as large as that United Kingdom itself. I say that that marks out for many years a policy from which you cannot depart if you would. You may be compelled to draw the sword – I hope you may not be; but the foreign policy of Great Britain, until its territory is consolidated, filled up, settled, civilised, must inevitably be a policy of peace.” [36]
Since these words were uttered, vast new tracts of undigested empire have been added in the Soudan, in East Africa, in South Africa, while Great Britain is busily entangling herself in obligations of incalculable magnitude and peril in the China seas, and the prophet who spoke this warning has himself been an active instrument in the furtherance of the very folly he denounced.
Imperialism – whether it consists in a further policy of expansion or in the rigorous maintenance of all those vast tropical lands which we have lately ear-marked as British spheres of influence – implies militarism now and ruinous wars in the near future. This truth is now for the first time brought sharply and nakedly before the mind of the nation. The kingdoms of the earth are to be ours on condition that we fall down and worship Moloch.