concentrated on the necessity for the creation of, and the maintenance of, a dominating machine. Socialism has inherited that Conservative idea from its Germanic founders. Insteadof endeavouring to diminish the power of the State over the individual, instead of endeavouring as far as possible to mitigate the natural dominance by which brains and money control Democracy, they propose to increase the power of the State machine. It is true that their machine is going to dispense with money as one of the ingredients of power; nevertheless they openly admit that they intend to increase the power of the State over the individual and to control the people by the organized dominance of brains. This is pre-meditated reaction to a Conservative principle.

Liberalism is bound, not only to resist the Socialist reaction by which the State is to be in the control of brains, but also to resist the Conservative tendency in Democracy itself by which money and brains are obtaining a power so dominant that by it the liberty of the individual is endangered. The whole effort of Liberal thought has been, and should be, to weaken the dominance of the machine, to gradually decrease the control of the State, and to elevate mankind to be independent of both.

CHAPTER V

IMPERIALISM, WAR, AND REVOLUTION

HAT Rousseau called "the love of

WHAT

ruling' is one of the ancient vices of humanity. The whole edifice whose construction we have been examining, the disbelief in progress, the contempt for mankind, the Static State, and the idols that give it sanction, has been built up from time immemorial to gratify that selfish passion. To control others is pleasant to the egoism of the superior person. It sheds a limelight about his superiority, enables him to expand himself before the public eye, to spread his tail like a peacock before his less heroic admirers. Those who worship the State have always endeavoured to produce this hero type, representing their own Conservative egoism. Alexander was not the first of his kind, nor was he destined to be the last. He was the descendant of dim Egyptian Pharaohs and obscure Assyrian conquerors. His sword had been used before: Memphis and Nineveh and Babylon had felt it, and no

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one had wielded it more efficiently than Cyrus the Great. Cyrus destroyed with ease, not only God's chosen people with their Mosaic traditions, but also the civilization of Babylon, a culture pre-eminent for two thousand years, from which had arisen the elements of all our knowledge. His son Cambyses did the same for the ancient civilization of Egypt. The futile victories of these Persian conquerors read to us as mere aimless destruction; yet men from Alexander and Ghengis Khan to Napoleon and Wilhelm II have imitated their policy and refused to realize how ephemeral the power of their militarism is bound to be.

Imperialism is the inevitable child of State idolatry, and the idea of the Universal State, which is the objective of Imperialism, has had a long supremacy over Conservative thought. The barbarous instinct for power, with its grim belief in the right of the strong to devour the weak, has only lately given way before the Liberal idea of national liberty. And even now the very people, who admit the right of the small nation to exist free of the Universal State, deny the individual the right to exist free of the nation.

There is a curious resemblance between the history of England and of Athens. By the mere accident of the Persian attack on Greece, Athens obtained her Empire and her maritime

supremacy. By the accident of the attack on Europe by Spain, France, and Prussia, England has obtained her Empire and her maritime supremacy. The idea of the British Empire did not spring from the heated brain of philosophy; it was not the monstrous child of science and organization. Empire came to England partly by the accident of settlement, partly by the accident of wars waged for a purely European purpose. The English aristocracy had to evolve out of its inexperience an Imperial policy and to adapt it to the Liberal ideas of their own country. They saw, just as the Athenians had seen, that Imperialism and Democracy could not easily combine, that the Conservative idea of Imperialism was in direct contradiction to the Liberal idea of Democracy, and, in true English fashion, they endeavoured to compromise by the adoption of a Conservative policy abroad and a Liberal policy at home. The English people could not realize the possibility of parliamentary tyranny. They could not believe that the House of Commons, having inherited the powers of the monarch, had also inherited its capacity for oppression. Democracy, just as much as monarchy, and just as much as Socialism, has a Conservative instinct for power, which it has to learn to limit and control. Democracy had to learn, from the failure of its policy during

the American Revolution, that liberty abroad is as necessary as liberty at home. Unlike the Athenians, England succeeded in liberalizing her Empire. She, the enemy of all Universal States, could not herself be the master of a Universal State, even if that State was outside the confines of Europe. The principle of liberty cannot be confined to Europe, and England began in Canada, in Australia, and in South Africa, slowly and cautiously, the process of enfranchisement. We can observe England in these actions endeavouring to apply abroad what she had found to be successful at home, and at the same time justifying in her own eyes the possession of her world-wide Empire. In her case there was to be no servile imitation of Alexander and Cæsar. There was no Prussian talk about the propagation of culture, and the military basis was entirely lacking to the Imperial structure. There was not even to be a reproduction of the ideas of Charlemagne and Hildebrand, since there was no centralization of power and no insistence upon authority and obedience. The Empire was not to be Conservative it does not satisfy the instinct for power, since our power over it does not exist. It is free, and we are speaking of States now, not of individuals, because the English State has no control over it.

It is the business of Liberalism to contend