threatened decrease in population have those limits been transgressed by France?  Have they been transgressed by Great Britain?  Considering the enormous increase in British responsibilities imposed by the maritime expansion of Germany, will not Great Britain be obliged to adopt a policy of concentration rather than expansion?  Is not her partial retirement from American waters the first step in such a policy?  Is not the Japanese alliance a dubious device for the partial shifting of burdens too heavy to bear?  How long can Great Britain afford to maintain her existing control of the sea?  Is there any way of ending such a control save either by the absolute exhaustion of Great Britain or by the establishment of a stable international system under adequate guarantees?  Will the economic development of Asia lead to the awakening of other Asiatic states like Japan, and the re-arrangement of international relations for the purpose of giving them their appropriate places?  A multitude of such questions are raised by the transformation which is taking place from a European international system into a political system composed chiefly of European nations, but embracing the whole world; and these questions will prove to be sufficiently difficult of solution.  But in spite of the certainty that colonial expansion will in the end merely transfer to a larger area the conflicts of idea and interest whose effects have hitherto chiefly been confined to Europe—­in spite of this certainty the process of colonial expansion is a wholly legitimate aspect of national development, and is not necessarily inimical to the advance of democracy.  It will not make immediately for a permanent international settlement; but it is accomplishing a work without which a permanent international settlement is impossible; and it indubitably places every colonizing nation in a situation which makes the risk of hostilities dangerous compared to the possible advantages of military success.

The chief object of this long digression, has, I hope, now been achieved.  My purpose has been to exhibit the European nations as a group of historic individuals with purposes, opportunities, and limitations analogous to those of actual individuals.  An individual has no meaning apart from the society in which his individuality has been formed.  A national state is capable of development only in relation to the society of more or less nationalized states in the midst of which its history has been unfolded.  The growing and maturing individual is he who comes to take a more definite and serviceable position in his surrounding society,—­he who performs excellently a special work adapted to his abilities.  The maturing nation is in the same way the nation which is capable of limiting itself to the performance of a practicable and useful national work,—­a work which in some specific respect accelerates the march of Christian civilization.  There is no way in which a higher type of national life can be obtained without