ration of the
preponderant military strength into the hands of the most pacific
communities. With infinite toil and trouble this point has been slowly
gained by mankind, through the circumstance that the very same political
aggregation of small primitive communities which makes them less
disposed to quarrel among themselves tends also to make them more than a
match for the less coherent groups of their more barbarous neighbours.
The same concert of action which tends towards internal harmony tends
also towards external victory, and both ends are promoted by the
co-operation of the same sets of causes. But for a long time all the
political problems of the civilized world were complicated by the fact
that the community had to fight for its life. We seldom stop to reflect
upon the imminent danger from outside attacks, whether from surrounding
barbarism or from neighbouring civilizations of lower type, amid which
the rich and high-toned civilizations of Greece and Rome were developed.
When the king of Persia undertook to reduce Greece to the condition of a
Persian satrapy, there was imminent danger that all the enormous
fruition of Greek thought in the intellectual life of the European world
might have been nipped in the bud. And who can tell how often, in
prehistoric times, some little gleam of civilization, less bright and
steady than this one had become, may have been quenched in slavery or
massacre? The greatest work which the Romans performed in the world was
to assume the aggressive against menacing barbarism, to subdue it, to
tame it, and to enlist its brute force on the side of law and order.
This was a murderous work, and in doing it the Romans became excessively
cruel, but it had to be done by some one before you could expect to have
great and peaceful civilizations like our own. The warfare of Rome is by
no means adequately explained by the theory of a deliberate immoral
policy of aggression,--"infernal," I believe, is the stronger adjective
which Dr. Draper uses. The aggressive wars of Rome were largely dictated
by just such considerations as those which a century ago made it
necessary for the English to put down the raids of the Scotch
Highlanders, and which have since made it necessary for Russia to subdue
the Caucasus. It is not easy for a turbulent community to live next to
an orderly one without continually stirring up frontier disturbances
which call for stern repression from the orderly community. Such
con