necessary to stir the world conscience and heart; to start
those movements to right the wrongs in the world. So long as peace
reigned commerce was uninterrupted, and the acquisition of wealth was
not obstructed, men cared little for the intrigues and ambitions of
royalty. If they sensed them at all, they lulled themselves into a
feeling of security through the belief that progress had attained too
far, civilization had secured too strong a hold, and democracy was too
firmly rooted for any ordinary menace to be considered.

So insidious and far reaching had become the inculcation of false
philosophies summed up in the general term Kultur, that the subjects of
the autocratic-ridden empires believed they were being guided by benign
influences. Many enlightened men; at least it seems they must have been
enlightened, in Germany and Austria--men who possessed liberated
intellects and were not in the pay of the Kulturists--professed to
believe that despotism in the modern world could not be other than
benevolent.

The satanic hand was concealed in the soft glove; the cloven hoof
artistically fitted into the military boot; the tail carefully tucked
inside the uniform or dress suit; fiendish eyes were taught to smile and
gleam in sympathy and humor, or were masked behind the heavy lenses of
professorial dignity; the serpent's hiss was trained to song, or drowned
in crashing chords and given to the world as a sublime harmony.

Suddenly the world awoke! The wooing harmony had changed to a blast of
war; the conductor's baton had become a bayonet; the soft wind
instrument barked the rifle's tone; its notes were bullets that hissed
and screamed; tinkling cymbals sounded the wild blare of carnage, and
sweet-throated horns of silver and brass bellowed the cannon's deadly
roar.

Civilization was so shocked that for long the exact sequence of events
was not comprehended. It required time and reflection to clear away the
brain benumbing vapors o