"Of course," he added, pipe in mouth, as he poured out his whiskey,
"it's a big undertaking. It's an affair of centuries. . . ."

And then, as a further afterthought: "All the more reason for
getting to work at it. . . ."

In his moods of inspiration Prothero would discourse through the
tobacco smoke until that great world-state seemed imminent--and Part
Two in the Tripos a thing relatively remote. He would talk until
the dimly-lit room about him became impalpable, and the young men
squatting about it in elaborately careless attitudes caught glimpses
of cities that are still to be, bridges in wild places, deserts
tamed and oceans conquered, mankind no longer wasted by bickerings,
going forward to the conquest of the stars. . . .

An aristocratic world-state; this political dream had already taken
hold of Benham's imagination when he came to town. But it was a
dream, something that had never existed, something that indeed may
never materialize, and such dreams, though they are vivid enough in
a study at night, fade and vanish at the rustle of a daily newspaper
or the sound of a passing band. To come back again. . . . So it
was with Benham. Sometimes he was set clearly towards this world-
state that Prothero had talked into possibility. Sometimes he was
simply abreast of the patriotic and socially constructive British
Imperialism of Breeze and Westerton. And there were moods when the
two things were confused in his mind, and the glamour of world
dominion rested wonderfully on the slack and straggling British
Empire of Edward the Seventh--and Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Mr.
Chamberlain. He did go on for a time honestly entertaining both