CHAPTBE VIII. 



"PEACE, PROGRESS AND PROSPERITY." 



THE somewhat monotonous chronicle of party strife and personal 

 intrigue which filled the last chapter has crowded out all reference 

 to matters tending to make for that peace which was to inaugurate 

 the reign of Sir Bryan O'Loghlen. 



One of these humanising factors was the great International 

 Exhibition of 1880. Ever since the fairy-like structure had sprung 

 up in Hyde Park, under the guiding hand of Sir Joseph Paxton, 

 some thirty years before, buildings devoted to widely competitive 

 exhibitions of trade, science and art had been hailed as symbols of 

 peace on earth and good-will among men. In 1851, when the idea 

 had the charm of novelty, the English press grew quite eloquent 

 over the prospect of a general federation of civilised mankind, and 

 many journals professed a belief that there would be no more war. 

 Alas, within three years of the opening of that friendly meeting-place 

 of all nations, tens of thousands of British, French and Eussian 

 soldiers lay in festering heaps on the blood-soaked fields of the 

 Crimea. Within another decade three or four of the leading powers 

 of Europe were submitting their quarrels to the arbitrament of war 

 and tearing at each other's throats. The ghastly horrors of the 

 Indian Mutiny ; stubborn conflicts in China, Abyssinia, Ashantee, 

 the Soudan and many another outlying field proclaimed that the 

 lust of fight had not been killed, and that the prophesied days of 

 international arbitration were as remote as the millennium. Never- 

 theless, with all the discouragements of experience, communities 

 continued to build up hopes of minimising racial distrust and mis- 

 representations by the methods inaugurated so hopefully by Queen 

 Victoria's Consort. To some extent such an enterprise took the 

 form of a peaceful challenge, and its inauguration was only possible 



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