Power which has sprung like Pallas Athene in the full panoply of war, and in the foil vigour of mature nationality, into the circle of the European nations. We see these eight great Powers endeavouring to group themselves by alliances into a smaller number of systems, so that at the present moment they may be reckoned as four, and not as eight—the United States, England and Japan, the Dual Alliance, and the Triple Alliance. These alliances, though important as indicating a tendency, are too fluctuating perhaps for a serious argument to be based upon them; but if we look more closely we shall see the same tendency to reduction of numbers taking another shape. There are some of these great Powers which as world States are even now great only by convention, and have little chance of maintaining their present rank and position; there are others, again, whose hold on the future is anything but assured; and there are only three great Empire States which, unless they fall to pieces, as we have no reason to expect they will, are, by their population, their resources, and their possibilities of development, secured from the danger of sinking into a secondary place. The three are the British Empire, Russia, and the United States. Time may add to their number. China may awake from her lethargy and take the place beside them to which her population would entitle her, or less probably, if China proves to be not asleep but dead, Japan may become the head of a vast Empire in Eastern Asia, which would add her to the list; Germany, so strong as a national power in Europe, may succeed in winning a place among the world Powers of the future; and in South America a great Latin organization may arise to confront the United States on her own continent. But these things are matters of speculation. The great fixture awaiting the three world Empires we have named is a matter almost of certainty.
We are trying to discover the germ of a new political organism, to arrive at a new political conception wider
