However, for the moment, ignorance was bliss. Accordingly, the _fin de siècle_ white world, having partitioned Africa and fairly well dominated brown Asia, prepared to extend its sway over the one portion of the colored world which had hitherto escaped subjection--the yellow Far East. Men began speaking glibly of "manifest destiny" or piously of "the white man's burden." European publicists wrote didactically on "the break-up of China," while Russia, bestriding Siberia, dipped behemoth paws in Pacific waters and eyed Japan. [Illustration: CATEGORIES OF WHITE WORLD-SUPREMACY] Such was the white world's confident, aggressive temper at the close of the last century. To be sure, voices were occasionally raised warning that all was not well. Such were the writings of Professor Pearson and Meredith Townsend. But the white world gave these Cassandras the reception always accorded prophets of evil in joyous times--it ignored them or laughed them to scorn. In fact, few of the prophets displayed Pearson's immediate certainty. Most of them qualified their prophecies with the comforting assurance that the ills predicted were relatively remote. Meredith Townsend is a good case in point. The reader may recall his prophecy of white expulsion from Asia, quoted in my second chapter.[95] That prophecy occurs in the preface to the fourth edition, published in 1911, and written in the light of the Russo-Japanese War. Now, of course, Mr. Townsend's main thesis--Europe's inability permanently to master and assimilate Asia--had been elaborated by him long before the close of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the preface to the fourth edition speaks of Europe's failure to conquer Asia as absolute and eviction from present holdings as probable within a relatively short time; whereas, in his original introduction, written in 1899, he foresaw a great European assault upon Asia, which would probably succeed and from which Asia would shake itself free only after the lapse of more than a century.