The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

The snobbery of wealth compounded, instead of countervailing, that of birth; the insolence of the successful climber reinforced the arrogance of the titled ancestor-worshiper.

The snobbery of wealth

It was the decaying European dynastic system itself, and the whole philosophy and machinery of foreign relations linked to it, that made war inevitable, thereby dooming the social order based on the system.

Europe

Technological and sociological progress had rendered war too dangerous to be used as a means for achieving national objectives, but the rulers of nations had not yet realized it — half a century later, we are just beginning to grasp the idea — and their political imagination had not evolved techniques or concepts of diplomacy capable of settling major international problems without resort to war (neither has ours).

War

when policemen imitate the methods of the underworld, while revolutionaries adopt the outlook of policemen, that is a symptom of a disordered or a decaying civilization.

Decay of society