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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



and a law truly common to all parts of 

 his kingdom. 



The close propinquity and the strong 

 government which the smallness of ad- 

 ministrative England made possible were 

 the factors which students are more and 

 more coming to agree molded the English 

 constitution. But they are particularly 

 w^ell agreed that the success of the Eng- 

 lish constitution is to be chiefly ascribed 

 to the political experience of the English 

 people, which has taught them that suc- 

 cessful government must be the product 

 of mutual concession and compromise. 

 The English constitution works well be- 

 cause Englishmen began many centuries 

 ago to live together in a way which the 

 men of other countries have only ap- 

 proached in recent generations. 



CIVIIv WAR UNKNOWN IN e;NGLAND FOR 

 MANY CFNTURIIiS 



We shall likewise see in the early at- 

 tainment of racial unity, in the early dis- 

 appearance of the religious cleft, and in 

 the early attainment of a truly national 

 feeling the explanation of the fact that 

 the settlement of domestic disputes by 

 force of arms ceased in the seventeenth 

 century. 



The statement that Ulster would resist 

 with arms an act of Parliament produced 

 a great sensation, because no part of the 

 British Isles had threatened civil war for 

 centuries. To Englishmen it seemed a 

 crushing calamity; yet practically every 

 nation in Europe contains larger bodies 

 ■of so-called citizens who await merely a 

 favorable opportunity to prosecute a civil 

 war. In a strict sense of the word, Eng- 

 land has had no irreconcilables. What- 

 ever extensions of legal privileges Irish- 

 men, Scotsmen, and Welshmen have 

 sought for in the last three centuries, 

 there has certainly been in none of those 

 countries any wide-spread sentiment in 

 favor of overthrowing the English crown 

 or the English constitution. 



Such a record no other State in Europe 

 can show, and today England is probably 

 the only one of the Great Powers which 

 contains no considerable body of men 

 desirous of changing, fundamentally, the 

 form of government. 



It has been England's peculiar fortune 



that such differences of opinion as there 

 have been in regard to local government 

 or autonomy should have been held by 

 people who inhabited portions of the Brit- 

 ish Isles of practically no military, naval, 

 or administrative importance. Compared 

 with Germany, who has the Alsatians 

 and Poles located upon the military keys 

 to the frontier, or Austria, whose south- 

 western and northeastern frontiers are 

 both in the hands of men who hate the 

 Dual Monarchy with a truly consuming 

 hatred, the English have never had to 

 cope with the problem of domestic dis- 

 cord. 



England's predominance 



With these facts in mind, let us now 

 analyze what is known as Great Britain's 

 predominance in Europe — this position, 

 if it is a position, which is supposed to 

 give England the casting vote in Euro- 

 pean politics — and see, if we can, what 

 are the really significant factors support- 

 ing it. We shall find that we are dealing 

 with a singularly elusive type of influence, 

 seldom tangible and seldom manifesting 

 itself in precisely the same way. 



It is due, least of all, to superior phys- 

 ical strength. Never has it been possible 

 for England to place upon the continent 

 armies capable of waging a decisive cam- 

 paign without assistance. At times, dur- 

 ing the Hundred Years' War, the Eng- 

 lish armies, single-handed, won glorious 

 victories, like Agincourt, but invariably 

 were unable to turn them to account in 

 deciding the campaign. Since the six- 

 teenth century the English have at times 

 sent expeditionary forces to the continent 

 which have had in some cases decisive 

 influence upon the results of the cam- 

 paign, but they have never been able, and 

 are not now able, to take the offensive 

 alone against any of the Great European 

 Powers in the field with any chance of 

 success. England's predominance in Eu- 

 rope, then, is not based upon superior 

 military strength ; it is not a question of 

 force ; her diplomats know invariably 

 that they cannot threaten coercion of 

 their opponents on land. 



Yet for three centuries and more the 

 English have succeeded in getting what 

 they wanted, and in the general European 



