ABSTRACT
Before 1914 the advance of formal democracy, measured by such institutions as a wide franchise and representative government, seemed increasingly assured. When the century began, liberals had everywhere assumed that the triumph of democracy was inevitable. The Great War reinforced this confidence. Autocracy and aristocracy were, many believed, responsible for the disasters into which Europe had been misled. Their discredit was widespread and, indeed, was accompanied by the collapse of the great dynastic and authoritarian empires which had been their citadels. Allied propaganda and the fastidiousness of President Wilson had, too, transformed the war officially into a positive struggle for democracy. His success was reflected in the speed with which those European states without them (outside Russia) adopted or at least pretended to adopt democratic and constitutional forms of government soon after the armistices. Not all were to last for long, but by 1920, formally democratic government was more widespread in Europe than ever before. Some were monarchies, but republics had been set up in the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Austria. The erection of a republic in Germany was, indeed, a startling achievement. Under the Weimar Republic (as it came to be called), Germany, potentially the strongest European power, had one of the most advanced constitutions in Europe. Even in democratic Great Britain an extension of the franchise in 1918 almost trebled the electorate and gave women the vote.
