For the halcyon days of peace, prosperity, and progress can hardly be assumed as yet, and not even the most distant and self-contained Dominions can afford to ignore the menace of blood and iron. No power, indeed, is likely to find the thousand millions or so which it would cost to conquer and hold Canada, Australia, or South Africa; but a lucky raid on their commerce or some undefended port might cost many millions by way of ransom. A slackening birth-rate is, moreover, a reminder that empires in the past, like that of Rome, have civilized themselves out of existence in the competition with races which bred with primitive vigour, and had no costly standards of comfort. There are such races to-day; the slumbering East has wakened, and the tide which flowed for four centuries from West to East is on the turn. The victory of Japan over Russia was an event beside which the great Boer War sinks into insignificance. Asiatics, relieved by the _Pax Britannica_ from mutual destruction, are eating the whites out of the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and threatening South Africa, Australia, and the western shores of America. No armaments and no treaties of arbitration can ward off their economic competition; and it is not certain that their myriads, armed with Western morality and methods of warfare, will be always content to refrain from turning against Europe the means of expansion which Europe has used with so much success against them. The British Empire will need all the wisdom it can command, if it is to hold its own in the parliament of reason or the arbitrament of war. CHAPTER IX ENGLISH DEMOCRACY