slaughter, the
disappearance of slavery, the protection of the rights and usages of
primitive and simple folk against reckless exploitation, and the chance
of gradual improvement and emancipation from barbarism. But to all
alike, to one quarter of the inhabitants of the world, it has meant the
establishment of the Reign of Law, and of the Liberty which can only
exist under its shelter. In some degree, though imperfectly as yet, it
has realised within its own body all the three great political ideas of
the modern world. It has fostered the rise of a sense of nationhood in
the young communities of the new lands, and in the old and decaying
civilisations of the most ancient historic countries. It has given a
freedom of development to self-government such as history has never
before known. And by linking together so many diverse and contrasted
peoples in a common peace, it has already realised, for a quarter of
the globe, the ideal of internationalism on a scale undreamt of by the
most sanguine prophets of Europe.

Truly this empire is a fabric so wonderful, so many-sided, and so
various in its aspects, that it may well escape the rigid categories of
a German professor, and seem to him 'wholly a sham.' Now is the crisis
of its fate: and if the wisdom of its leaders can solve the riddle of
the Sphinx which is being put to them, the Great War will indeed have
brought, for a quarter of the world, the culmination of modern history.

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