al; and gradual likewise, granting the utmost
possible spread of Christian beliefs among them, will be the
approximation of the Eastern nations, as nations, to the principles
which powerfully modify, though they cannot control wholly even now,
the merely natural impulses of Western peoples. And if, as many now
say, faith has departed from among ourselves, and still more will
depart in the coming years; if we have no higher sanction to propose
for self-restraint and righteousness than enlightened self-interest
and the absurdity of war, war--violence--will be absurd just so long
as the balance of interest is on that side, and no longer. Those who
want will take, if they can, not merely from motives of high policy
and as legal opportunity offers, but for the simple reasons that they
have not, that they desire, and that they are able. The European world
has known that stage already; it has escaped from it only partially by
the gradual hallowing of public opinion and its growing weight in the
political scale. The Eastern world knows not the same motives, but it
is rapidly appreciating the material advantages and the political
traditions which have united to confer power upon the West; and with
the appreciation desire has arisen.

Coincident with the long pause which the French Revolution imposed
upon the process of external colonial expansion which was so marked a
feature of the eighteenth century, there occurred another singular
manifestation of national energies, in the creation of the great
standing armies of modern days, themselves the outcome of the _levee
en masse_, and of the general conscription, which the Revolution
bequeathed to us along with its expositions of the Rights of Man.
Beginning with the birth of the century, perfected during its
continuance, its close finds them in full maturity and power, with a
development in numbers, in reserve force, in organization, and in
material for war, over which the economist perpetually wails, whose
existence he denounces, and whose abolition he demands. As freedom has
grown and strengthened, so have they grown and strengthened. Is this
singular product of a century whose gains for political liberty are
undeniable, a mere gross perversion of human activities, as is so
confidently claimed on many sides? or is there possibly in it also a
sign of the times to come, to be studied in connection with other
signs, some of which we have noted?

What has been the effect of these gr