Part 24

At that time Italy was not a single country as now but like Germany a collection of small states. Some of these were independent, some were owned by France, some were owned by Austria. The king of one of these Italian states was Victor Emmanuel. He wanted all the Italian states to unite and become one single country like our United States. He was helped by his prime minister, a very able man named Cavour, and by a rough but romantic popular hero named Garibaldi, who was called the hero of the Red Shirt.

Garibaldi, who had been a candle-maker in New York City, was always poor and seemed not to care for money. He was so popular that whenever he called for soldiers to fight with him for his beloved Italy, they at once flocked around him ready to fight to the death.

And so at last these three, Victor Emmanuel, Cavour, and Garibaldi, succeeded in making their country one big nation. The Italians erected monuments to them and named streets after them. To Victor Emmanuel they built a magnificent building on a hill in Rome overlooking the city, a building that was intended to be more beautiful than anything built in Athens during the time of Pericles or in Italy during the Renaissance.

If you collect postage-stamps it would be interesting for you to get, if you can, stamps of these countries at that time, the New French Republic, United Germany, and United Italy.

[Illustration: 1870]

77

The Age of Miracles

You may think the Age of Miracles was when Christ lived.

But if a man who lived at that time should come back to earth now he would think _this_ the Age of Miracles.

If he heard you talk over a wire to a person a thousand miles away, he would think you a magician.

If you showed him people moving and acting on a movie screen, he would think you a witch.

If he heard you start a band playing by turning on a phonograph, he would think you a devil.

If he saw you fly through the air in an airplane, he would think you a god.

We are so used to the telephone, telegraph, and phonograph; to steamboats, steam railroads, and trolley-cars; to electric lights, motor-cars, moving pictures, radio, and airplanes, that it is hard to imagine a world in which there were none of these things--absolutely none of these things. Yet in the Year 1800 not a single one of these inventions was known.

Neither George Washington nor Napoleon ever saw a steam-engine, a steam-car, nor a steamboat. They had never used a telephone nor a telegraph nor a bicycle. My own grandfather never saw a trolley-car nor an electric light. Even my father never saw a phonograph, a moving picture, an automobile, nor a flying-machine.

More wonders have been made in the last hundred years than in all the previous centuries of the world put together.

A Scotchman named James Watt was one of the first of these magicians whom we call inventors. Watt had watched a boiling kettle on the stove and noticed that the steam lifted the lid. This gave him an idea that steam might lift other things as well as the lid of a tea-kettle. So he made a machine in which steam lifted a lid called a piston in such a way as to turn a wheel. This was the first steam-engine.

Watt’s steam-engine moved wheels and other things, but it didn’t move itself. An Englishman named Stephenson put Watt’s engine on wheels and made the engine move its own wheels. This was the first locomotive. Soon funny-looking carriages drawn by funny-looking engines were made to run on tracks in America. At first these trains ran only a few miles out from such cities as Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Then a young fellow named Robert Fulton thought he could make a boat go by putting Watt’s engine on board and making it turn paddle-wheels. People laughed at him and called the boat he was building “Fulton’s Folly,” which means “foolishness.” But the boat worked, and Fulton had the laugh on those who had laughed at him. He called his boat the _Clermont_, and it made regular trips up and down the river.

No one had ever before been able to talk to another far off until the telegraph was invented. The telegraph makes a clicking sound. Electricity flows through a wire from one place to another place which may be a long distance off. If you press a button at one end of the wire you stop the electricity flowing through the wire, and the instrument at the other end makes a click. A short click is called a dot, and a long click is called a dash. These dots and dashes stand for letters of the alphabet, so you can spell out a message by dots and dashes.

A is . -- dot-dash B is -- ... dash-dot-dot-dot E is . dot H is .... dot-dot-dot-dot T is -- dash

An American painter named Morse invented this wonderful little instrument. He built the first telegraph line in America between Baltimore and Washington, and this was the first message he clicked across it: “What hath God wrought!”

A school-teacher named Bell was trying to find some way of making deaf children hear, and in doing so he invented the telephone. The telephone carries words as the telegraph carries clicks. You do not have to know a special alphabet or spell out words by dots and dashes as you do on the telegraph. With the telephone any one can talk from one side of America to the other.

Many inventions now in every-day use have been partly invented by several people, so that it is hard to say just which one thought of the invention first. Several people thought of a way to run a machine by feeding it electricity. This was the electric motor. Then others thought of a way to run a machine by exploding gas. This was the motor used in automobiles.

Electric lights, such as we use indoors, were invented by Thomas Alva Edison. Edison is called a wizard, because in the Middle Ages wizards were supposed to be able to do and to make all sorts of wonderful and impossible things, to turn lead into gold, to make people invisible, and that sort of thing. But Edison has done things that no wizard of a fairy-tale had ever even thought of. Edison was a poor boy who sold newspapers and magazines on a train. He was interested in all sorts of experiments and fitted up a place in the baggage-car where he could make experiments. But he made so much of a mess in the car that at last the baggage-man kicked Edison’s whole outfit off the train. Edison invented many things connected with the phonograph and the movies, and he has probably made more useful and important inventions than any other man who has ever lived, so that he is much greater than those mere kings who have done nothing but quarrel and destroy--without whom the world would have been much better off if they had never lived!

Thousands of people who have lived in the past ages have tried to fly and failed. Millions of people have said it was impossible to fly and foolish to try. Some have even said it was wicked to try, that God meant that only birds and angels should fly. At last, after long years of work and thousands of trials, two American brothers named Wright did the impossible. They invented the airplane and flew.

An Italian named Marconi invented the radio, and others every day are still making wonderful inventions, but you will have to read about these yourself, for we are near the end of our history.

Here is a good subject for an argument or debate: Are we any happier _with_ all these inventions than people were a thousand years ago _without_ them?

Life is faster and more exciting; but it is more difficult and more dangerous. Instead of enjoying a book curled up in the corner of a sofa by a crackling fire, we leave a steam radiator and go out to the movies. Instead of singing or playing the violin, we turn on the graphophone or the player-piano and miss the chief joy in music, the joy of making it ourselves. Instead of the jogging drive in an old buggy behind a horse that goes along through the country-side almost by himself, we speed on in dangerous autos, to which we must pay constant, undivided attention or be wrecked.

[Illustration: 1905]

78

GERMANY FIGHTS THE WORLD

The last chapter was one of the few without a fight in it. But now, to make up for that, I must tell you about the greatest and the worst fight in history.

There is a little country in Europe called Serbia. It is next door to Austria. A young man who lived in Serbia shot an Austrian prince. Little Serbia apologized to Austria for what one of her people had done. But Austria insisted that the Serbian nation was to blame for what had been done; she refused to accept the apology and started in to punish Serbia.

I once saw a little dog snap at a big boy. The owner of the little dog apologized to the big boy for what his dog had done. But the big boy did not accept the apology, and he started in to thrash the little boy for what his dog had done. Presently a crowd gathered round, the friends of each boy took sides, and there was a general free-for-all “scrap.”

So it was in this case. One of Austria’s big friends, Germany, took sides against Serbia, and Russia took the side of Serbia. Ever since the time of the Franco-Prussian War and Bismarck and William, Germany had been in training for a fight, and so had her neighbors. Nearly all the countries of Europe had for years been getting together into two groups, made up of the friends and the enemies of Germany; and the two were ready to jump at each other as soon as Austria, or Germany, or anybody else, struck at any one.

But Germany didn’t strike at Serbia; Austria didn’t really need her help against Serbia. Germany was sure that France, who was her enemy and Russia’s friend, would take sides against her; and so she rushed at France to destroy her before Russia could hit hard from the other side. Now, to get at France Germany had to get through the little country of Belgium. She and France had agreed that neither would march armies through Belgium, but when the war began her armies marched in anyway and pushed aside the Belgians, who tried to stop them. And so her armies rushed on toward the capital of France, Paris. She got as far as a little stream called the Marne, only twenty miles from Paris. But here the French under General Foch stopped her army. This battle of the Marne is probably the most famous of all the battles you have heard about in history, for though the war was not ended for four years after this battle, if the Germans had won at the Marne, the war would have been over, with Germany victor, and the rest of the world would have had to do what Germany said.

Germany was the first to use poison gas, trying to smother her enemy; she fought with submarines from under the sea; she attacked passenger ships that could not fight back. The English navy was the strongest, and it was only with submarines that Germany could fight at sea. This war was the first one in history in which battles were fought not only on land but up in the air and down under the water.

England took sides with France and Russia--and these were called Allies--to fight against Germany and Austria, and at first the war was between these countries only. Before the war ended, however, almost all the countries of the world had taken sides against Germany, for they knew that if she won she would be able to tell the rest of the world what to do. Then all of a sudden Russia had a revolution. The Russian people killed their ruler, the czar, and his family, and refused to fight any longer. Things began to look pretty bad for the Allies.

The United States did not start into the war until 1917, almost three years after it had begun; then she did so because German submarines were sinking American passenger ships and killing Americans.

[Illustration: Surrender of Germans.]

America was so far off--three thousand miles away--and across an ocean that it seemed impossible that she could do much in the war. But in a very short time she had sent two million soldiers across in ships. Under General Pershing they fought great battles. At last Germany was utterly beaten, and on Armistice day, November 11, 1918, Germany signed a paper agreeing to do everything the Allies asked; and so the greatest war in history ended. The kaiser went to live in Holland, and Germany became a republic.

[Illustration: 1918]

79

Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow

There is a candy shop near where I live. On its sign it says, “Made Fresh Every Hour.” History is being made every day. It is being made fresh almost every hour. The newsboy even now is calling outside of my window, “Extra! Extra!” Is it a new war? Is it a new discovery? If you had clipped head-lines from the papers since the World War, here are some of the things you might have pasted in your scrapbook.

TREATY OF PEACE SIGNED AT VERSAILLES

Nations Agree on Terms of Peace

The Mohammedan Turks in the East Are Again Threatening the Christian Nations of the West

THE IRISH FREE STATE ESTABLISHED

After Centuries of Struggle to Become Independent of England, Ireland at Last, with England’s Permission, Has Set Up a Government of Her Own

COLUMBUS OF THE AIR

Read, an American, Crosses Atlantic Ocean for First Time in an Airplane; Lands at the Azores and Then in Portugal; Several Others Soon Follow, and the Ocean Is Crossed a Number of Times

WOMEN CAN VOTE AT LAST

All Through the Ages Women Have Had Little or No “Say” in the Government; Now, for the First Time, They Can Vote in Our Country and in Most Other Civilized Countries

STRONG DRINK PROHIBITED

The Use of Wine and Strong Drink, Which Has Caused So Much Crime, Disease, Death and Unhappiness, Has Been Forbidden in the United States and Limited in Many Other Countries; in the Generations to Come, Men Will Probably Marvel That There Was Once a Time When People Drank Poison for Pleasure

From now on you will have to read your history in the daily papers.

Up to this time, history has been marked by the story of one war after another, some big, some small, some short, some long. Almost always a fight has been going on somewhere. It has been War, War, War; Fight, Fight, Fight. Children scratch, kick, and bite. But the older we get, the less do we use our fists and feet to settle quarrels. So fighting seems to be a sign of childhood--that we are “kids”--and our fights, that we call wars, a sign of how young the world really is and we really are; a sign that the world is still but a minute or two old.

Now, we admire and praise as heroes Horatius, Leonidas, Joan of Arc, and General Foch and those others who have defended their countries against the attacks of the enemy, as we would admire a man who shoots a burglar or a murderer that attacks his family in the night. But those, whether kings, generals, or princes, who do the attacking and take life with no other excuse than to add to their power or wealth or glory, are no better than burglars who go forth with a gun and a blackjack to waylay, rob, and murder for the same purpose. War kills, war destroys, war costs millions of lives and billions of dollars--money that could be used to make us happy, instead of causing bitterness, suffering, misery, and unhappiness; blind men and cripples, widows and orphans. No one is better off, not even the winner. It is a terrible game, in which even the winner loses. And yet in the long run who knows? It may be the only way the world can grow!

But this is certain: if wars do not end, they will be fought with something more deadly, more terrible than shot and shell. Sooner or later, some man of science will invent a disease more catching than the terrible plague, more deadly than the Black Death with which to attack the enemy. But if such a disease is let loose, once started it will spread from one being to the next till every one has caught it and died and no one will escape. Or he will invent a poison to poison the air we breathe that will spread like the wind or like wildfire in dry grass, and there will be no stopping it. The air that wraps the globe will be a sea of poison gas. Every thing that breathes will take only one breath, and every man, woman, and child, every beast of the field, every bird and flying thing will drop dead. Or he will invent something a million times more powerful than gunpowder or dynamite--something so explosive that when discovered by some Mr. Swartz it will blow him, his house, his town, his country, and the whole world to kingdom come--and that will be the end of this little spark off the sun.

Perhaps you have looked through a microscope at what seem to be wars between germs. As germs might look up at the eye of the microscope through which we watch their life-and-death struggles, and wonder what is up above on the other side looking down at them, so we may look up at the blue eye of heaven above us and wonder what all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful being up there is watching our own life-and-death struggles here below.

Our little world, which seems so immense to us, is really only a tiny speck, only one of countless other specks floating in space; it is like one of the tiny motes which you may see any time in a sunbeam that shines in at the window. Who has an eye so keen that he can count the moving motes in such a beam of light? Who would miss one such grain of dust if it should disappear? So this grain of dust we call the World and all of us who live upon it could vanish without ever being noticed!

This story ends here, but only for the present, for history is a continued story and will never end.

If you were living in the Year 10,000 A.D., as some boy will be, your history would only be just begun when you had reached where we are now. Even the World War would then seem as long ago as the fights of the Stone Age men seem to us. You might think of us and all the inventions we consider so wonderful as we think of the discovery of copper and bronze.

Will the history that is written in the Year 10,000 have any wars to tell about? If the wars on Earth cease, will there be wars with other worlds?

And if there are no more wars, what will history tell about? Will it be new inventions? What kinds? Will it be new discoveries? We know every corner of the world now. Will it be the inside of this world or other new worlds or a spiritual world?

Perhaps then people will no longer use trains, steamboats, automobiles, or even flying-machines, but go from place to place as on some magic carpet, simply by wishing. Perhaps then they will no longer use letters, telephones, or telegraphs, or even radio, but read each other’s thoughts at any distance.

And so on--World without end--AMEN!

[Illustration: NOW]

PRONOUNCING INDEX

This list of the most important names in the book tells you on what page you may find each name and how to sound those you may not know.

Sound a as in hat. “ aw “ “ saw. “ ah “ “ ah! “ ee “ “ see. “ e or eh “ “ get. “ er “ “ her. “ i or ih “ “ hit “ igh “ “ right. “ o “ “ hot. “ oh “ “ oh! “ ow “ “ how. “ u or uh “ “ up. “ ew “ “ few.

Aaron (air´ un), 262

Abednego (a bed´ nee go), 261

Abraham (ay´ bra ham), 49, etc.

Acropolis (a krop´ o lis), 145

Adolphus, Gustavus (a dolf´ us), 396

Æneas (ee nee´ as), 190 etc., 196

Æneid (ee nee´ id), 196

Æsop’s Fables (ee´ sop), 447

Africa, 169, 348, 352

Age of Discovery, 347

Age of Miracles, 454

Aix-la-chapelle (ayks - la - sha pell´), 258, 298

Alaric (al´ a rik), 224

Alcuin (al´ kwin), 259, 260

Alexander the Great, 159 to 168

Alexandria, 163, 164

Alfred the Great, 264 to 270

Allah (al´ ah), 244 to 247

Alps, 173, 429

America, 271, 346

Americus, 346

Angle-land, 223

Angles, 223 to 230

Anglo-Saxons, 223, 229

Anno Domini, 26

Antony (an´ to nih), 190 to 192

Aphrodite (af ro digh´ tih), 60

Apollo (a pol´ lo), 58 to 63

Arabesques (air a besks´), 252

Arabia, 242, 252 to 256

Arabian Nights, 442

Arabs, 244 to 256

Ares (ay´ reez), 58

Arch of Constantine, 216

Arch of Titus, 216

Aristides (air is tigh´ deez), 133, 134

Aristotle (air is tott´ ell), 160, 166

Artemis (ar´ tee mis), 58

Arthur, 234, 311

Aryans (ar´ yans), 23, 56, 220, 256

Asia, 162, 248

Assurbanipal (ass er ban´ ih pal), 97, 98, 164

Assyria (as seer´ ih ah), 42, 94 to 98

Astarte (ass tar´ tih), 76

Athene (a thee´ nih), 59, 60, 145 to 154

Athene Parthenos (par´ the nos), 194

Athenians, 83, 114, 140 to 145, 236

Athens, 60, 83, 114, 126, etc.

Attila (at´ tih lah), 225 to 227

Augustan Age, 196

Augustus, 195 to 197

Austria, Austrian, 396, 408, 409, 440, 462

Azores, 466

Aztecs (az´ tecks), 355 to 357

Baal (bay´ al), 76

Babylon (bab´ in lun), 98 to 103, 106 to 108

Babylonia, 43 to 48

Babylonians, 45 to 49, 75

Bach (bahk), 439

Bacon, Roger, 324

Bagdad, 243, 254, 262

Balboa (bal boh´ ah), 350, 351

Baltimore, 455, 456

Bastille (bas teel´), 421, 422

Beethoven, Louis (bay´ to ven), 441, 442

Belgium, 461

Bell, 457

Belshazzar (bel shaz´ zar), 108

Benedict and Benedictines (ben´ eh dickt), 237

Bethlehem, 197, 216

Bible, King James, 387

Bishop of Rome, 218

Bismarck, 450, 451, 461

Black Death, 328, 468

Black Sea, 21, 169, 444

Blondel (blon dell´), 300

Boleyn, Anne (bool´ in), 370

Bourbon (boor´ bun), 449

Brahma, Brahmanism, Brahmanists (brah´ mah), 111, 112

Britain, 186, 223, 229

British Museum, 33

Bronze Age, 19 to 22

Brutus, 121, 189, 190

Bucephalus (bew sef´ a lus), 160

Buddha, Buddhism, Buddhists (bood´ dah), 112, 113

Byron, 97

Byzantium (bi zan´ shi um), 217

Cabot (kab´ ut), 350, 379

Cadmus (kad´ mus), 74

Cæsar, Augustus (see´ zer), 193, 196

Cæsar, Julius, 184 to 192

Cairo (kigh´ ro), 38, 196

Canaan (kay´ nan), 50, 54, 55, 70

Canada, 350, 417

Canary Islands, 340

Canterbury Cathedral, 309

Cape of Good Hope, 348

Cape Horn, 351

Cape of Storms, 348

Carthage and Carthaginians (kar´ thij), 78, 170 to 176

Caspian Sea, 21

Cathay (ka thay´), 316 to 322, 328