Then came the war, and its outcome was in every particular what
Prevost-Paradol, with his keen foresight, had predicted: "Afterwards,"
he wrote, "France, with Paris, will take up in Europe the same position
as Hellas with Athens assumed in the old Roman empire; it will become
the city of taste and the noble delights; but it will never be able to
regain its power." It has, in fact, been killed by this very theory of
nationality; for the only cognate races, Spain and Italy, are two
countries of which the one is rotten, the other just entered upon the
convalescent stage. Thus it is clear that Germany will, for a time,
exercise the supreme sway in Europe. But the future belongs neither to
her nor to Russia, but, if not to England herself, at any rate to the
Anglo-Saxon race, which has revealed a power of expansion in comparison
with which that of other nations is too small to count. Germans who go
to North America, in the next generation speak English. The English have
a unique capacity for spreading themselves and introducing their
language, and the power which the Anglo-Saxon race will acquire cannot
be broken in course of time like that of ancient Rome; for there are no
barbarians left, and their power is based, not on conquest, but on
assimilation, and the race is being rejuvenated in North America.
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