the world still mourns, fell before the onslaught of this triumphant
democracy. The culture of the few could not prevail against the greed of
the many. Domestic conditions became so intolerable that a majority of
the Athenians welcomed the stern but salutary rule of the tyrant. For
they had learned that the tyranny of a despot is easier to be borne than
that of universal poverty.

One does not have to interrogate the future to learn whither Russia
under Bolshevism is tending; one has but to look to the past. Like
causes cannot produce unlike effects. Under given conditions national
eclipses can be predicted as surely as the eclipses of the planets.

_Los Angeles Times_, May 4, 1921.

NAPOLEON'S CENTENNIAL

The hundredth anniversary of the passing of Napoleon centers attention
anew on one of the baffling figures of all time--a man at once
attractive and repulsive; a soldier of infinite courage who on at least
one occasion acted the coward; a master strategist who, to the last,
seemed never to fully grasp that strategy by which he almost recast a
world.

He found Europe feudal and left it modern. He opened up new realms of
knowledge to the servants; revolutionized military tactics; founded
lasting industries; gave a new birth to French law; mocked and yet
fostered freedom.

More volumes have been written regarding him than any other character in
history--one excepted. Nevertheless, he still remains the most elusive,
the most unsatisfying genius that the world has ever known.

His accomplishments have by this time been fully set forth and properly
valued. We know that he stands practically alone as the greatest
strategist of the ages. Cromwell, on a smaller scale and within a far
more limited sphere, more nearly approaches him, perhaps, than does any
other.

We know also that he was an adroit politician and a statesman on a scale
rarely equalled in Europe. He was also an orator and an adept at coining
phrases. He was an executive of immense power and a man of tremendous
personal charm.

Of course, he was relentless, cruel, unscrupulous and all the rest of
it, as we have been so often told. But, praise and blame aside, the
question of the source of his power still remains the important thing.

Certainly he was not great because he was a brilliant student, for, all
in all, he was not deeply read. It could hardly be claimed that he was
of the electric, assimilative type, for he would listen to no one and
held