complicated ultimate causes, the
responsibility rests upon the shoulders of no individual men.
Necessity is laid upon the peoples, and they move, like the lemmings
of Scandinavia; but to man, being not without understanding like the
beasts that perish, it is permitted to ask, "Whither?" and "What shall
be the end hereof?" Does this tend to universal peace, general
disarmament, and treaties of permanent arbitration? Is it the
harbinger of ready mutual understanding, of quick acceptance of, and
delight in, opposing traditions and habits of life and thought? Is
such quick acceptance found now where Easterns and Westerns impinge?
Does contact forebode the speedy disappearance of great armies and
navies, and dictate the wisdom of dispensing with that form of
organized force which at present is embodied in them?

What, then, will be the actual conditions when these civilizations, of
diverse origin and radically distinct,--because the evolution of
racial characteristics radically different,--confront each other
without the interposition of any neutral belt, by the intervention of
which the contrasts, being more remote, are less apparent, and within
which distinctions shade one into the other?

There will be seen, on the one hand, a vast preponderance of numbers,
and those numbers, however incoherent now in mass, composed of units
which in their individual capacity have in no small degree the great
elements of strength whereby man prevails over man and the fittest
survives. Deficient, apparently, in aptitude for political and social
organization, they have failed to evolve the aggregate power and
intellectual scope of which as communities they are otherwise capable.
This lesson too they may learn, as they already have learned from us
much that they have failed themselves to originate; but to the lack of
it is chiefly due the inferiority of material development under which,
as compared to ourselves, they now labor. But men do not covet less
the prosperity which they themselves cannot or do not create,--a trait
wherein lies the strength of communism as an aggressive social force.
Communities which want and cannot have, except by force, will take by
force, unless they are restrained by force; nor will it be
unprecedented in the history of the world that the flood of numbers
should pour over and sweep away the barriers which intelligent
foresight, like Caesar's, may have erected against them. Still more
will this be so if the bar