ies. This might, indeed it has, become a sufficiently
perplexing question of casuistry, both as touches the punctilios of
national honour and as regards an equitable division between rival
Powers in respect of the material means of mastery. So in private life
it may become a moot question--in point of equity--whether the craving
of a kleptomaniac may not on occasion rise to such an intolerable pitch
of avidity as to justify him in seizing whatever valuables he can safely
lay hands on, to ease the discomfort of ungratified desire. In private
life any such endeavour to better oneself at one's neighbors' cost is
not commonly reprobated if it takes effect on a decently large scale
and shrewdly within the flexibilities of the law or with the connivance
of its officers. Governing international endeavours of this class there
is no law so inflexible that it can not be conveniently made over to fit
particular circumstances. And in the absence of law the felt need of a
formal justification will necessarily appeal to the unformulated
equities of the case, with some such outcome as alluded to above. All
that, of course, is for the diplomatists to take care of.

But any speculation on the equities involved in the projected course of
empire to which these two enterprising nations are committing themselves
must run within the lines of diplomatic parable, and will have none but
a speculative interest. It is not a matter of equity. Accepting the
situation as it stands, it is evident that any peace can only have a
qualified meaning, in the sense of armistice, so long as there is
opportunity for national enterprise of the character on which these two
enterprising national establishments are bent, and so long as these and
the like national establishments remain. So, taking the peaceable
professions of their spokesmen at a discount of one hundred percent, as
one necessarily must, and looking to the circumstantial evidence of the
case, it is abundantly plain that at least these two imperial Powers may
be counted on consistently to manoeuvre for warlike advantage so long as
any peace compact holds, and to break the peace so soon as the strategy
of Imperial enterprise appears to require it.

There has been much courteous make-believe of amiable and upright
solicitude on this head the past few years, both in diplomatic
intercourse and among men out of doors; and since make-believe is a
matter of course in diplomatic intercourse it is right and