WAR. liO 



[This drc:im of universal eiiipiir, wliicli iiuulo Alcxniulcr weep 

 to think that the world had limits, while his ambition had none, 

 has taken, in later times, another form.] 



AVe know thi' L-artli Ijottcr iiuw. "We know that its 

 L'xtent is too vast to submit to any single empire. But 

 there is a fancy, now-a-days, for dividing it into vast 

 zones, eaeli of wliicli represents ii Avorld. There is the 

 Sclavonic world, the Germanic world, the American 

 world, not to mention others. Now, within the limits 

 of each of these worlds, the effort is made to consolidate 

 the peoples by violently tearing asunder the sacred 

 bonds of history and treaties. Men appeal to the nat- 

 ural right of the race, and, if need be, to a higher mis- 

 sion, mysterious as fate. And while they are trying to 

 fuse together kingdoms and nations in the crucibles of 

 this novel alchemy, our pseudo-philosophers stand by 

 and cry out. Progress ! 



I say it is going backward toward the ages of bar- 

 barism. I come back to my book, my inspired Bible. 

 Daniel saw them — these giant empires — both in pro- 

 phecy and in history, and, like Saint Peter in his trance, 

 he beheld them in the form of beasts. '• In the first 

 year of Belshazzar. king of Babylon, Daniel had a 

 dream, and visions of his head upon his bed ; and he 

 wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters."* 

 He saw mankind itnder its most natural image, a vast 

 and surging sea, and darkness was upon the face of it ; 

 '' and, behold, the four winds of heaven were in strife 

 upon the great sea.'' The prophet watched the storm, 

 and presently there emerged from the billows four mon- 

 strous beasts. The first was like a lion, and had wings, 

 whereby its wrath might rage from end to end of the 

 earth with the swiftness of an eagle. Anotlier was like 



* Daniel, vii. 1. 



