Nothing that happens there is really foreign to us, for the fortunes of Europe and America are inextricably intertwined.

This, in my opinion the most outstanding fact in the modern world, was exemplified in the eighteenth century in the person of Lafayette, an American patriot and a French patriot, a hero of two revolutions.

In Lafayettes library hung appropriately side by side two momentous documents, the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, two utterances that have had memorable consequences in the world because multitudes of men have been willing to give their lives that these principles might prevail and multitudes have given their lives that they should not prevail.

Fundamentally this struggle for liberty has been the warp and woof of modern European history and the vicissitudes of the struggle are, in the deepest sense, what have attempted to set forth in this volume.

Complicated, exceedingly, has been the history of this conflict, and many other elements have entered into the problem and solution.