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Demolins and his sort all such questions are as irrelevant as is the question of the honesty of the avowed motive for such a conflict. For the nation of superior social efficiency 'inevitably gets the upper hand' – from which he and his fellow-thinkers argue backwards that when you see a nation getting the upper hand of another, 'by peaceful means or feats of arms' (a matter of perfect indifference which method is adopted!), you are aware that that nation is endowed with superior social efficiency and is fulfilling an inevitable law, is in the right,' according to the only sense that phrase can bear.

I give M. Demolins's argument this prominence, not merely because the book is advertised as 'British Colonial Policy scientifically vindicated by a prominent Frenchman,' but because the argument does really formulate the feeling by which many Englishmen have been induced to brush aside the doubts and qualms arising in connection with the conduct of the Colonial policy of the British Empire by pushful statesmen. The 'inevitable' is a complete sedative of the old conscience, and, when convenient phrasemongers can identify it with 'the right,' it may even 'run' a new conscience of its own.