The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Van Loon, Ph.D. - HTML preview

carelessness they bestowed upon their descendants a terrible inheritance of hate and

misery. For untold centuries the south-eastern corner of Europe had been the scene of

rebelion and bloodshed. During the seventies of the last century the people of Serbia and

Bulgaria and Montenegro and Roumania were once more trying to gain their freedom and

the Turks (with the support of many of the western powers), were trying to prevent this.

After a period of particularly atrocious massacres in Bulgaria in the year 1876, the Russian

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people lost al patience. The Government was forced to intervene just as President

McKinley was obliged to go to Cuba and stop the shooting-squads of General Weyler in

Havana. In April of the year 1877 the Russian armies crossed the Danube, stormed the

Shipka pass, and after the capture of Plevna, marched southward until they reached the

gates of Constantinople. Turkey appealed for help to England. There were many English

people who denounced their government when it took the side of the Sultan. But Disraeli

(who had just made Queen Victoria Empress of India and who loved the picturesque

Turks while he hated the Russians who were brutaly cruel to the Jewish people within

their frontiers) decided to interfere. Russia was forced to conclude the peace of San

Stefano (1878) and the question of the Balkans was left to a Congress which convened at

Berlin in June and July of the same year.

This famous conference was entirely dominated by the personality of Disraeli. Even

Bismarck feared the clever old man with his wel-oiled curly hair and his supreme

arrogance, tempered by a cynical sense of humor and a marvelous gift for flattery. At

Berlin the British prime-minister carefuly watched over the fate of his friends the Turks.

Montenegro, Serbia and Roumania were recognised as independent kingdoms. The

principality of Bulgaria was given a semi-independent status under Prince Alexander of

Battenberg, a nephew of Tsar Alexander II. But none of those countries were given the

chance to develop their powers and their resources as they would have been able to do,

had England been less anxious about the fate of the Sultan, whose domains were

necessary to the safety of the British Empire as a bulwark against further Russian

aggression.

To make matters worse, the congress alowed Austria to take Bosnia and Herzegovina

away from the Turks to be "administered" as part of the Habsburg domains. It is true that

Austria made an excelent job of it. The neglected provinces were as wel managed as the

best of the British colonies, and that is saying a great deal. But they were inhabited by

many Serbians. In older days they had been part of the great Serbian empire of Stephan

Dushan, who early in the fourteenth century had defended western Europe against the

invasions of the Turks and whose capital of Uskub had been a centre of civilisation one

hundred and fifty years before Columbus discovered the new lands of the west. The

Serbians remembered their ancient glory as who would not? They resented the presence

of the Austrians in two provinces, which, so they felt, were theirs by every right of

tradition.

And it was in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, that the archduke Ferdinand, heir to the

Austrian throne, was murdered on June 28 of the year 1914. The assassin was a Serbian

student who had acted from purely patriotic motives.

But the blame for this terrible catastrophe which was the immediate, though not the only

cause of the Great World War did not lie with the half-crazy Serbian boy or his Austrian

victim. It must be traced back to the days of the famous Berlin Conference when Europe

was too busy building a material civilisation to care about the aspirations and the dreams

of a forgotten race in a dreary corner of the old Balkan peninsula.

A NEW WORLD

THE GREAT WAR WHICH WAS REALLY THE STRUGGLE

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FOR A NEW AND BETTER WORLD

THE Marquis de Condorcet was one of the noblest characters among the smal group of

honest enthusiasts who were responsible for the outbreak of the great French Revolution.

He had devoted his life to the cause of the poor and the unfortunate. He had been one of

the assistants of d'Alembert and Diderot when they wrote their famous Encyclopedie.

During the first years of the Revolution he had been the leader of the Moderate wing of the

Convention.

His tolerance, his kindliness, his stout common sense, had made him an object of suspicion

when the treason of the king and the court clique had given the extreme radicals their

chance to get hold of the government and kil their opponents. Condorcet was declared

"hors de loi," or outlawed, an outcast who was henceforth at the mercy of every true

patriot. His friends offered to hide him at their own peril. Condorcet refused to accept

their sacrifice. He escaped and tried to reach his home, where he might be safe. After

three nights in the open, torn and bleeding, he entered an inn and asked for some food.

The suspicious yokels searched him and in his pockets they found a copy of Horace, the

Latin poet. This showed that their prisoner was a man of gentle breeding and had no

business upon the highroads at a time when every educated person was regarded as an

enemy of the Revolutionary state. They took Condorcet and they bound him and they

gagged him and they threw him into the vilage lock-up, but in the morning when the

soldiers came to drag him back to Paris and cut his head off, behold! he was dead.

This man who had given al and had received nothing had good reason to despair of the

human race. But he has written a few sentences which ring as true to-day as they did one

hundred and thirty years ago. I repeat them here for your benefit.

"Nature has set no limits to our hopes," he wrote, "and the picture of the human race, now

freed from its chains and marching with a firm tread on the road of truth and virtue and

happiness, offers to the philosopher a spectacle which consoles him for the errors, for the

crimes and the injustices which stil polute and afflict this earth."

The world has just passed through an agony of pain compared to which the French

Revolution was a mere incident. The shock has been so great that it has kiled the last

spark of hope in the breasts of milions of men. They were chanting a hymn of progress,

and four years of slaughter folowed their prayers for peace. "Is it worth while," so they

ask, "to work and slave for the benefit of creatures who have not yet passed beyond the

stage of the earliest cave men?"

There is but one answer.

That answer is "Yes!"

The World War was a terrible calamity. But it did not mean the end of things. On the

contrary it brought about the coming of a new day.

It is easy to write a history of Greece and Rome or the Middle Ages. The actors who

played their parts upon that long-forgotten stage are al dead. We can criticize them with a

cool head. The audience that applauded their efforts has dispersed. Our remarks cannot

possibly hurt their feelings.

But it is very difficult to give a true account of contemporary events. The problems that fil

the minds of the people with whom we pass through life, are our own problems, and they

hurt us too much or they please us too wel to be described with that fairness which is

necessary when we are writing history and not blowing the trumpet of propaganda. Al the

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same I shal endeavour to tel you why I agree with poor Condorcet when he expressed

his firm faith in a better future.

Often before have I warned you against the false impression which is created by the use of

our so-caled historical epochs which divide the story of man into four parts, the ancient

world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Reformation, and Modern Time. The

last of these terms is the most dangerous. The word "modern" implies that we, the people

of the twentieth century, are at the top of human achievement. Fifty years ago the liberals

of England who folowed the leadership of Gladstone felt that the problem of a truly

representative and democratic form of government had been solved forever by the second

great Reform Bil, which gave workmen an equal share in the government with their

employers. When Disraeli and his conservative friends talked of a dangerous "leap in the

dark" they answered "No." They felt certain of their cause and trusted that henceforth al

classes of society would co-operate to make the government of their common country a

success. Since then many things have happened, and the few liberals who are stil alive

begin to understand that they were mistaken.

There is no definite answer to any historical problem.

Every generation must fight the good fight anew or perish as those sluggish animals of the

prehistoric world have perished.

If you once get hold of this great truth you wil get a new and much broader view of life.

Then, go one step further and try to imagine yourself in the position of your own great-

great-grandchildren who wil take your place in the year 10,000. They too wil learn

history. But what wil they think of those short four thousand years during which we have

kept a written record of our actions and of our thoughts? They wil think of Napoleon as a

contemporary of Tiglath Pileser, the Assyrian conqueror. Perhaps they wil confuse him

with Jenghiz Khan or Alexander the Macedonian. The great war which has just come to

an end wil appear in the light of that long commercial conflict which settled the supremacy

of the Mediterranean when Rome and Carthage fought during one hundred and twenty-

eight years for the mastery of the sea. The Balkan troubles of the 19th century (the

struggle for freedom of Serbia and Greece and Bulgaria and Montenegro) to them wil

seem a continuation of the disordered conditions caused by the Great Migrations. They

wil look at pictures of the Rheims cathedral which only yesterday was destroyed by

German guns as we look upon a photograph of the Acropolis ruined two hundred and fifty

years ago during a war between the Turks and the Venetians. They wil regard the fear of

death, which is stil common among many people, as a childish superstition which was

perhaps natural in a race of men who had burned witches as late as the year 1692. Even

our hospitals and our laboratories and our operating rooms of which we are so proud wil

look like slightly improved workshops of alchemists and mediaeval surgeons.

And the reason for al this is simple. We modern men and women are not "modern" at al.

On the contrary we stil belong to the last generations of the cave-dwelers. The foundation

for a new era was laid but yesterday. The human race was given its first chance to become

truly civilised when it took courage to question al things and made "knowledge and

understanding" the foundation upon which to create a more reasonable and sensible

society of human beings. The Great War was the "growing-pain" of this new world.

For a long time to come people wil write mighty books to prove that this or that or the

other person brought about the war. The Socialists wil publish volumes in which they wil

accuse the "capitalists" of having brought about the war for "commercial gain." The

capitalists wil answer that they lost infinitely more through the war than they made—that

their children were among the first to go and fight and be kiled—and they wil show how

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in every country the bankers tried their very best to avert the outbreak of hostilities.

French historians wil go through the register of German sins from the days of

Charlemagne until the days of Wiliam of Hohenzolern and German historians wil return

the compliment and wil go through the list of French horrors from the days of

Charlemagne until the days of President Poincare. And then they wil establish to their own

satisfaction that the other felow was guilty of "causing the war." Statesmen, dead and not

yet dead, in al countries wil take to their typewriters and they wil explain how they tried

to avert hostilities and how their wicked opponents forced them into it.

The historian, a hundred years hence, wil not bother about these apologies and

vindications. He wil understand the real nature of the underlying causes and he wil know

that personal ambitions and personal wickedness and personal greed had very little to do

with the final outburst. The original mistake, which was responsible for al this misery, was

committed when our scientists began to create a new world of steel and iron and

chemistry and electricity and forgot that the human mind is slower than the proverbial

turtle, is lazier than the wel-known sloth, and marches from one hundred to three hundred

years behind the smal group of courageous leaders.

A Zulu in a frock coat is stil a Zulu. A dog trained to ride a bicycle and smoke a pipe is

stil a dog. And a human being with the mind of a sixteenth century tradesman driving a

1921 Rols-Royce is stil a human being with the mind of a sixteenth century tradesman.

If you do not understand this at first, read it again. It wil become clearer to you in a

moment and it wil explain many things that have happened these last six years.

Perhaps I may give you another, more familiar, example, to show you what I mean. In the

movie theatres, jokes and funny remarks are often thrown upon the screen. Watch the

audience the next time you have a chance. A few people seem almost to inhale the words.

It takes them but a second to read the lines. Others are a bit slower. Stil others take from

twenty to thirty seconds. Finaly those men and women who do not read any more than

they can help, get the point when the brighter ones among the audience have already

begun to decipher the next cut-in. It is not different in human life, as I shal now show you.

In a former chapter I have told you how the idea of the Roman Empire continued to live

for a thousand years after the death of the last Roman Emperor. It caused the

establishment of 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

spel of this magic word "Rome." Al 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 stil 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 wil compare the chapter on

the Thirty Years War with that on Inventions, you wil 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 wil use the same words about

Europe of the out-going nineteenth century, and he wil see how men were engaged upon

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terrific nationalistic struggles while the laboratories al around them were filed with serious

folk who cared not one whit for politics as long as they could force nature to surrender a

few more of her milion secrets.

You wil gradualy begin to understand what I am driving at. The engineer and the scientist

and the chemist, within a single generation, filed 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 al this before but it certainly wil 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. Especialy coal. Meanwhile the mass

of the people were stil 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 caled 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 kiled. In most

cases they did not object, and were alowed to live peacefuly, 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 realy 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 century. They associated the idea of violence

with the long-ago age of unlimited monarchies and intriguing dynasties. Every day they

read in their papers of stil further inventions, of groups of English and American and

German scientists who were working together in perfect friendship for the purpose of an

advance in medicine or in astronomy. They lived in a busy world of trade and of

commerce and factories. But only a few noticed that the development of the state, (of the

gigantic community of people who recognise certain common ideals,) was lagging several

hundred years behind. They tried to warn the others. But the others were occupied with

their own affairs.

I have used so many similes that I must apologise for bringing in one more. The Ship of

State (that old and trusted expression which is ever new and always picturesque,) of the

Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans and the Venetians and the merchant

adventurers of the seventeenth century had been a sturdy craft, constructed of wel-

seasoned wood, and commanded by officers who knew both their crew and their vessel

and who understood the limitations of the art of navigating which had been handed down

to them by their ancestors.

Then came the new age of iron and steel and machinery. First one part, then another of the

old ship of state was changed. Her dimensions were increased. The sails were discarded

for steam. Better living quarters were established, but more people were forced to go

down into the stoke-hole, and while the work was safe and fairly remunerative, they did

not like it as wel as their old and more dangerous job in the rigging. Finaly, and almost

imperceptibly, the old wooden square-rigger had been transformed into a modern ocean

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liner. But the captain and the mates remained the same. They were appointed or elected in

the same way as a hundred years before. They were taught the same system of navigation

which had served the mariners of the fifteenth century. In their cabins hung the same charts

and signal flags which had done service in the days of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great.

In short, they were (through no fault of their own) completely incompetent.

The sea of international politics is not very broad. When those Imperial and Colonial liners

began to try and outrun each other, accidents were bound to happen. They did happen.

You can stil see the wreckage if you venture to pass through that part of the ocean.

And the moral of the story is a simple one. The world is in dreadful need of men who wil

assume the new leadership—who wil have the courage of their own visions and who wil

recognise clearly that we are only at the beginning of the voyage, and have to learn an

entirely new system of seamanship.

They wil have to serve for years as mere apprentices. They wil have to fight their way to

the top against every possible form of opposition. When they reach the bridge, mutiny of

an envious crew may cause their death. But some day, a man wil arise who wil bring the

vessel safely to port, and he shal be the hero of the ages.

AS IT EVER SHALL BE

"The more I think of the problems of our lives, the more I am persuaded that we ought to

choose Irony and Pity for our "assessors and judges" as the ancient Egyptians caled upon

"the Goddess Isis and the Goddess Nephtys" on behalf of their dead. "Irony and Pity" are

both of good counsel; the first with her "smiles" makes life agreeable; the other sanctifies it

with her tears." "The Irony which I invoke is no cruel Deity. She mocks neither love nor

beauty. She is gentle and kindly disposed. Her mirth disarms and it is she who teaches us

to laugh at rogues and fools, whom but for her we might be so weak as to despise and

hate."

And with these wise words of a very great Frenchman I bid you farewel. 8 Barrow

Street, New York. Saturday, June 26, xxi.

AN ANIMATED CHRONOLOGY, 500,000 B.C.—A.D. 1922

THE END

CONCERNING THE PICTURES

CONCERNING THE PICTURES OF THIS BOOK AND A FEW WORDS ABOUT

THE BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The day of the historical textbook without ilustrations has gone. Pictures and photographs

of famous personages and equaly famous occurrences cover the pages of Breasted and

Robinson and Beard. In this volume the photographs have been omitted to make room for

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a series of home-made drawings which represent ideas rather than events.

While the author lays no claim to great artistic excelence (being possessed of a decided

leaning towards drawing as a child, he was taught to play the violin as a matter of

discipline,) he prefers to make his own maps and sketches because he knows exactly

what he wants to say and cannot possibly explain this meaning to his more proficient

brethren in the field of art. Besides, the pictures were al drawn for children and their ideas

of art are very different from those of their parents.

To al teachers the author would give this advice—let your boys and girls draw their

history after their own desire just as often as you have a chance. You can show a class a

photograph of a Greek temple or a mediaeval castle and the class wil dutifuly say, "Yes,

Ma'am," and proceed to forget al about it. But make the Greek temple or the Roman

castle the centre of an event, tel the boys to make their own picture of "the building of a

temple," or "the storming of the castle," and they wil stay after school-hours to finish the