ABSTRACT
It was in the year 1907 that the division of the Great Powers of Europe into two camps received the final form which persisted until the Great War. The world had changed since the Congress of Vienna more than in any previous century: freedom and organization had both increased, and had increased in about equal measure. As to freedom: serfdom had disappeared; parliamentary institutions had been introduced where none existed before, and had been made more democratic where they came from an earlier time; trade unions had been legalized, and had given wage-earners some approach to equality of bargaining power in dealings with employers; emigration was everywhere permitted by governments, and was beginning to have a great effect upon southern and eastern Europe; religious toleration had been established everywhere except in the Russian Empire; the criminal law had become less ferocious; Press censorship had been abolished or mitigated, and in politics there was a nearer approach to free speech than at any previous period.
