CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Future students of political evolution will note a strange similarity between the theories which are now being advanced to defend imperialistic expansion and that humanitarian optimism which animated the period of the French Revolution. The ideas through which the French Revolution attempted to conquer the world were based upon an intense and undoubting belief in the equality and uniform virtue of human nature. Freed from the shackles which perverted forms of society had forged, humanity would again be true to itself, would follow its rational impulses, and under sane institutions, inherit a millennium of peace and happiness. These hopes of a young century were bitterly disappointed in its later years. It became impossible to realize the unity of civilized mankind, and the narrower feelings of nationalism and race antipathy completely overbore the earlier enthusiasms. But at present, when a new and universal forward movement of civilized society is taking place, the same ideals are again appealed to. Humanity is one, and those members of the brotherhood who, through barbarous customs and irrational institutions, are