This larger and better life of the 20th cen tury, too, is bound together, for good and for ill, in a new human solidarity. The enlarged world of 1900 is more compact than the small world of 1800. Ox-cart and pack-horse have been replaced as carriers by long lines of cars swiftly moving thousands of tons of all kinds of freight across continents. New methods of banking make it possible to transfer credit with magical quickness between distant portions of the earth; and, to say nothing of telegraphy, lines of communication are so organized that it costs no more to send a letter or parcel around the globe than to send it around the nearest street corner. The Minnesota farmer's market is not Minneapolis, but the world. The sheep raiser in Australia, the Kansas farmer, the New York merchant, the London banker, are parts of one industrial organism. All this solidarity means one more revolution in indus try. The age of small individual enterprise has given way to an era of vast consolidation of capital and management—department stores, mighty corporations, huge trusts, flouring cen tres like Minneapolis, meat-packing centres like Chicago, money centres like Wall street. And this consolidation has brought incalculable sav ing of wealth in economy of management and in utilization of old wastes into by-products. The new unity of society, too, has its moral side. Any happening of consequence is known within the hour in London, Petrograd, Pekin, New York, San Francisco, and, within a day, in almost every hamlet where civilized men live. A world opinion shapes itself, in ordinary times, as promptly as village opinion could be brought to bear upon an individual citizen a century ago.
Even before the horrible catastrophe of the World War, it was plain enough that all this modern progress had a darker side. The in dustrial organization produced wealth with gratifying rapidity, but failed to distribute it equitably. The world had become rich; but multitudes of workers remained ominously poor. Even in the most democratic countries about nine-tenths of the increased wealth was held by one-tenth the population, while at least two-tenths of the people were reduced to a stage of poverty that imperiled both health and decency. The apex of the social pyramid contains real captains of industry, but it con tains also pirates and parasites. Service to society has less to do with its revenues than plunder and privilege have. The broad base of the pyramid contains multitudes whose poverty results from physical or mental or moral lack; but it contains other multitudes of willing, hard-working, sober men and women now de nied a chance at comfortable and happy life.
And this modern poverty is harder to bear than that of earlier times because it is less nec essary. Then there was little wealth to divide. Now the poor man is jostled insultingly by ostentatious affluence and vicious waste. These were the conditions that summoned enlight ened thinkers and statesmen to a hopeful "war upon poverty') when the calamitous World War of 1914 set back indefinitely the hand of progress.
For modern society contained other poison more potent even than those industrial ills. All "civilized* nations, on occasion, still showed callous disregard of humane principles and of just dealing in their relations with barbarous and weak states. And among.them selves the civilized peoples were still in the im perfect "national* stage,— a stage far advanced upon the city or tribal or class organization of earlier centuries, but insufficient for the new needs of humanity, forbidding all approach to world patriotism, fruitful of international mis understandings and rivalries and hatreds and of a low and blasphemous international morality which permits a strong power, for its selfish ends, scornfully to tear up the most solemn treaties as "scraps of paper.° Semi-civilized
peoples are equipped with all the modern en gines of destruction. And in particular, in Germany, leader in civilization as she was in some respects, a curiously surviving feudal class had dominated society and had taught in sistently and insidiously an intensified Bis marckian philosophy of brute force,— the doc trine that the measure of a people's virtue is its military prowess and that victory in war justifies all means. Thus all modern progress had long been threatened, to the deeply ob servant, by the brooding menace of annihilating war armed with all the inventions of the new scientific age.
To lessen this peril, the world had recourse to The Hague Congresses of 1899 and 1907 and to a long series of standing arbitration treaties for the judicial settlement of future disputes between nations. This movement held much of promise: but, ominously, all proposals at The Hague meetings for disarmament, or for the limitation of armaments, fell before the opposition of Germany. Between nations armed to the teeth, arbitration treaties backed by no international police it was plain could have little more lasting value than laws have between armed desperadoes in a district with out a sheriff.
Still, despite all warnings, the mighty strug gle that began in the summer of 1914 amazed the world. The conflagration spread swiftly until the two central powers, Germany and Austria, with their two dependent allies, Tur key and Bulgaria, were encircled by a ring of 10 hostile nations. The various phases of the mighty conflict are treated elsewhere in this work under appropriate headings. (See WAR, EUROPEAN). From the historian's viewpoint, this much is clear: the conclusion of the war must mark the end of one age and the begin ning of another. That new age must begin un der indescribable handicaps. If ultimately it prove better than the age just gone, it will be only because of some happy outcome from the stern world-wide determination already aroused that some new way shall be found to prevent future wars. A confederation of nations to en force arbitration, from the prophetic forecast of poets, has suddenly become the most press-. ing practical problem of statesmen. This is the ray of hope that breaks from the war clouds over Europe.
Bibliography.- Within the space at com mand, no detailed bibliography is possible. Since the dawn of the scientific study of his tory, writers have shunned the attempt to cover the complex field of modern history ex cept in co-operative s e ri es ." Of such series the most important in English are Cam bridge Modern History,' edited by Ward (1903-14, 12 vols.); Periods of European. History,' edited by Hassall (1890-92, 8 vols., of which the last 5 belong to our period). Hazen's Since 1815' (1909); An drews' (Historical Development of Modern Eu rope' (18%) ; Fyffe's (Modern Europe to 1878) (1884), and Seignobos' Since 1814' (1899) deal with the 19th century. For further references the reader may consult the special bibliographies at the close of the articles on leading countries and movements.
Wn..us MASON WEST, Sometime Professor of History and Head of • the Department, in the University of Minne sota.