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160 by our butchers, who scruple not to dot their proposed partitions even on living hides.

To this famous crusade all the leading nations of Christendom, except Austria-Hungary and, until to-day, Italy, have despatched a respectable contingent of conquistadors. For example, Spaniards, Portuguese, French, and English have absorbed America north and south; while Russia, France, England, Holland, and Germany have raided a good part of Asia and the Far East; and so on with the other continents.

All this has exercised very naturally an immense stimulus upon the passions of Europe. Not only have formal wars arisen between the western nations over the division of their quarry, but also, what is less noticed, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century unofficial conflicts between them raged constantly in the outer world. Besides, almost from the first, at the back of the motive of sheer plunder, a subtler consideration and a more far-sighted dream took shape. For, obviously, any nation that could become master in the outer world would presently become master in Europe, and probably vice versa. Therefore, in the lists of war, now made infinitely more spacious, the charging knights gathered a double momentum. The internal conflict of Christendom became reincarnate on a vastly dilated scale.

As for England, she felt this great change more than any other power. Unambitious in Europe, and only anxious to have no more Cæsars, she