Page:The empire and the century.djvu/50

 than nationality yet capable of finding a place for nationality, to discern a new political ideal. Now, the very breadth of these Empire States lifts them in a sense above mere nationalism, and gives them a certain universality. In all three there is present, in a greater or less degree, the element of nationality; while, on the other hand, all three owe their present breadth and greatness to the movement of conquest or expansion. Thus in all there is a reflection of both the great political tendencies of the last four or five centuries, though here it is necessary to distinguish. Russia is the one-sided product and expression of the movement of conquest in its most Cæsarian form. She claims to be the heir of Byzantine traditions, and her Empire represents no great advance upon Byzantine Imperialism. She has a certain basis of nationality indeed, out is at best only a nationality in the making; while in her form of government she is a semi-Asiatic despotism, from which there is little probability of mankind being able to draw fresh hopes of progress or new political ideals. In the United States, on the other hand, we can equally see a one-sided product of nationality and democracy. As a nation State on a scale such as the world has never yet beheld, the Great Republic is immensely interesting, and her recent acceptance of a share of the white man's burden is not only interesting in itself, but of immense importance as the recognition of a principle. In practice, however, the share is too small, as compared with the huge and growing mass of the nation itself, to modify in any vital sense the political organism as a whole; and except in scale the United States remains merely a nation State of the older type, supplies us with no new political conception of the kind we are in search of, and contains no suggestion of the new Imperial ideal.