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The Possibility of a World-Empire 341If, for instance, there were a series of struggles between thefour or five great Powers now dominating the world, each ofwhich left the aggressor broken without hope of recovery andwithout any new Power arising to take its place, it is conceivablethat at the end one of them would be left in a position of suchnatural predominance gained without any deliberate aggression,gained at least apparently in resisting the aggression of othersas to put world-empire naturally into its grasp. But with thepresent conditions of life, especially with the ruinous nature ofmodern war, such a succession of struggles, quite natural andpossible in former times, seems to be beyond the range of actualpossibilities.We must then assume that the Power moving towardsworld-domination would at some time find inevitably a coalitionformed against it by almost all the Powers capable of opposingit and this with the sympathy of the world at their back. Giveneven the happiest diplomacy, such a moment seems inevitable.It must then possess such a combined and perfectly organisedmilitary and naval predominance as to succeed in this otherwiseunequal struggle. But where is the modern empire that canhope to arrive at such a predominance? Of those that alreadyexist Russia might well arrive one day at an overwhelmingmilitary power to which the present force of Germany wouldbe a trifle; but that it should combine with this force by land acorresponding sea-power is unthinkable. England has enjoyedhitherto an overwhelming naval predominance which it might soincrease under certain conditions as to defy the world in arms; 2but it could not even with conscription and the aid of all itscolonies compass anything like a similar force by land, — unlessindeed it created conditions under which it could utilise all themilitary possibilities of India. Even then we have only to thinkof the formidable masses and powerful empires that it must beprepared to meet and we shall see that the creation of this doublepredominance is a contingency which the facts themselves showto be, if not chimerical, at least highly improbable.2 This is no longer true since the enormous increase of the American Navy.