growth of which it succeeded in retarding for more than two centuries.
Finally since the sixteenth century we have seen the Russians, redeemed
from their Mongolian oppressors, and rich in many of the elements of a
vigorous national life,--we have seen the Russians resume the aggressive
in this conflict of ages, beginning to do for Central Asia in some sort
what the Romans did for Europe. The frontier against barbarism, which
Cæsar left at the Rhine, has been carried eastward to the Volga, and is
now advancing even to the Oxus. The question has sometimes been raised
whether it would be possible for European civilization to be seriously
threatened by any future invasion of barbarism or of some lower type of
civilization. By barbarism certainly not: all the nomad strength of
Mongolian Asia would throw itself in vain against the insuperable
barrier constituted by Russia. But I have heard it quite seriously
suggested that if some future Attila or Jinghis were to wield as a unit
the entire military strength of the four hundred millions of Chinese,
possessed with some suddenly-conceived idea of conquering the world,
even as Omar and Abderrahman wielded as a unit the newly-welded power of
the Saracens in the seventh and eighth centuries, then perhaps a
staggering blow might yet be dealt against European civilization. I will
not waste precious time in considering this imaginary case, further than
to remark that if the Chinese are ever going to try anything of this
sort, they cannot afford to wait very long; for within another century,
as we shall presently see, their very numbers will be surpassed by those
of the English race alone. By that time all the elements of military
predominance on the earth, including that of simple numerical
superiority, will have been gathered into the hands not merely of men of
European descent in general, but more specifically into the hands of the
offspring of the Teutonic tribes who conquered Britain in the fifth
century. So far as the relations of civilization with barbarism are
concerned to-day, the only serious question is by what process of