was to ours; and we shall abandon it if we
ever change our opinion. And when I say 'interest' I would not be
understood to mean economic interest in the narrower sense. A nation,
like an individual, I conceive, has a personality to maintain. It must
be its object not to accumulate wealth at all costs, but to develop and
maintain capacity, to be powerful, energetic, many-sided, and above all
independent. Whether the policy we have adopted will continue to
guarantee this result, I am not prophet enough to venture to affirm.
But if it does not, I cannot doubt that we shall be driven to revise
it. Nor can I believe that other nations, not even our own colonies,
will follow us in our present policy, if to do so would be to jeopardy
their rising industries and unduly to narrow the scope of their
economic energies. I do not, then, I confess, look forward with
enthusiasm or with hope to the Crystal Palace millennium that inspired
the eloquence of Remenham. I see the future pregnant with wars and
rumours of wars. And in particular I see this nation, by virtue of its
wealth, its power, its unparalleled success, the target for the envy,
the hatred, the cupidity of all the peoples of Europe. I see them
looking abroad for outlets for their expanding population, only to find
every corner of the habitable globe preoccupied by the English race and
overshadowed by the English flag. But from this, which is our main
danger, I conjure my main hope for the future. England is more than
England. She has grown in her sleep. She has stretched over every
continent huge embryo limbs which wait only for the beat of her heart,
the motion of her spirit, to assume their form and function as members
of one great body of empire. The spirit, I think, begins to stir, the
blood to circulate. Our colonies, I believe, are not destined to drop
from us like ripe fruit; our dependencies will not fall to other
masters. The nation sooner or later will wake to its imperial mission.
The hearts of Englishmen beyond the seas will beat in unison with ours.
And the federation I foresee is not the federation of Mankind, but that
of the British race throughout the world."

He paused, and in the stillness that followed we became aware of the
gathering dusk. The first stars were appearing, and the young moon was
low in the west. From the shadow below we heard the murmur of a
fountain, and the call of a nightingale sounded in the wood. Something
in the