Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/57

 idea of the solution of this problem took the direction of imparting a military drill to all the youth of the country, so as to enable the whole people afterwards, at shortest notice, to turn out, to all the extent needful, in defence of the fatherland, thus rendering practically impossible the mutual invasion of nations.

The general political forecast was also freely treated by Yellowly. There were great political changes ahead for us, in substance, at least, if not in form. We had our own peculiar political ways, and would probably keep to them to the last, unless unforeseen incidents gave the political machine any revolutionary upset. We were already in a course of actual change, and at no dilatory pace, although the political surface, in point of external form, remained undisturbed. Thus our government had passed already into what was called a "constitutional" monarchy, in which the hereditary monarchy survived, but at the expense of the surrender of any independent views or will of the personal monarch. It was not difficult to foresee what must be the end of that in democratic progress. "The Crown" would gradually pale out of sight as regarded practical government. Queens, by force of the natural courtesies of sex, and of that more exemplary life which circumstances help to give to the other sex, would protract this result more successfully than kings; and, again, queens who were also super-excellent women would protract it still further. The hereditary element must everywhere die out amongst us as an actual political power. Nevertheless if, as said above, our normal development remain undisturbed by revolutionary incidents, we shall not lapse into a republic, which is a term politically