, would he have
averted the French Revolution? I think not. It is to be doubted
whether even a strong king, after so many years of tyranny which
had generated such hatred of the ancient regime, could have
checked the flow of forces making for the Revolution. Apart from
the effect of the old tyranny, new ideas of democracy were
arising. Witness the contemporary failure of a great benevolent
despot in Joseph II.

There was no idea of nationality in the foreign policy of the
younger Pitt.

Hilaire Belloc's description of the guillotining of the
Dantonists forms a picture among the most thrilling, enthralling
and agonising that I know.

Fox stands out as one of the most brilliant failures and one of
the most ineffective geniuses in history.

Before war broke out in 1870 the world believed in the military
superiority of France. Only that grim trio, Bismarck, Moltke and
Roon, knew the contrary.

William the First, grandfather of the present Kaiser, was an
absurdly overestimated character. He owed all his success to his
great Ministers.

Treitschke writes: "The territories drained by great rivers are
usually centres of civilisation.... Our Rhine remains the king of
all rivers, but what great thing has ever happened on the
Danube?" Paul's comment on this:

"I know of only three great events on the Danube. One, the
capture of Vienna by the Turks; two, the Battle of Blenheim;
three, the Battle of Ulm."

The Jews are a truly extraordinary race. Though they have for
centuries been persecuted, despised, outcast, so far from being
crushed by their sufferings, they seem actually to have been
toughened in fibre, and to-day they exercise a commanding
influence in the world.

England's geographical position does not fit her for the role of
a Continental Power. Her home is on the sea; her empire
world-wide.

Each race, each nation, has its own characteristics, its own
peculiar type of civilisation. Attempts to destroy these inherent
qualities have time and time again been baffled--as the examples
of the Jews, Poland and Alsace-Lorraine clearly demonstrate....
As Treitschke puts it: "The idea of a world-State is odious. The
whole content of civilisation cannot be realised in a single
State. Every people has the right t