Great world shocks are necessary to stir the world conscience and heart; to start those movements to right the wrongs in the world.

So long as peace reigned commerce was uninterrupted, and the acquisition of wealth was not obstructed, men cared little for the intrigues and ambitions of royalty.

If they sensed them at all, they lulled themselves into a feeling of security through the belief that progress had attained too far, civilization had secured too strong a hold, and democracy was too firmly rooted for any ordinary menace to be considered.
So insidious and far reaching had become the inculcation of false philosophies summed up in the general term Kultur, that the subjects of the autocratic-ridden empires believed they were being guided by benign influences.

Many enlightened men; at least it seems they must have been enlightened, in Germany and Austria--men who possessed liberated intellects and were not in the pay of the Kulturists--professed to believe that despotism in the modern world could not be other than benevolent.
The satanic hand was concealed in the soft glove; the cloven hoof artistically fitted into the military boot; the tail carefully tucked inside the uniform or dress suit; fiendish eyes were taught to smile and gleam in sympathy and humor, or were masked behind the heavy lenses of professorial dignity; the serpent's hiss was trained to song, or drowned in crashing chords and given to the world as a sublime harmony.
Suddenly the world awoke! The wooing harmony had changed to a blast of war; the conductor's baton had become a bayonet; the soft wind instrument barked the rifle's tone; its notes were bullets that hissed and screamed; tinkling cymbals sounded the wild blare of carnage, and sweet-throated horns of silver and brass bellowed the cannon's deadly roar.
Civilization was so shocked that for long the exact sequence of events was not comprehended.

It required time and reflection to clear away the brain benumbing vapors of the dream; to reach a realization that liberty actually was tottering on her throne.