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Shifts & Stirrings.
Outside of Britain, the block of years 1900-14 brought more important shifts and stirrings:
Wherever industrial machinery went it brought a new prosperity to the middle class — and rebellion or unrest among the workers, even when it raised their standard of living. The industrial proletariat of the great European cities drifted away from Christianity. In 1891 Pope Leo XIII solemnly warned against the unrestrained abuses of capitalism and against the Socialist remedy for them. By & large, the abuses went uncorrected. By 1914 12,000,000 Socialists were affiliated with the Second International; in Germany the Socialists were the largest party.
U.S. unrest took a less definite, more subtle form. The strong moral element in the American character was brought to bear on the new social and economic issues. S. S. McClure and his muckrakers exposed evil in politics and business. William Jennings Bryan, declaiming against the money power of the Eastern cities, found his most responsive audience in the rural churches. Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, each in a very different way, tried to deal with the restless discontent. They deflected currents which were to flow more strongly another day.
In 1905, Japan, with the full approval of Teddy Roosevelt and progressive men everywhere, humbled Russia. No one noticed that this broke a chain of victories by Christians over non-Christian nations, stretching back to Lepanto in 1571. No one foresaw that the real effects of Russia's defeats would be 1) to tip the scale in the struggle between Japanese democrats and militarists in favor of the latter and 2) to break the confidence in Russia's rulers and lead to the revolution of 1905 — the dress rehearsal for 1917. From the fall of Port Arthur one line led straight to Pearl Harbor; another led straight to Lenin.
Dr. Sun Yat-sen hurried home from Denver to take charge of the revolt which brought down China's Manchu dynasty in 1912. Western techniques and ways of thought had torn the threads of the old society and the West looked upon the fall of the Manchus as a forward step. It turned out, however, to be easier for Western influence to destroy an alien society than to rebuild. Dr. Sun's fires were caught by strong breezes; in 1950 they were still burning.
Mexico's revolution was regarded by the outside world as a comic nuisance. It was, however, part of the deep stirring of "backward" peoples everywhere which was to be characteristic of the century. Not the least poignant of 'the era's surprises was the flowering of its greatest art movement in the soil of the Mexican revolution; Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros were culturally about as far as possible from Paris salons.
Crusades & Soup Kitchens.
In Britain, the Liberal Party was the first channel of those who sought State help against the rigors of capitalism. Sidney and