g directed by one or two
dominant peoples, as was the case with all similar movements of the
past, the new movement was shared by many different nations. From
every standpoint it has been of infinitely greater moment than
anything hitherto seen. Not in one but in many different peoples there
has been extraordinary growth in wealth, in population, in power of
organization, and in mastery over mechanical activity and natural
resources. All of this has been accompanied and signalized by an
immense outburst of energy and restless initiative. The result is as
varied as it is striking.

In the first place, representatives of this civilization, by their
conquest of space, were enabled to spread into all the practically
vacant continents, while at the same time, by their triumphs in
organization and mechanical invention, they acquired an unheard-of
military superiority as compared with their former rivals. To these
two facts is primarily due the further fact that for the first time
there is really something that approaches a world civilization, a
world movement. The spread of the European peoples since the days of
Ferdinand the Catholic and Ivan the Terrible has been across every sea
and over every continent. In places the conquests have been ethnic;
that is, there has been a new wandering of the peoples, and new
commonwealths have sprung up in which the people are entirely or
mainly of European blood. This is what happened in the temperate and
sub-tropical regions of the Western Hemisphere, in Australia, in
portions of northern Asia and southern Africa. In other places the
conquest has been purely political, the Europeans representing for the
most part merely a small caste of soldiers and administrators, as in
most of tropical Asia and Africa and in much of tropical America.
Finally, here and there instances occur where there has been no
conquest at all, but where an alien people is profoundly and radically
changed by the mere impact of Western civilization. The most
extraordinary instance of this, of course, is Japan; for Japan's
growth and change during the last half-century has been in many ways
the most striking phenomenon of all history. Intensely proud of her
past history, intensely loyal to certain of her past traditions, she
has yet with a single effort wrenched herself free from all hampering
ancient ties, and with a bound has taken her place among the leading
civilized nations of mankind.

There are of course many