and the growth of a few vast political systems which begin to overshadow the earth, all tend to reduce the occasions for war, to simplify the problem of maintaining international peace. Now, as Britons who have felt the attraction of the Imperial ideal dimly see, the reconstituted Empire of their dreams would be specially fitted under the new conditions for the office of mediator between the great combinations around it, specially adapted to be the central or regulating State of the world in the coming time. It is here that we begin to perceive a reach of significance in their ideal wider than the merely esoteric, here that we find the connection between the Imperialism of to-day and the Imperialism of Rome in its grander aspects, or the sublime ideals of the Middle Ages. Our Empire could play the part of the Imperator Pacificus for whom the Middle Ages longed, and it could do it, not by holding the nations of the earth in the iron grip of Rome, but while leaving full scope for the free play of the multitudinous forces of humanity in all their legitimate fields of action.
Historically, England has for many centuries played the same part of the regulating Power in the microcosm of Europe. Freed by her isolated position and her interests oversea from the temptation to aggression in Europe on her own account, she has over and over again thrown her weight decisively into the scale against the aggression of any other Power that had grown dangerously strong. Philip II., Louis XIV., and Napoleon, all alike, found England barring the way to a European domination; and it has almost become a tradition in Europe that, when any Power threatens the independence of the others, the weaker States gather round England. A distinguished French journalist, writing in a French paper for the benefit of his countrymen, not long ago described the Englishman as 'the most perfect type of civilized humanity in this twentieth century.' Testimony such as this, if it is used, not to minister to national vanity, but to deepen the sense of national responsibility, need not be ignored; and there
