It might be supposed that this reverberating lesson could have been read in only one way--as a warning to the nations against taking the Roman road of conquest and dominion. And yet it is doubtful whether modern States have been at all guided by that lesson, as compared with the extent to which they have been overruled by the sheer difficulty of repeating the evolution. The problem has been faced by Lord Cromer, a ripe ruler, in his very scholarly essay on _Ancient and Modern Imperialism_. The experienced administrator is quite alive to the analogy between the part played of old by Rome around the Mediterranean and in Europe, and that played to-day by England in India and, in some measure, in Egypt. Raised in some degree above the ordinary hallucination of mere dominion, the confused pride of the average man in his country's rule over large portions of the earth, the veteran governor notes that, whereas there was a general acquiescence of the subject peoples in the imperial rule of Rome, no _imperium_ to-day has won any such cordial acceptance.[442] Neither France in Algeria and Tunis nor Britain in India and Egypt is an assimilating and unifying power. We may note the proximate explanation, which he does not at first give--to wit, the sundering force of crystallised religious systems. As he later puts it, following Sir Alfred Lyall, religions make nations, where the Romans had to deal with tribes.[443] But that need not greatly affect our view of the political problem, which would remain if the religious factor were eliminated; and it is over the political problem that Lord Cromer most significantly balances. Falling back on the method of fatalism, he pronounces, like others before him, "that Rome, equally with the modern expansive Powers, more especially Great Britain and Russia, was impelled onwards by the imperious and irresistible necessity of acquiring defensible frontiers; that the public opinion of the world scoffed 2,000 years ago, as it does now, at the alleged necessity; and that each onward move was attributed to an insatiable lust for extended dominion."[444] As in all fatalistic reasoning, we are here faced by radical self-contradiction. The "public opinion of the world," which Lord Cromer allows to include a large part of Roman opinion,[445] could not scoff at an "irresistible necessity": it knew that it was no more irresistibly necessary for A to conquer B than for B to conquer A; and in ascribing to Rome an "insatiable lust for extended dominion" it merely credited Rome with an appetite known to inhere in all States. Rome succeeded in her aim; others failed. Pisa, overborne by Florence, had in her day overborne other communities. Lord Cromer has begged the vital question, which is: Can States, or can they not, live neighbourly? To say that Rome could not because of the ambitions or menaces of others is idle: the menace was reciprocal.