CHAPTER I 

 THE CHART OF EVOLUTION 



ON a fateful day in August, 1914, the ship of human 

 progress crashed upon a rock. Though battered and 

 broken by a terrific tempest, she still hangs together 

 after four years of pounding on the reef of militarism. Clearly 

 at this time of crisis it is well to reexamine the route by which 

 the world has come to this disaster. Has there been some wind, 

 some current — some widespread tendency, or some unnoticed 

 agency — that has carried us out of our true course.? Many 

 students are already engaged in the study of this great problem. 

 In the future it will occupy the attention of thousands of the 

 world's best minds. One inquirer studies the currents of phi- 

 losophy. He judges that the teachings of Nietzsche, for example, 

 were responsible for a swerve in German thought which changed 

 the direction of progress and thus brought shipwreck. Another 

 investigates the eddies of religion. He finds that lack of altruism 

 in the great commercial centers and the setting up of a home- 

 made God in Germany were potent causes of the wrong course 

 which the whole world now deplores. Again, an historian con- 

 cludes that the wind of junkerism and the militaristic spirit had 

 been blowing more strongly than people realized. Thus before 

 mankind knew what was happening the ship had run aground. 

 Still another inquirer, impressed by the importance of trade and 

 commerce, finds in them the deflecting force. The jealousy of 

 England and Germany formed a perfect network of conflicting 

 currents which drifted the ship first this way and then that. 

 Where one student feels that the Bagdad railway was a domi- 

 nating influence, another is sure that the Serbian question was 



