In forecasting the future, then, it is upon these particular signs of the times that I dwell:  the arrest of the forward impulse towards political colonization which coincided with the decade immediately preceding the French Revolution; the absorption of the European nations, for the following quarter of a century, with the universal wars, involving questions chiefly political and European; the beginning of the great era of coal and iron, of mechanical and industrial development, which succeeded the peace, and during which it was not aggressive colonization, but the development of colonies already held and of new commercial centres, notably in China and Japan, that was the most prominent feature; finally, we have, resumed at the end of the century, the forward movement of political colonization by the mother countries, powerfully incited thereto, doubtless, by the citizens of the old colonies in different parts of the world.  The restlessness of Australia and the Cape Colony has doubtless counted for much in British advances in those regions.  Contemporary with all these movements, from the first to the last, has been the development of great standing armies, or rather of armed nations, in Europe; and, lastly, the stirring of the East, its entrance into the field of Western interests, not merely as a passive something to be impinged upon, but with a vitality of its own, formless yet, but significant, inasmuch as where before there was torpor, if not death, now there is indisputable movement and life.  Never again, probably, can there of it be said,

    “It heard the legions thunder past,
    Then plunged in thought again.”

Of this the astonishing development of Japan is the most obvious evidence; but in India, though there be no probability of the old mutinies reviving, there are signs enough of the awaking of political intelligence, restlessness under foreign subjection, however beneficent, desire for greater play for its own individualities; a movement which, because intellectual and appreciative of the advantages of Western material and political civilization, is less immediately threatening than the former revolt, but much more ominous of great future changes.

Of China we know less; but many observers testify to the immense latent force of the Chinese character.  It has shown itself hitherto chiefly in the strength with which it has adhered to stereotyped tradition.  But stereotyped traditions have been overthrown already more than once even in this unprogressive people, whose conservatism, due largely to ignorance of better conditions existing in other lands, is closely allied also to the unusual staying powers of the race, to the persistence of purpose, the endurance, and the vitality characteristic of its units.  To ambition for individual material improvement they are not insensible.  The collapse of the Chinese organization in all its branches during the late war with Japan, though greater than was expected,