A History by IRWIN ST. JOHN TUCKER Published by New York FOREWORD Empires are as old as history itself. When the misty curtain first parts for us upon that stage whereon the drama of life is played, emperors occupy the center of the scene. They have held the leading.rôle ever since. Around successive rivalries for that coveted part, the wars of the world group themselves like endless murders around a chain of Hamlets. What is the meaning of that mad plot, so wild, so bloody, so continuous, so undetermined? For it is not yet played out. We have entered upon a new act, it is true, with the old Imperialisms prostrate in the dust. But a new one rises triumphant over its fallen rivals. We have seen the powers of autocracy rent from the shoulders of Czar and Kaiser, only to behold them wrapped around the figure of a President. There is a straight line of descent from the throne of Menes to the chair of Wilson; a straight course of Empire from that far off day when Upper and Lower Egypt were united beneath the crown of the first Empire, to the day when the expanding credits of America forced her imperial merchants to create an imperial figurehead. Our symptoms of imperialism are identical with those 'which all budding empires have displayed. It is time that we analyze ourselves in the light of what physicians call the "etiology" of the disease. We entered the war, theoretically, to bring autocracy to an end. Did the war bring autocracy to an end? Can a war end autocracy? The Treaty of Versailles, it was promised, would bring |