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interpreted the real nature of the Inevitable as it shows itself in history. This conception inspired the Greek dramatists under the form of Nemesis, the law of life whereby the past misconduct of a man, or a race, dogs its footsteps to its final fall. How powerfully do they, and with them the father of history, Herodotus, convey the lesson of the Hybris of Imperialism in the case of Persia! The following words of Sophocles surely deserve the consideration of Mr. Chamberlain and his big Englanders: 'Insolent infatuation begets the Tyrant. Insolence, if it be idly overfed with unseasonable and excessive food, ascending to a heady promontory, plunges into the sheer abyss of the Inevitable (Anagké) where it can find no footing wherewith to walk.'

Such laws of the Inevitable, of which the Greeks had prophetic glimpses, we can see governing the lives of all great empires of the past; and yet, following the same road, we hope to escape the same fatal goal. This hope is itself the fruit of 'infatuation'; the danger-point of Empire is already reached when Hybris so swells the head and corrupts the intelligence as to suggest that we alone of Empires possess some special skill to dodge the inevitable.