The century closes upon another England than that which was
struggling against Napoleon at its dawn. Instead of the "right
little tight little island," a compact and self-contained nation,
it is now the head of an empire comparable in extent and
population with no other since the Rome of Augustus. Canada,
Federal Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa form a Greater
Britain, while the subject lands and islands dot the globe. The
problem which confronts the English at the end of the century is
not whether they can hold their own against a foreign power as in
the days of Waterloo, but whether all these British commonwealths
can be made to work together in some sort of federal union, or
whether the present ties are to dissolve or snap asunder and
girdle the globe with independent states like the American
republic, where each may be free to develop under its peculiar
conditions the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race.