nd, it may come about that a striking analogy between
St. Petersburg and Dublin will finally appear.

So much for the Pan-Slavic synthesis. It seems improbable that it can
prevail against the forces that make for the linguistic and economic
annexation of the greater part of European Russia and of the minor
Slavonic masses, to the great Western European urban region.

The political centre of gravity of Russia, in its resistance to these
economic movements, is palpably shifting eastward even to-day, but that
carries it away from the Central European synthesis only towards the
vastly more enormous attracting centre of China. Politically the Russian
Government may come to dominate China in the coming decades, but the
reality beneath any such formal predominance will be the absorption of
Russia beyond the range of the European pull by the synthesis of Eastern
Asia. Neither the Russian literature nor the Russian language and
writing, nor the Russian civilization as a whole have the qualities to
make them irresistible to the energetic and intelligent millions of the
far East. The chances seem altogether against the existence of a great
Slavonic power in the world at the beginning of the twenty-first
century. They seem, at the first glance, to lie just as heavily in
favour of an aggressive Pan-Germanic power struggling towards a great
and commanding position athwart Central Europe and Western Asia, and
turning itself at last upon the defeated Slavonic disorder. There can be
no doubt that at present the Germans, with the doubtful exception of the
United States, have the most efficient middle class in the world, their
rapid economic progress is to a very large extent, indeed, a triumph of
intelligence, and their political and probably their military and naval
services are still conducted with a capacity and breadth of view that
find no parallel in the world. But the very efficiency of the German as
a German to-day, and the habits and traditions of victory he has
accumulated for nearly forty years, may prove in the end a very doubtful
blessing to Europe as a whole, or even to his own grandchildren.
Geographical contours, economic forces, the trend of invention and
social development, point to a unification of all Western Europe, but
they certainly do not point to its Germanization. I have already given
reasons for anticipating that the French language may not only hold its
own, but prevail against German in Western Europe. And the