The description of the position of the British Empire at the close of the Boer War was less flattering even than the personal sketch of its King and Emperor. "At this moment the astounded peoples had felt the Britannic colossus totter on its foundation, this colossus with feet of clay which weighs down too credulous nations by its bluff, by its arrogance, by rapine, by insatiable rapacity, which already grips the entire globe like a gigantic cuttle-fish and sucks its marrow through the numberless tentacles of its commerce, until the day when it shall subjugate the whole planet to its domination--always provided that it does not encounter on its way another still more powerful octopus of destruction which will attack and destroy it." Needless to say that this challenger of the British supremacy was the rising power of Germany. As an Englishman I admit the infamy of the Boer War, and recognise that our rule in India and Ireland has been anything but what it ought to have been. M. Clemenceau knew all that as well as we British anti-Imperialists do. But even in 1907-8 much had happened since 1900. Democracy was slowly making way in Great Britain likewise, and freedom for others would surely follow emancipation for herself. It was not to be expected that all Frenchmen should see or understand this. A nation which has under its flag a fourth of the population and more than a seventh of the habitable surface of the world can scarcely expect that another colonial country, whose colonies the British have largely appropriated, in the East and in the West, will admit the "manifest destiny" of the Union Jack to wave of undisputed right over still more territory. There was a good deal to be said, and a good deal was said, about British greed and British unscrupulousness: nor could the truth of many of the imputations be honestly denied.