ole breeding-stock of the world. For the moment we shrink from the
interbreeding of races, but we do so in spite of some conspicuous
examples of successful interbreeding in the past, and largely because of
our complete ignorance of the conditions on which success depends.

Already, therefore, it is possible without intellectual dishonesty to
look forward to a future for the race which need not be reached through
a welter of blood and hatred. We can imagine the nations settling the
racial allocation of the temperate or tropical breeding-grounds, or even
deliberately placing the males and females of the few hopelessly
backward tribes on different islands, without the necessity that the
most violent passions of mankind should be stimulated in preparation for
a general war. No one now expects an immediate, or prophesies with
certainty an ultimate, Federation of the Globe; but the consciousness of
a common purpose in mankind, or even the acknowledgment that such a
common purpose is possible, would alter the face of world-politics at
once. The discussion at the Hague of a halt in the race of armaments
would no longer seem Utopian, and the strenuous profession by the
colonising powers that they have no selfish ends in view might be
transformed from a sordid and useless hypocrisy into a fact to which
each nation might adjust its policy. The irrational race-hatred which
breaks out from time to time on the fringes of empire, would have little
effect in world politics when opposed by a consistent conception of the
future of human progress.

Meanwhile, it is true, the military preparations for a death-struggle of
empires still go on, and the problem even of peaceful immigration
becomes yearly more threatening, now that shipping companies can land
tens of thousands of Chinese or Indian labourers for a pound or two a
head at any port in the world. But when we think of such things we need
no longer feel ourselves in the grip of a Fate that laughs at human
purpose and human kindliness. An idea of the whole existence of our
species is at last a possible background to our individual experience.
Its emotional effect may prove to be not less than that of the visible
temples and walls of the Greek cities, although it is formed not from
the testimony of our eyesight, but from the knowledge which we acquire
in our childhood and confirm by the half-conscious corroboration of our
daily life.

We all of us, plain folk and learned alike, now ma