THERE was a time when the prime factors in all rule were physical force and the skill to apply it. Our national armaments prove that we have not yet outgrown that condition. "The good old rule, the simple plan," still holds, and they still take who have the power, and they still keep who can. But little by little there
suppression of one savagery by an is growing up a feeling that the other, or the displacement of an old civilisation by a new one that is worse is, to say the least, undesirable. Public opinion throughout the world has begun to think of change as synonymous with reform. Very often it is not so, but the tendency to so regard it is evidence of the trend of international thought.
More and more clearly is this seen in the criticism to which the British Empire is subjected. An Irish-American rises in his wrath and his irreconcilability and strikes everything British hip and thigh, Nothing under the sun which never sets on that Empire satisfies him. Every prospect pleases, but man—the Britisher—is vile. Then what happens? Two, three, four, or more Americans immediately spring up in defence. They are not hyphenated Americans, but the pure article. They hail from India, from Egypt, from Cyprus, from every part of the world where the missionary finds a station, and their story is practically unanimous. The native, they tell us, does not love his British master, but his respect for him is high. In everything that pertains to material prosperity, to peace and plenty, to good government, and especially to the civilizing effect of education, the overlord is as perfect
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.