conceived and broadly handled. The nation had displayed a belated
regard for its honour and a sustained passion for great unities. It
was still possible for Benham to regard the empire as a splendid
opportunity, and London as the conceivable heart of the world. He
could think of Parliament as a career, and of a mingling of
aristocratic socialism based on universal service with a civilizing
imperialism as a purpose. . . .

But his thoughts had gone wider and deeper than that. . . .

Already when Benham came to London he had begun to dream of
possibilities that went beyond the accidental states and empires of
to-day. Prothero's mind, replete with historical detail, could find
nothing but absurdity in the alliances and dynasties and loyalties
of our time. "Patched up things, Benham, temporary, pretentious.
All very well for the undignified man, the democratic man, to take
shelter under, all very well for the humourist to grin and bear, all
very well for the crowd and the quack, but not for the aristocrat--
No!--his mind cuts like steel and burns like fire. Lousy sheds they
are, plastered hoardings . . . and such a damned nuisance too! For
any one who wants to do honourable things! With their wars and
their diplomacies, their tariffs and their encroachments; all their
humbugging struggles, their bloody and monstrous struggles, that
finally work out to no end at all. . . . If you are going for the
handsome thing in life then the world has to be a united world,
Benham, as a matter of course. That was settled when the railways
and the telegraph came. Telephones, wireless telegraphy, aeroplanes
insist on it. We've got to mediatise all this stuff, all these
little crowns and boundaries and creeds, and so on, that stand in
the way. Just as Italy had to be united in spite of all the rotten