Page:Armistice Day.djvu/344

322 denied, and we all know what the violations of this principle have been in Europe. It is unnecessary for me to point them out.

"Races rarely have been successfully mixed by conquest." The military winner of a war is not always the real conqueror in the long run. The Normans conquered Saxon England, but Saxon law and Saxon institutions worked up through the new power and have dominated England's later history. The Teutonic tribes conquered Rome, but Roman civilization, by a sort of capillary attraction, went up into the mass above and presently dominated the Teutons.

"The persistency of a civilization may well be superior in tenacity to mere military conquest and control.

"The smallness of the number of instances in which conquering nations have been able successfully to deal with alien peoples is extraordinary. The Romans were usually successful, and England has been successful with all but the Irish, but perhaps no other peoples have been successful in high degree in an effort to hold alien populations as vassals and to make them really happy and comfortable as such.

"One of the war's chief effects on us will be to change our point of view. Europe will be more vivid to us from now on. There are many public men who have never thought much about Europe,