Austria? No more than Canada,
Australia, India, or Ireland has to do with England. People
are now beginning to see the absurdity of these things, and in
the end people are reasonable. That is why the age of Empires
is passing away."

It was a bold prophecy, but it contains the root of the whole matter.
Only where there is community of heart and thought is national or
personal life possible in any worthy sense. Unless that community exists
between the various nationalities within an Empire, we may be sure the
Empire is moribund. It is dying, as Napoleon said, of indigestion, and
that other community of the world which is slowly taking shape among
free and reasonable peoples will demand its dissolution. Our hope is
that the other community will further proceed to demand that these
disastrous experiments in the overthrow and subjection of free
nationalities shall no longer be tolerated by the combined forces of
liberty.

XXII

BLACK AND WHITE

One night Mr. Clarkson, of the Education Office, was rather late in
leaving the Savile Club. He always makes a point of selecting the best
articles in the _Nineteenth Century_, the _Fortnightly_, and the
_Contemporary_ on the first Monday of every month, and, owing to a
suspension of political activity in the House of Commons, he had lately
spent more time than usual over the daily papers as well, since they
could now afford greater space for subjects of interest. He noticed with
some regret that it was half-past eleven as he came up Piccadilly and
admired, as he never failed to admire, that urbane aspect of nature's
charm presented by the Green Park.

It was late, but the evening was cool and dry. He wished to follow up a
train of thought suggested by the question: "Should Aristotle be left
out?" but, to preserve his mind from exclusiveness, he now and then
considered it advantageous to plunge into what he called the full tide
of humanity at Charing Cross. So that night, instead of making his way
by the shortest route to his rooms in Westminster, he strolled, with a
pleasurable sense of sympathetic abandonment, through the usual crowds
that were hurrying home from theatres or supper-room.

But he soon perceived that all the crowds were not usual. Some were not
hurrying; they were stationary. They were nearly all men, unrelieved by
that subdued feminine radiance which Mr. Clarkson so much valued in the
colour scheme of London. They were mainly silent. They ap