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Above all, it was the hope of more effectually crushing the world-power of Britain that drove him, at the very moment when Canning was attacking America, to his worst aggression, the aggression upon Spain. Spain was already his subservient ally; but her alliance became every hour less useful. The country was ruined by misgovernment: its treasury was empty: its fleet rotted in its harbours.
He has no reverential preface, no softening of his message. His words are as if cut with steel on the rock. He brushes aside the promises of vulgar decorations and honours with undisguised contempt, and goes straight to his work of rousing a torpid conscience. Babylon was the embodiment and type of the godless world-power, and Belshazzar was the incarnation of the spirit which made Babylon.
They are proud of their scheme of government, by which an imperial world-power has been created for certain national and international purposes, resting on a collection of States, each of which is an independent sovereignty, absolutely as respects the others, and for the most part as respects the United States. They are in the mass an educated and intelligent people.
Now that 'world-power' had become the test of greatness among states, she could be content with nothing short of the first rank among world-states; if this rank could not be achieved, she seemed to be sentenced to the same sort of fate as had befallen Holland or Denmark: she might be ever so prosperous, as these little states were, but she would be dwarfed by the vast powers which surrounded her.
But her growth was more than a merely territorial growth. She was turning her command of the seas to a practical account. Not only was she monopolizing the carrying trade of the European nations, but the sudden uprush of her industries was making her the workshop as well as the market of the world. From the first the mind of Buonaparte had been set on a struggle with this growing world-power.
Seeing and hearing all this, we have seen and heard the intimations of the glory of France in the new world, the birth of a world-power, the United States, the infancy of a new democracy, the disappearance of the aboriginal Indian, the menace of the black shadow that had made a nation half slave and half free, and the prophecy of the triumphant coming of the new-age producers and poets, the men of the Land of the Western Waters.
In the little thought which he permitted himself, Selwyn argued that the ignorance of many nations had made war possible, but only Germany had been vile enough to try to exploit it for the achievement of world-power. For that reason alone she was a thing of detestation. His enthusiasm and quickly acquired knowledge of army routine marked him for promotion.
No peace or hope was possible for the leading powers as long as Spain was perpetually encamped in the very heart of Western Europe. The Netherlands were not fighting their own battle merely, but that of freedom and independence against the all-encroaching world-power.
A more immediately practicable field of operations was to be found in the Turkish Empire. It was here that the most systematic endeavours were made during this period: the Berlin-Bagdad scheme, which was to be the keystone of the arch of German world-power, had already taken shape before our period closed, though the rest of the world was strangely blind to its significance.
They say that he never calls in the daytime, and rarely in the evening. What did he say?" "He said that some of this Boston nonsense must be gotten out of you," answered Mrs. Brice, laughing. "He said that you were too stiff. That you needed to rub against the plain men who were building up the West. Who were making a vast world-power of the original little confederation of thirteen states.
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