re short, and it is easy to forget how brief is
this period of unquestioned supremacy of the so-called white race. It
is but a thing of yesterday. During the thousand years which went
before the opening of this era of European supremacy, the attitude of
Asia and Africa, of Hun and Mongol, Turk and Tartar, Arab and Moor,
had on the whole been that of successful aggression against Europe.
More than a century went by after the voyages of Columbus before the
mastery in war began to pass from the Asiatic to the European. During
that time Europe produced no generals or conquerors able to stand
comparison with Selim and Solyman, Baber and Akbar. Then the European
advance gathered momentum; until at the present time peoples of
European blood hold dominion over all America and Australia and the
islands of the sea, over most of Africa, and the major half of Asia.
Much of this world conquest is merely political, and such a conquest
is always likely in the long run to vanish. But very much of it
represents not a merely political, but an ethnic conquest; the
intrusive people having either exterminated or driven out the
conquered peoples, or else having imposed upon them its tongue, law,
culture, and religion, together with a strain of its blood. During
this period substantially all of the world achievements worth
remembering are to be credited to the people of European descent. The
first exception of any consequence is the wonderful rise of Japan
within the last generation--a phenomenon unexampled in history; for
both in blood and in culture the Japanese line of ancestral descent is
as remote as possible from ours, and yet Japan, while hitherto keeping
most of what was strongest in her ancient character and traditions,
has assimilated with curious completeness most of the characteristics
that have given power and leadership to the West.

During this period of intense and feverish activity among the peoples
of European stock, first one and then another has taken the lead. The
movement began with Spain and Portugal. Their flowering time was as
brief as it was wonderful. The gorgeous pages of their annals are
illumined by the figures of warriors, explorers, statesmen, poets, and
painters. Then their days of greatness ceased. Many partial
explanations can be given, but something remains behind, some hidden
force for evil, some hidden source of weakness upon which we cannot
lay our hands. Yet there are many signs that in the New World, a