CHAPTER IX
OUR ORIENTAL FUTURE
Meanwhile, a storm which had been threatening Traitor's Hill had not come on. In the very moment when it had appeared about to break over London, its ranks opened, its battalions yielded, its artillery limbered up, and, as they wheeled to go, the descending sun completed their catastrophe. For it shot remorselessly clean through their regiments and annihilated their van, until all cloudland was broken, lost with here and there a protest of thunder in the distant East.
Thought followed the omen, and went that way too. It seemed plain that if our first duty is to fortify our citizens in freedom, prosperity, and health, and if, in Christendom, we must strive for long-lost concord, all this must be crowned by another duty yet. The weightiest obligation of England lies eastward. Out there, we shall finally win, or lose, our title to lead the world.
At first sight that proposition may not appear entirely accurate. For England, behind her Asiatic empire of 320,000,000, is building up, in her inexhaustible way, another empire in its shadow. Hence, if our Asiatic Aladdin's palace were to
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