one particular nation secured an advantage for the citizens of that nation, in that its overflowing population found homes in conditions preferable socially, or politically, to the conditions imposed by alien nations. But none of these considerations applies to the problem with which we are dealing. We are concerned with the case of fully civilized rival nations in fully occupied territory or with civilizations so firmly set that conquest could not sensibly modify their character, and the fact of conquering such territory gives to the conqueror no material advantage which he could not have had without conquest. And in these conditions—the realities of the political world as we find it to-day—"domination," or "predominance of armament," or the "command of the sea," can do nothing for commerce and industry or general well-being: England may build fifty Dreadnoughts and not sell so much as a penknife the more in consequence. She might conquer Germany to-morrow, and she would find that she could not make a single Englishman a shilling's worth the richer in consequence, the war indemnity notwithstanding.
How have conditions so changed that terms which were applicable to the ancient world—in one sense at least to the mediæval world, and in another sense still to the world of that political renaissance which gave to Great Britain its Empire—are no longer applicable in any sense to the