The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-09-27
ENGLAND AFTER WAR.
4 VERY STRIKING VIEW OF
 THE AFFAIR.
Imperial Expansion Has Reached
 Its Limit.

With the peace of Pretoria it is re-
 markable probability that England has fought her last war of conquest and touched the limit of her expansion. The South African struggle can never be regarded as a detached episode or even as an unavoidable crisis in tho long work of bringing the two races nearer to a final adjustment of their re
 lations. It was part of wider question and formed the necessary climax of British development in the last contin- ent that remained to be thrown open to colonial enterprise. The whole earth has been staked out so far as it was possible for local conflicts and settle ments to decide. In the problems of the nearer and the further East, we have history moving back to where it began; and as it is unlikely that they can be solved except by Armageddon or an Areopagus of the world, they may be allowed to wait indefinitely for solution
 Even if the partition of China should ever be undertaken, the United States would have to take over our share, and those who advocate that we should place ourselves in permanently irrecon- cilable contact with Russia by the seiz- ure of southern Persia will find less and less support from a sane nation. No. Three centuries after Elizabeth, let us say of the expansion of England it is finished, What England has now to deal with is the enormous work of keeping a quarter of the globe and third of it's population permanently under the con- trol of the least numerous and prolific of it's four principal white peoples, and it may be safely suggested that we have failed as yet to grasp the real magnitude and even the nature of the task to which we are committed
 One of the chief causes of our ten- dency to comparative ineffectiveness is that the energies of forty millions of white people in these islands, or fifty millions including the colonies, are irn- measurably more dispersed and over loaded than those of the United States or Germany, with their larger and more rapidly increasing population. We can- not have so much of our best ability employed in India and Egypt, for in- stance, without losing some of the force which would have contributed to main tain our eminence at home in govern ment, science and business. As it is, we have now brought under our power, direct or yelled, more than twelve mill lion square miles of territory, and more than four hundred millions of men. Language is helpless to bring home to the British mind a proper con ception of the stupendous disproportion between its moral and mental energies and the political task it has undertaken. If Englishmen were beyond comparison the ablest freshest, best trained and most numerous of all ruling races, present or past. the maintainance of empire would tax all their qualities. If the Anglo American world were united to support the burden, the strength available would be of no more than suf- ficient. Tn the meantime, the fact re- mains that we have added to our re- responsibilities, snce the" flag was first Toisted In the Transvaal, territory equal to the whole area of the United States, though we had held more than twice as much before.
 As the only certain periodical test of the quality of a nation, no substitute for war has been discovered. It is in itself an immense stimulus, and usually raises creative energy to higher pow CT in way that does far more than merely repair in short time the waste of life and wealth it causes. All na- tions, after very prolonged enjoyment of peace, begin to wonder how far they have been corrupted by ease. A decade ago, as the increased self-conffdence and vigor derived by America and Ger many from two great struggles became more and more perceptible by contrast with our own increasing symptoms of slowing down, it was the opinion of many of us that nothing would be so good for England as a just war which would rouse her to the core. We have had our struggle, very different from any that we had anticipated and 1t can- not be said that, to those among us ---=----=