THE RETURN OF THE WEST. 15 



But it can show another face. Those strange agglo- 

 merations of sterile wastes and smiling oases, with their 

 mouldering cities and unfathomable peoples, — Turkey, 

 Persia, Afghanistan, Transcaspia, Turkestan, China, and 

 Tibet, — familiar to a large majority but in name, pos- 

 sess for a few a deep significance, and I have no hesi- 

 tation in admitting that it is in the part which each 

 is playing, or is destined to play, in the great silent 

 struggle for supremacy in Asia which is even at the 

 present moment engaging a far greater share of the 

 attention and of the resource of the statesmen of the 

 world than is apparent on the surface, that I find an 

 interest far surpassing all other. 



For it is hither, to the promising theatre where still 

 survive on doubtful equilibrium the decaying kingdoms 

 of the East, that the Powers of the West are driven 

 by forces altogether beyond control, for the furtherance 

 of their ambitions, and it is here in the end that the 

 fierce struggle for supremacy between representatives 

 of two of the great divisions of mankind — the Slavonic 

 and the Teutonic — must find its issue. The progress 

 of events and the march of time serve only to make 

 it daily more apparent to the observant, that in the 

 continent of Asia lies the stage whereon the fate of 

 empires will be sealed and their destinies fulfilled. 



The story of the return of the peoples of the West 

 to those lands wherein was situated the first home and 

 cradle of their race is one of absorbing interest, and may 

 be said to have had its origin with the rise of a man 

 who, born in a little kingdom occupying the south-west 

 corner of Europe, was destined to set in motion a move- 

 ment which even at the present day can scarce be said 

 to have run its course, and which has already played 

 a determining part in the destinies of the world. For 

 it is to Prince Henry of Portugal, known to ^history 



