a bit frivolous, but graphic--of noisy
_reclame_, advertisement for a people; because, although a more
civilised people may be conquered by one more barbarous, less
cultured, less moral; although, also, the superiority in war may
be relative, and men are not on the earth merely to give each other
blows, but to work, to study, to know, to enjoy; yet the majority
of men are easily convinced that he who has won in a war is in
everything, or at least in many things, superior to him who has lost.
So it happened, for example, after the late Franco-Prussian War, that
not only the armies organised or reorganised after 1870 imitated even
the German uniform, as they had earlier copied the French, but in
politics, science, industry, even in art, everything German was more
generously admired. Even the consumption of beer heavily increased
in the wine countries, and under the protection of the Treaty of
Frankfurt, the god Gambrinus has made some audacious sallies into the
territories sacred to Dionysos.

The same thing occurred in regard to wine in the ancient world. Athens
and Alexander the Great had given to Greek wine the widest reputation,
all the peoples of the Mediterranean world being persuaded that that
was the best of all. Then the centre of power shifted to the west,
toward the city built on the banks of the Tiber, and little by little
as the power of Rome grew, the reputation of its wine increased, while
that of Greece declined; until, finally, with world empire, Italy
conquered pre-eminence in the wine market, and held it with the
Empire; for while Italy was lord, Italian wine seemed most excellent
and was paid for accordingly.

This propensity of minor or subject peoples to imitate those dominant
or more famous, is the greatest prize that rewards the pre-eminent
for the fatigue necessary to conquer that place of honour; it is the
reason why cultured and civilised nations ought naturally to seek
to preserve a certain political, economic, and military supremacy,
without which their intellectual superiority would weaken or at least
lose a part of its value. The human multitude in the vast world are
not yet so intelligent and refined as to prize that which is beautiful
and grand for its own sake; and they are readily induced to admire as
excellent what is but mediocre, if behind it there is a force to be
feared or to impose it. Indeed, we may observe in the modern world a
phenomenon analogous to that in historic Italy. Wh