led to the final catastrophe.

On a broad view, the final conquest of the world by European
civilisation was made possible, and indeed inevitable, by the amazing
development of the material aspects of that civilisation during the
nineteenth century; by the progressive command over the forces of
nature which the advance of science had placed in the hands of man, by
the application of science to industry in the development of
manufacturing methods and of new modes of communication, and by the
intricate and flexible organisation of modern finance. These changes
were already in progress before 1878, and were already transforming the
face of the world. Since 1878 they have gone forward with such
accelerating speed that we have been unable to appreciate the
significance of the revolution they were effecting. We have been
carried off our feet; and have found it impossible to adjust our moral
and political ideas to the new conditions.

The great material achievements of the last two generations have been
mainly due to an intense concentration and specialisation of functions
among both men of thought and men of action. But the result of this has
been that there have been few to attempt the vitally important task of
appreciating the movement of our civilisation as a whole, and of
endeavouring to determine how far the political conceptions inherited
from an earlier age were valid in the new conditions. For under the
pressure of the great transformation political forces also have been
transformed, and in all countries political thought is baffled and
bewildered by the complexity of the problems by which it is faced. To
this in part we owe the dimness of vision which overtook us as we went
whirling together towards the great catastrophe. It is only in the
glare of a world-conflagration that we begin to perceive, in something
like their true proportions, the great forces and events which have
been shaping our destinies. In the future, if the huge soulless
mechanism which man has created is not to get out of hand and destroy
him, we must abandon that contempt for the philosopher and the
political thinker which we have latterly been too ready to express, and
we must recognise that the task of analysing and relating to one
another the achievements of the past and the problems of the present is
at least as important as the increase of our knowledge and of our
dangerous powers by intense and narrow concentration within very
limited fie