rank and office; barbarians catching something of the manners and
culture of their neighbours. And thus, when the final movement came,
the Teutonic tribes slowly established themselves through the
provinces, knowing something of the system to which they came, and
not unwilling to be considered its members.' Taking friend and foe
together, it may be doubted whether the fighting capacity of the two
armies was not as great at last, when the Empire fell, as ever it
was in the long period while the Empire prevailed. During the Middle
Ages the combining power of men often failed; in a divided time you
cannot collect as many soldiers as in a concentrated time. But this
difficulty is political, not military. If you added up the many
little hosts of any century of separation, they would perhaps be
found equal or greater than the single host, or the fewer hosts, of
previous centuries which were more united. Taken as a whole, and
allowing for possible exceptions, the aggregate fighting power of
mankind has grown immensely, and has been growing continuously since
we knew anything about it.

Again, this force has tended to concentrate itself more and more in
certain groups which we call 'civilised nations.' The literati of
the last century were for ever in fear of a new conquest of the
barbarians, but only because their imagination was overshadowed and
frightened by the old conquests. A very little consideration would
have shown them that, since the monopoly of military inventions by
cultivated states, real and effective military power tends to
confine itself to those states. The barbarians are no longer so much
as vanquished competitors; they have ceased to compete at all. The
military vices, too, of civilisation seem to decline just as its
military strength augments. Somehow or other civilisation does not
make men effeminate or unwarlike now as it once did. There is an