as to be almost as expensive to keep up
as itself. It has sent out apostles of its own, who at one time went
about (mostly in newspapers) preaching the gospel of the mystic sanctity
of its sacrifices, and the regenerating power of spilt blood, to the poor
in mind--whose name is legion.

It has been observed that in the course of earthly greatness a day of
culminating triumph is often paid for by a morrow of sudden extinction.
Let us hope it is so. Yet the dawn of that day of retribution may be a
long time breaking above a dark horizon. War is with us now; and,
whether this one ends soon or late, war will be with us again. And it is
the way of true wisdom for men and States to take account of things as
they are.

Civilisation has done its little best by our sensibilities for whose
growth it is responsible. It has managed to remove the sights and sounds
of battlefields away from our doorsteps. But it cannot be expected to
achieve the feat always and under every variety of circumstance. Some
day it must fail, and we shall have then a wealth of appallingly
unpleasant sensations brought home to us with painful intimacy. It is
not absurd to suppose that whatever war comes to us next it will _not_ be
a distant war waged by Russia either beyond the Amur or beyond the Oxus.

The Japanese armies have laid that ghost for ever, because the Russia of
the future will not, for the reasons explained above, be the Russia of to-
day. It will not have the same thoughts, resentments and aims. It is
even a question whether it will preserve its gigantic frame unaltered and
unbroken. All speculation loses itself in the magnitude of the events
made possible by the defeat of an autocracy whose only shadow of a title
to existence was the invincible power of military conquest. That
autocratic Russia will have a miserable end in harmony with its base
origin and inglorious life does not seem open to doubt. The problem of
the immediate future is posed not by the eventual manner but by the
approaching fact of its disappearance.

The Japanese armies, in laying the oppressive ghost, have not only
accomplished what will be recognised historically as an important mission
in the world's struggle against all forms of evil, but have also created
a situation. They have created a situation in the East which they are
competent to manage by themselves; and in doing this they have brought
about a change in the condition of the West with which E