f itself would be enough to make the war, in M.
Thiers' refrain, _digue de l'attention des hommes_; but, like the wars
of the sixteenth century or the French Revolutionary Wars, it is a war
between two ideals, between two principles that strike deep into the
life-history of modern States.

In the religious wars of the sixteenth century the principle of freedom
was arrayed against the principle of authority. The conflict rolled
hither and thither for two centuries, and was illustrated by the valour
and genius of Europe, by characters and incidents of imposing grandeur,
sublime devotion, or moving pity. So in the war of the French
Revolution the dying principle of Monarchism was arrayed against the
principle of Democracy, and the tragic heroism with which the
combatants represented these principles, whether Austria, Russia,
Spain, England, Germany, or France, makes that war one of the most
precious memories of mankind.

In the tragedies of art, in stage-drama, the conflict, the struggle is
between two principles, two forces, one base, the other exalted. But
in the world-drama a conflict of a profounder kind reveals itself, the
conflict between heroism and heroism, between ideal and ideal, often
equally lofty, equally impressive.

Such is the eternal contrast between the tragic in Art and the tragic
in History, and this characteristic of these two great conflicts of the
sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries reappears in the present war.
There also two principles equally lofty and impressive are at
strife--the dying principle of Nationality, and the principle which,
for weal or woe, is that of the future, the principle of Imperialism.
These are the forces contending against each other on the sterile
veldt; this is the first act of the drama whose _denouement_--who dare
foretell? What distant generation shall behold _that_ curtain?

Sec. 2. NATIONALITY AND IMPERIALISM

In political life, in the life-history of states, as in religious, as
in intellectual and social history, change and growth, or what we now
name Evolution, are perpetual, continuous, unresting. The empire which
has ceased to advance has begun to recede. Motion is the law of its
being, if not towards a fuller life, motion toward death. Thus in a
race dowered with the genius for empire, as Rome was, as Britain is,
Imperialism is the supreme, the crowning form, which in this process of
evolution it attains. The civic, the feudal, or the oligarc