in France and Germany, and the main part of the Slavonic nations. The third factor, the Nordic race, is now believed to be genuinely European, being indigenous around the Baltic Sea. From this centre it flooded the greater part of Europe in successive waves of invasion. Its well-known characteristics are tall stature, lightcoloured hair and eyes, and a roving disposition. Being a good fighter, though pugnacious rather than warlike, the Nordic man has been a great conqueror, and has formed the aristocracy of many countries inhabited mainly by the other European races. Being a heavy eater and drinker, he is what the Americans call a high standard man, and cannot or will not compete by the side of other races in manual labour. This habit, rather than his inability to live in a hot climate, has led to his disappearance in several countries where he conquered but did not expel the inhabitants. His high standard of living and pride of race are gradually extinguishing him in North America; and in England, while the Nordic man flourishes in the country districts and as a seafarer, he is apparently at a disadvantage under the conditions of industrial labour in the towns, where a smaller and darker type of men is already prevalent, and is becoming more so in each generation. The industrial revolution has greatly diminished the preponderance of pure Nordic blood in this country. Our frequent wars, in which the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons and Danes are usually the first to volunteer and the first to be killed, have weakened them still further. Writers like Madison Grant, who are influenced by the cult of racialism now popular on the Continent, even speak of The Passing of the Great Race' as a doom to which the Nordics must resign themselves. Of the remaining two races, the pure Alpine seems to be decidedly inferior to the Mediterranean in intelligence and energy; but a large admixture of Alpine blood flows in the veins of some of the most powerful nations. The vigour of the Germans is indeed a refutation of their favourite theory that the Nordic race is intrinsically superior to all others; for they themselves are not, like the Scandinavians, pure Nordics. The Germans are a mixture of Nordic and Alpine man ; the British of Nordic and Mediterranean. In Great Britain the round-headed man, who was once among us

and constructed the round barrows which indicate his presence, has practically vanished. His physical characteristics are rarely found in these islands.

If we look at a map of the world as it was at the end of the Middle Ages, about 1480, we shall be startled to find how small a part of it was fully included in the European system. European culture reigned in France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Bohemia, and the greater part of Spain, from which, however, the Moors had not yet been expelled. Russia was still a barbarous country; South-Eastern Europe had fallen, or was soon to fall, under the yoke of the Grand Turk ; Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Poland were still on the outskirts of civilisation, and partially detached from the European system.

For a thousand years before the beginning of the modern period Europe had been on the defensive against Asia. Three times civilisation had been in imminent danger of being submerged by a torrent of Asiatic invaders. The first irruption of Mongols, in the fifth century, reached France, and nearly overthrew Roman civilisation at Chalons. The Arabs, within a few decades after their emergence from the desert, struck down the East Roman Empire, exterminated the Nordic Vandals in Africa, conquered Spain, invaded France, and even after they had begun to decline, drove the chivalry of Europe out of Palestine. The third period of nomadic aggression set the Tartar on the thrones of India and China, which he retained till within living memory, kept Russia in thraldom for two hundred years, obliterated the East Roman Empire, and as late as the 17th century threatened Vienna. The destruction of civilisation in all its most ancient seats has been the work of the Mongol. It is not true to say that he overthrew only decadent and feeble empires.

Such was the state of the unending duel between West and East, in the years before the great age of discovery. On the whole, the East had been the successful aggressor. The West had only once turned the tables on a large scale, in the time of Alexander the Great, who took advantage of a great temporary superiority in military science to conquer the home-lands of the Asiatic beyond the borders of India. The Roman Empire was

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only a device to protect the Mediterranean enclave, so insecurely guarded by mountain and river on the north, so open to nomadic raiders in Hungary and Syria. The Mediterranean peoples, except the Jews who were themselves Asiatics, accepted the heavy hand of Rome and did not often rebel; they knew the alternative too well.

The turning-points of world-history have generally been military discoveries. The unknown genius who found out that copper could be hardened into a serviceable weapon by the admixture of a small percentage of tin probably revolutionised Europe in prehistoric times. The Altaic shepherd on his horse shattered civilisation over the greater part of the Old World. The invention of gunpowder curbed his aggression, and for the first time gave civilisation a decisive superiority over barbarism in warfare. But the turn of the tide which has now brought nearly the whole world under the political control of the European races began with two feats of naval enterprise. In 1492 Columbus, while seeking a western route to the East Indies, landed on one of the Bahama Islands; and two years later Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and crossed the Indian Ocean to Calicut. The blockade of Europe by the Moslem was broken, and the Atlantic period of history, which to the future historian will be as distinct an epoch as the Mediterranean period, began. Almost simultaneously with these discoveries, the Moors were finally driven from Spain; the tide of Moslem conquest had begun to ebb from its western high-water mark. In 1519-1521 the most wonderful of all voyages brought the crew of Magelhaës to the Philippines from Patagonia. From that time the white man has been at home on every ocean.

The ascendancy of the white man may be dated from these discoveries; but the full effect of them was not felt till the 19th century. By an amazing piece of good fortune, which can never be repeated in the history of the world, however many millennia remain during which it will be inhabited by our species, the white man, newly emancipated by the Renaissance and ready for new adventures, found a vast continent across the Atlantic, only sparsely peopled by a feeble race with no effective weapons, waiting for his occupation. He was able to

populate a great part of this enormous area with his own stock; till a second stroke of luck opened to him, in the nick of time, the only other large territories suitable for white colonisation, in Australasia. Thus two new continents, with an area of about 17 million square miles, were added to the domains of the European.

It was not, however, till the industrial revolution in the reign of George III that the overwhelming predominance of the European declared itself. momentous transformation of the whole economic structure of European society produced an unexampled increase, both in wealth and numbers. The population of Europe, which in 1801, after the rapid growth had begun, was only 150 millions, was about 450 millions in 1914, besides 110 million white men in America and the British colonies. Wealth in England increased about tenfold between the two great wars, a striking comment on Wellington's forecast in 1832: Few people will be sanguine enough to imagine that we shall ever again be as prosperous as we have been.' After 1870, the progress of Germany was even more rapid than our own. In North America material expansion was on a yet more portentous scale. The three million colonists. who revolted against Great Britain in the reign of George III; are now represented by a nation of 110 millions, of whom a very large majority are of white descent. More recently, Canada and the Argentine Republic have entered on the path of rapid growth.

This expansion of the Western Europeans by no means exhausts the tale of aggression. The Russians brought under their dominion, and began to colonise, the vast expanse of Northern Asia as far as the Pacific; and practically the whole of Africa, which covers 11 million square miles, was staked out by rival white races for present or future 'exploitation. At the beginning of the Great War, out of the 53 million square miles which (excluding the Polar regions) constitute the land surface of the globe, only six million square miles were not under white government. The exceptions to universal white domination were China, Japan, Tibet, Siam, Turkey, Afghanistan, Persia, Abyssinia, Liberia, and Hayti. As the result of the Great War, Turkey, Persia, and Hayti may almost be

subtracted from the list. No important coloured governments remain, except in China and Japan.

It is no wonder that till a few years ago it was assumed as probable that the remaining Asiatic Empires would follow the same path as India, and fall under one or other of the European powers. Mr Meredith

Townsend, writing in 1901, says, 'So grand is the prize [of Asiatic trade] that failures will not daunt the Europeans, still less alter their conviction. If these movements follow historic lines, they will recur for a time upon a constantly ascending scale, each repulse eliciting a greater effort, until at last Asia, like Africa, is partitioned, that is, each section is left at the disposal of some white people. If Europe can avoid internal war, or war with a much aggrandised America, she will by A.D. 2000 be mistress in Asia, and at liberty, as her people think, to enjoy.'

But in 1901 the tide had really begun to turn, and Mr Townsend himself was one of the first to sound the warning. The culmination of white ascendancy may almost be fixed at the date of the second Jubilee of Queen Victoria, when the spectators of that magnificent pageant could observe the contrast between the splendid physique of the coloured troops in the procession and the stunted and unhealthy appearance of the crowds who lined the streets. The shock came in 1904, when Russia, who with the help of France and Germany had robbed Japan of the fruits of her victory over China, extended covetous hands over Manchuria and threatened Korea. The military prestige of Russia at that time stood very high, and Europe was startled when an Asiatic people, poor and relatively small in numbers, threw down the gauntlet to the Colossus of the North. Kuroki's victory on the Yalu, though due to the blunder of a subordinate general, will perhaps rank as one of the turning-points of history. It was followed by a series of successes, both by land and sea, which amazed Europe, and sent waves of excitement and hope through the entire continent of Asia. A Frenchman has described the arrival of the first batch of tall Russian prisoners at a Japanese port. The white men present consisted of French, Germans, English, and Americans; but at the sight of Europeans in the custody of Asiatics they forgot