transfer of the present mercantile and
naval ascendency of Great Britain to the United States during the next
two or three decades a very probable thing, and when this is
accomplished the problem how far colonial loyalty is the fruit of Royal
Visits and sporadic knighthoods, and how far it has relation to the
existence of a predominant fleet, will be near its solution. An
interesting point about such discussions as this, in which indeed in all
probability the nascent consciousness of the New Republic will emerge,
will be the solution this larger synthesis will offer to certain
miserable difficulties of the present time. Government by the elect of
the first families of Great Britain has in the last hundred years made
Ireland and South Africa two open sores of irreconcilable wrong. These
two English-speaking communities will never rest and never emerge from
wretchedness under the vacillating vote-catching incapacity of British
Imperialism, and it is impossible that the British power, having
embittered them, should ever dare to set them free. But within such an
ampler synthesis as the New Republic will seek, these states could
emerge to an equal fellowship that would take all the bitterness from
their unforgettable past.

Another type of public activity which foreshadows an aspect under which
the New Republic will emerge is to be found in the unofficial
organizations that have come into existence in Great Britain to watch
and criticize various public departments. There is, for example, the
Navy League, a body of intelligent and active persons with a distinctly
expert qualification which has intervened very effectively in naval
control during the last few years. There is also at present a vast
amount of disorganized but quite intelligent discontent with the tawdry
futilities of army reform that occupy the War Office. It becomes
apparent that there is no hope of a fully efficient and well-equipped
official army under parliamentary government, and with that realization
there will naturally appear a disposition to seek some way to military
efficiency, as far as is legally possible, outside War Office control.
Already recruiting is falling off, it will probably fall off more and
more as the patriotic emotions evoked by the Boer War fade away, and no
trivial addition to pay or privilege will restore it. Elementary
education has at last raised the intelligence of the British lower
classes to a point when the prospect of fighting