On the final issue as to what the ruling nations "have to" do to-day as regards the subject peoples, the disinterested student can hardly hesitate, however the ex-administrator may feel bound to balance. "The Englishman," Lord Cromer tells us, truly enough as regards the average citizen, "would be puzzled to give any definite answer" to the question _Quo vadis?_ in matters imperial.[452] He may well be, when Lord Cromer visibly is, despite the ostensible emphasis with which he exhorts his countrymen to keep "the _animus manendi_ strong within them."[453] The danger is that, noting the formal conclusion rather than the implicit lesson of Lord Cromer's very able survey, "the Englishman" may turn from his puzzle to some new insanity of imperialism. Not many years have passed since English wiseacres were speculating on a "break-up" of China, and a dominion of some other State over her huge area and multitudinous millions. He would be a bad sample of modernity who should now regret that China is apparently on the way, like Japan, to build up a new progressive civilisation in the "unchanging East."[454] But it is perhaps as much to the sheer impracticability of further great conquests as to any alert and conscious reading of the lesson of history that we owe the growing disposition of modern States to seek their good in their own development. If so, provided that the ideal be changed, "it is well, if not _so_ well." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 429: _Decadence._ (Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture.) By the Right Hon. A.J. Balfour, 1908, p. 8.] [Footnote 430: See above, pp. 23-24. On the whole question see the very full survey of W.R. Patterson, _The Nemesis of Nations_, 1907, p. 265 _sq._] [Footnote 431: Gibbon's generalisation (end of ch. 10) as to a "diminution of the human species" throughout the Empire is confessedly founded on very imperfect evidence, applying only to Alexandria, and very doubtful even at that point.] [Footnote 432: History, vol. v (_The Provinces_). Cp. Merivale, _General History_, p. 682.] [Footnote 433: See Gibbon, ch. 31, end. On Gibbon's and Guizot's interpretation of the scheme, see Prof. Bury's note on Gibbon, _in loc_.] [Footnote 434: _Lectures and Essays_, 1870: Lecture on "Roman Imperialism," p. 54.] [Footnote 435: Ch. 10, _end_.] [Footnote 436: Essay cited, p. 56.] [Footnote 437: Prof. Bury (note to Gibbon in his ed. i, 281) cites the debased silver coinage as a proof of the "distress of the Empire" and the "bankruptcy of the Government." This is an unwarranted inference. See above, p. 80.] [Footnote 438: Cp. Gibbon, ch. 13, Bohn ed. i, 427-28; Merivale, _General History_, pp. 572-74. Bagaudae seem to have recruited the army of Julian. (Ed. note on Gibbon, as cited, ii, 474.)] [Footnote 439: Seeley, as cited, p. 57.] [Footnote 440: Ferrero, _Greatness and Decline of Rome_, Eng. tr. 1907, vol. i, pref.] [Footnote 441: Cp. Patterson, _Nemesis of Nations_, as cited.]