longer to be regarded as fruits which cling till they ripen. The Asiatic renaissance; the Russia of a generation hence, counting well-nigh two hundred millions of people; the United States, which is tolerably certain of reckoning a hundred million inhabitants within a dozen years—not to speak of that possible pan-German Empire which would nearly double the strength and numbers of existing Germany—these influences will bring into play the economic, military, and naval power of such vast organisms all over the globe that we may lay down a new maxim as a fundamental truth of future politics—henceforth separatism must reduce security.
XIII.
The age of separatism is over, because the organization of the world proceeds. The great races are rapidly plotting out their definite boundaries. The possibilities of conquest will become more and more strictly limited; the equipoise of human forces more stable; the margin for dispute narrower; the prospect more distinct of an Areopagus of all civilization 'striking a universal peace through sea and land.' The break-up of the British Empire would overturn the existing equilibrium throughout the globe and plunge the world in war upon the greatest question of redistribution known to history. The final consolidation of the British Empire would be by far the greatest step ever taken towards the ultimate integration of mankind. Only imaginations prone, in Lord Beaconsfield's words, 'to make themselves miserable in the anticipation of evils that never happen,' can sincerely suppose that definite arrangements between the Mother Country, the Colonies, and India for mutual economic support as a means to political security would result in antagonism rather than cohesion.
Upon such a contention all organization should develop friction in multiplying points of contact—all order should mean disorder. It is the very argument of anarchy. Nor is the cause of 'freedom' at stake in the attempt to marshal a voluntary combination of free
