Excerpt from The World Peace and After We witness now the initial stages of that revolution. The world war has long since ceased to be only a war between rival groups of states; it is a conflict of ideals. It has become a war of classes; war between the rights of persons and the rights of property. The powerful and propertied minorities the world over are being drawn together in a contest of survival waged with the masses, which, strong in numbers, are weak in organization, in leaders, in the tradition of authority, and have little control of the political and industrial machinery which has hitherto ruled the world. We are witness to the incipient stages of the last and greatest revolution, that by which the masses seek to wrest power from the bourgeoisie. Other revolutions in history have exacted power from kings and placed it in the hands of the nobility. These in turn have been largely merged with the commercial classes, and political and social power has shifted to the hands of those who control the wealth of the world. The revolution whose initial tremors we now discern but which may not be completed in our time is that which seeks to effect a still wider distribution of power: to place it truly where before it has been but ostensibly, in the hands of the people. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.