VENEZUELA AND AFTER 353 



empire, to check the influence of the United 

 States and the result is an access of democ 

 racy from Australia that makes American ideas 

 inviting by comparison. Americans rush into 

 war to uphold the cause of humanity and in 

 dependence for oppressed peoples and find 

 themselves struggling to carry, in the most ap 

 proved British manner, the burden of distant 

 and barbarous dependencies. But the federa 

 tive empire of the Britons and the imperialistic 

 republic of the Americans are more neighborly 

 after than before their transforming experiments. 



The hundred years of peace for which John 

 Quincy Adams politely, if not very hopefully, 

 prayed after the signing of the treaty of De 

 cember 24, 1814, have become realized his 

 tory. The gates of Janus, closed at Ghent, 

 have not been opened for a century. The 

 pacific years have brought changes, however, 

 more amazing than could have been wrought 

 by the desolating arts of war. It is not so 

 clear in the twentieth as it was in the nine 

 teenth century that the nerve centre of the 

 English-speaking world is in Great Britain. 

 The United Kingdom, with its 45,000,000 of 

 population, is a wonderful aggregate of ma- 



