The Story of Mankind [185]
a large number of ``imitation empires.'' It gave the
Bishops of Rome a chance to make themselves the head of the
entire church, because they represented the idea of Roman
world-supremacy. It drove a number of perfectly harmless
barbarian chieftains into a career of crime and endless warfare
because they were for ever under the spell of this magic
word ``Rome.'' All these people, Popes, Emperors and plain
fighting men were not very different from you or me. But
they lived in a world where the Roman tradition was a vital
issue something living--something which was remembered
clearly both by the father and the son and the grandson. And
so they struggled and sacrificed themselves for a cause which
to-day would not find a dozen recruits.
In still another chapter I have told you how the great religious
wars took place more than a century after the first open
act of the Reformation and if you will compare the chapter
on the Thirty Years War with that on Inventions, you will see
that this ghastly butchery took place at a time when the first
clumsy steam engines were already puffing in the laboratories
of a number of French and German and English scientists.
But the world at large took no interest in these strange
contraptions, and went on with a grand theological discussion
which to-day causes yawns, but no anger.
And so it goes. A thousand years from now, the historian
will use the same words about Europe of the out-going nine-
teenth century, and he will see how men were engaged upon
terrific nationalistic struggles while the laboratories all around
them were filled with serious folk who cared not one whit for
politics as long as they could force nature to surrender a few
more of her million secrets.
You will gradually begin to understand what I am driving
at. The engineer and the scientist and the chemist, within a
single generation, filled Europe and America and Asia with
their vast machines, with their telegraphs, their flying machines,
their coal-tar products. They created a new world in which
time and space were reduced to complete insignificance. They
invented new products and they made these so cheap that almost
every one could buy them. I have told you all this before
but it certainly will bear repeating.
To keep the ever increasing number of factories going, the
owners, who had also become the rulers of the land, needed raw
materials and coal. Especially coal. Meanwhile the mass of
the people were still thinking in terms of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries and clinging to the old notions of the
state as a dynastic or political organisation. This clumsy mediaeval
institution was then suddenly called upon to handle the
highly modern problems of a mechanical and industrial world.
It did its best, according to the rules of the game which had
been laid down centuries before. The different states created
enormous armies and gigantic navies which were used for the
purpose of acquiring new possessions in distant lands. Whereever{sic}
there was a tiny bit of land left, there arose an English or
a French or a German or a Russian colony. If the natives
objected, they were killed. In most cases they did not object,
and were allowed to live peacefully, provided they did not
interfere with the diamond mines or the coal mines or the oil
mines or the gold mines or the rubber plantations, and they
derived many benefits from the foreign occupation.
Sometimes it happened that two states in search of raw
materials wanted the same piece of land at the same time.
Then there was a war. This occurred fifteen years ago when
Russia and Japan fought for the possession of certain terri-
tories which belonged to the Chinese people. Such conflicts,
however, were the exception. No one really desired to fight.
Indeed, the idea of fighting with armies and battleships and
submarines began to seem absurd to the men of the early 20th
Bishops of Rome a chance to make themselves the head of the
entire church, because they represented the idea of Roman
world-supremacy. It drove a number of perfectly harmless
barbarian chieftains into a career of crime and endless warfare
because they were for ever under the spell of this magic
word ``Rome.'' All these people, Popes, Emperors and plain
fighting men were not very different from you or me. But
they lived in a world where the Roman tradition was a vital
issue something living--something which was remembered
clearly both by the father and the son and the grandson. And
so they struggled and sacrificed themselves for a cause which
to-day would not find a dozen recruits.
In still another chapter I have told you how the great religious
wars took place more than a century after the first open
act of the Reformation and if you will compare the chapter
on the Thirty Years War with that on Inventions, you will see
that this ghastly butchery took place at a time when the first
clumsy steam engines were already puffing in the laboratories
of a number of French and German and English scientists.
But the world at large took no interest in these strange
contraptions, and went on with a grand theological discussion
which to-day causes yawns, but no anger.
And so it goes. A thousand years from now, the historian
will use the same words about Europe of the out-going nine-
teenth century, and he will see how men were engaged upon
terrific nationalistic struggles while the laboratories all around
them were filled with serious folk who cared not one whit for
politics as long as they could force nature to surrender a few
more of her million secrets.
You will gradually begin to understand what I am driving
at. The engineer and the scientist and the chemist, within a
single generation, filled Europe and America and Asia with
their vast machines, with their telegraphs, their flying machines,
their coal-tar products. They created a new world in which
time and space were reduced to complete insignificance. They
invented new products and they made these so cheap that almost
every one could buy them. I have told you all this before
but it certainly will bear repeating.
To keep the ever increasing number of factories going, the
owners, who had also become the rulers of the land, needed raw
materials and coal. Especially coal. Meanwhile the mass of
the people were still thinking in terms of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries and clinging to the old notions of the
state as a dynastic or political organisation. This clumsy mediaeval
institution was then suddenly called upon to handle the
highly modern problems of a mechanical and industrial world.
It did its best, according to the rules of the game which had
been laid down centuries before. The different states created
enormous armies and gigantic navies which were used for the
purpose of acquiring new possessions in distant lands. Whereever{sic}
there was a tiny bit of land left, there arose an English or
a French or a German or a Russian colony. If the natives
objected, they were killed. In most cases they did not object,
and were allowed to live peacefully, provided they did not
interfere with the diamond mines or the coal mines or the oil
mines or the gold mines or the rubber plantations, and they
derived many benefits from the foreign occupation.
Sometimes it happened that two states in search of raw
materials wanted the same piece of land at the same time.
Then there was a war. This occurred fifteen years ago when
Russia and Japan fought for the possession of certain terri-
tories which belonged to the Chinese people. Such conflicts,
however, were the exception. No one really desired to fight.
Indeed, the idea of fighting with armies and battleships and
submarines began to seem absurd to the men of the early 20th