-2-                             
 
 
the narrowest of margins and the Caesars succeeded only
 
for a short moment as measured by the test of history.
 
 
                            II.                             
 
 
As in ancient times, so in modern.  When the Spanish
 
dumping of shiploads of South American gold and silver per
 
year into the medieval complex of economic Europe, and
 
prices, wages and currency values got as much out of all
 
control as they are today, men cast about wildly for remed-
 
ies.  There has rarely been more chaotic times in human history
 
than those of the hundred years which followed the discovery
 
of American and the religious reforms of Martin Luther.  No
 
nation's existence was half secure; no economic class rested
 
upon  sure foundation; peasants wandered aimlessly about
 
their countries, starving by the hundreds of thousands; and
 
city proletarians were everywhere ready to turn pirates upon
 
the seas or mercenary soldiers upon the land.  When Queen
 
Elizabeth died in 1603 England was confronted with imminent
 
chaos, and forty-five years later France was in even worse
 
plight, though victorious in the Thirty Years' War.  We must
 
not think our generation is the only one that has suffered
 
from violent economic and social disruptions.  The Puritan
 
fathers thought to re-distribute the benefits of government
 
and make England a model land; the Fronde rioters of France
 
and Paris thought to anticipate the revolution of 1789.
 
 
                            III.                            
 
 
Out of these chaotic eras there came two try-outs