THE WORLD REVOLUTION 17 



the immense majority in the nations did not assert 

 themselves and sweep it all away. 1 



Whatever these symptoms might imply in their 

 more immediate relations there could be even then 

 no mistaking their import in the deeper aspects of 

 history. The West was getting down to the first 

 principles of force. The powers which had com- 

 mand of force were, with a sure instinct, preparing 

 for a stage in which strength would be measured 

 again in the West in those conditions of primitive 

 force which the West understood. But the times 

 were evidently pregnant with a wider meaning 

 than this. It was a period more elemental still 

 in which some new, vast, and fundamental con- 

 ditions were assembling in the world, presently to 

 emerge into full view in another era of civilization. 



When we turn from these external symptoms 

 to the social conditions existing within the frontiers 

 of the nations before the outbreak of the war of 

 1914, the spectacle becomes more arresting. The 

 world-wide reach of the revolution which has been 

 in progress becomes more clearly visible. 



For centuries it had been a commonplace of 

 political thought in the West that the world that 

 is, represents the world that always will be. The 

 masters of force from the beginning took the Dar- 



1 Westminster Gazette, 31 October 1911. 



