In the United States, the government officials are simply the servants of the people.  Practically every man in our country, unless he is a citizen of some foreign nation, has a right to vote, and in many of the states women, too, have a voice in the government.  We, the people of the United States, can choose our own lawmakers, can instruct them how to vote and, in some states, can vote out of existence any law that they the people have made which we do not like.  In all states, we can show our disapproval of what our law-makers have done by voting against them at the next election.  Such is the government of a republic, a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as Abraham Lincoln called it.  In the leading British colonies, the people rule.  Australian citizens voted against forcing men to serve in the army.  The result was very close and the vote of the women helped to decide it.  Canada, on the contrary, voted to compel her men to go.  How is it in Europe?  Have the people of Germany or Austria the right to vote on war?  Were they consulted before their governments called them to arms and sent them to fight each other?  It is plain that in order to understand what this war is about, we must look into the story of how the different governments of Europe came to be and learn why their peoples obey them so unquestioningly.

We must remember that government by the people is a very new thing.  One hundred and thirty years ago, even in the United States only about one-fourth of the men had the right to vote.  These were citizens of property and wealth.  They did not think a poor man was worth considering.  In England, a country which allows its people more voice in the government than almost any other nation in Europe, it is only within the last thirty years that all men could vote.  There are some European countries, like Turkey, where the people have practically no power at all and others, like Austria, where they have very little voice in how they shall be governed.

For over a thousand years, the men of Europe have obeyed without thinking when their lords and kings have ordered them to pick up their weapons and go to war.  In many instances they have known nothing of the causes of the conflict or of what they were fighting for.  A famous English writer has written a poem which illustrates how little the average citizen has ever known concerning the cause of war, and shows the difference between the way in which war was looked upon by the men of old and the way in which one should regard it.  The poem runs as follows: 

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM

It was a summer evening,
  Old Kaspar’s work was done,
And he before his cottage door
  Was sitting in the sun,
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin
  Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet
  In playing there had found,
He came to ask what he had found
That was so large and smooth and round.