million) cast his vote, and by the tendency of his more highly
coloured equivalents to be disrespectful to irascible officials.
Their impertinence was excessive; it was no mere stone-throwing
and shouting. They would quote Burns at them and Mill and Darwin
and confute them in arguments.

Even more pacific than the British Empire were France and its
allies, the Latin powers, heavily armed states indeed, but
reluctant warriors, and in many ways socially and politically
leading western civilisation. Russia was a pacific power
perforce, divided within itself, torn between revolutionaries and
reactionaries who were equally incapable of social
reconstruction, and so sinking towards a tragic disorder of
chronic political vendetta. Wedged in among these portentous
larger bulks, swayed and threatened by them, the smaller states
of the world maintained a precarious independence, each keeping
itself armed as dangerously as its utmost ability could contrive.

So it came about that in every country a great and growing body
of energetic and inventive men was busied either for offensive or
defensive ends, in elaborating the apparatus of war, until the
accumulating tensions should reach the breaking-point. Each
power sought to keep its preparations secret, to hold new weapons
in reserve, to anticipate and learn the preparations of its
rivals. The feeling of danger from fresh discoveries affected
the patriotic imagination of every people in the world. Now it
was rumoured the British had an overwhelming gun, now the French
an invincible rifle, now the Japanese a new explosive, now the
Americans a submarine that would drive every ironclad from the
seas. Each time there would be a war panic.