ppine Islands. But America resolved herself to assume the task of
organising and governing these rich lands; and in doing so made a grave
breach with her traditions. Her new possession necessarily drew her
into closer relations with the problems of the Far East; it gave her
also some acquaintance with the difficulty of introducing Western
methods among a backward people. During these years of universal
imperialist excitement the spirit of imperialism seemed to have
captured America as it had captured the European states; and this was
expressed in a new interpretation of the Monroe doctrine, put forth by
the Secretary of State during the Venezuela controversy of 1895. 'The
United States,' said Mr. Olney, 'is practically sovereign on this
continent (meaning both North and South America), 'and its fiat is law
upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.' No such
gigantic imperial claim had ever been put forward by any European
state; and it constituted an almost defiant challenge to the
imperialist powers of Europe. It may safely be said that this dictum
did not represent the settled judgment of the American people. But it
did appear, in the last years of the century, as if the great republic
were about to emerge from her self-imposed isolation, and to take her
natural part in the task of planting the civilisation of the West
throughout the world. Had she frankly done so, had she made it plain
that she recognised the indissoluble unity and the common interests of
the whole world, it is possible that her influence might have eased the
troubles of the next period, and exercised a deterrent influence upon
the forces of disturbance which were working towards the great
catastrophe. But her traditions were too strong; and after the brief
imperialist excitement of the 'nineties, she gradually relapsed once
more into something like her old attitude of aloofness.

It is but a cursory and superficial view which we have been able to
take of this extraordinary quarter of a century, during which almost
the whole world was partitioned among a group of mighty empires, and
the political and economic unity of the globe was finally and
irrefragably established. Few regions had escaped the direct political
control of European powers; and most of these few were insensibly
falling under the influence of one or other of the powers: Turkey under
that of Germany, Persia under that of Russia and Britain. No region of
the earth remaine