There are of course many grades between these different types of influence, but the net outcome of what has occurred during the last four centuries is that civilization of the European type now exercises a more or less profound effect over practically the entire world.  There are nooks and corners to which it has not yet penetrated; but there is at present no large space of territory in which the general movement of civilized activity does not make itself more or less felt.  This represents something wholly different from what has ever hitherto been seen.  In the greatest days of Roman dominion the influence of Rome was felt over only a relatively small portion of the world’s surface.  Over much the larger part of the world the process of change and development was absolutely unaffected by anything that occurred in the Roman Empire; and those communities the play of whose influence was felt in action and reaction, and in inter-action, among themselves, were grouped immediately around the Mediterranean.  Now, however, the whole world is bound together as never before; the bonds are sometimes those of hatred rather than love, but they are bonds nevertheless.

Frowning or hopeful, every man of leadership in any line of thought or effort must now look beyond the limits of his own country.  The student of sociology may live in Berlin or St. Petersburg, Rome or London, or he may live in Melbourne or San Francisco or Buenos Aires; but in whatever city he lives, he must pay heed to the studies of men who live in each of the other cities.  When in America we study labor problems and attempt to deal with subjects such as life insurance for wage-workers, we turn to see what you do here in Germany, and we also turn to see what the far-off commonwealth of New Zealand is doing.  When a great German scientist is warring against the most dreaded enemies of mankind, creatures of infinitesimal size which the microscope reveals in his blood, he may spend his holidays of study in central Africa or in eastern Asia; and he must know what is accomplished in the laboratories of Tokyo, just as he must know the details of that practical application of science which has changed the Isthmus of Panama from a death-trap into what is almost a health resort.  Every progressive in China is striving to introduce Western methods of education and administration, and hundreds of European and American books are now translated into Chinese.  The influence of European governmental principles is strikingly illustrated by the fact that admiration for them has broken down the iron barriers of Moslem conservatism, so that their introduction has become a burning question in Turkey and Persia; while the very unrest, the impatience of European or American control, in India, Egypt, or the Philippines, takes the form of demanding that the government be assimilated more closely to what it is in England or the United States.  The deeds and works of any great statesman, the preachings of any great ethical, social, or political