wn, the national feeling emerged stronger
than ever. The doctrines of the French Encyclopedistes were inherited
by the English school of Utilitarians, led by Bentham and the two
Mills; and John Stuart Mill in particular, declared that one of the
chief obstacles to human improvement was the tendency to regard
difference of race as indelible. In fact, all this school, which had
considerable influence some forty years ago, treated religious and
social distinctions as inconvenient and decaying barriers against
rational progress, or as fictions invented by indolent thinkers to
save themselves the trouble of investigating the true causes that
modify human character.

There is undoubtedly a certain degree of truth underlying this view.
In the settled nationalities of the West these distinctions of race
and religion have a tendency to become unimportant and obsolete for
political purposes, although a glance across the water to Ireland will
remind us that they have by no means disappeared. What I wish to lay
stress upon is the very serious importance of race and religion,
politically, in other parts of the world, and particularly in some
Asiatic countries with which England is closely connected and
concerned. For, in the first place, there has been a notable revival
of the sentiment of race in Eastern Europe. And, secondly, the spread
of European dominion over Asia may be regarded as one of the most
prominent and powerful movements in the politics of the latter half of
the nineteenth century; one which may become the dominant feature of
politics in the twentieth century. It is this movement that is forcing
upon our serious attention the immense practical importance of race
and religion.

The plan which I shall attempt to follow in making a brief survey of
my subject, is to begin with a glance at the political condition of
Central Europe, and to travel rapidly Eastward. In the West, as I have
said, we have compact and permanently established States with national
governments. But as soon as we pass to Central Europe we find the
Austro-Hungarian empire distracted and threatened by internal feuds,
arising out of the contention for ascendency of two races, Germans and
Slavonians, and also out of the demands of the various provinces and
dependencies for political recognition of their separate identities,
founded on claims to represent internal sections or subdivisions of
the two chief races. The Slavonic populations in the north-wes