Annie Besant

LONDON THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY161 NEW BOND STREET, W.MADRAS: THE THEOSOPHIST OFFICEADYAR1911

FOREWORD

FEW words are needed to introduce this book. The five lectures, entitled “The Immediate Future”, were delivered in the large Queen’s Hall, London, on June 11, 18, 25, and July 2, 9, to audiences which packed every part of the building, from which hundreds were turned away. Of the public interest in the subject no doubt was possible; and the lectures reached another great audience by their weekly appear­ance in The Christian Commonwealth, to which I tender my hearty thanks for the admirable reports herein reproduced. The sixth lecture was given in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, at the closing meeting of the Spring Assembly of the League of Liberal Christian Thought, and was presided over by the Rev. R. J. Campbell. The seventh was delivered to the Fabian Society, in the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, and was presided over by Mrs. Sidney Webb.

I send them forth in the hope that they may serve the purpose for which they were designed: the preparation of the public mind for the coming of the World-Teacher.

ANNIE BESANT

THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE

AND OTHER LECTURES

IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES

FRIENDS: When I chose as the subject for my Sunday lectures this year “The Immediate Future," I felt that some of the subjects were rather far removed from ordinary thought. While such questions as the Growth of a World-­Religion, the Coming of a World-Teacher, might, without introduction, be sufficiently familiar to the Theosophist to be placed before him directly, I felt on the other hand that to the general public, who had not made a study of Theosophical ideas, some kind of introduction was necessary in order to make the more obscure subjects intelligible and rational. And so I thought that in the opening lecture I would try to give a common-sense and rational foundation for the hopes that are spreading so widely within and without the Theosophical Society of today; that I would try to show you that these hopes [1] were based on a study of the past as well as on observation of the events of the present; and that our feeling that the world is standing on the threshold of mighty changes is justified by knowledge and is not the mere dream of the enthusiast.

In pointing you to the impending physical changes, I want to show you that similar changes have also happened in the past before the other changes which I have classed together as the Growth of a World-Religion, the Coming of a World-Teacher. For just as you may look upon the plan of an architect stretched out before you on a table, may know that part of the building is already completed, that part is still building, that another part is not yet raised above the surface, but that the whole is one building, traced out on a single plan, so you may look at the great plan whose field of evolution is our world. On that world a great drama is played, divided into different acts. In every act the setting is different, but the plot is carefully carried on. And so in the world’s story, past, present, and future are all part of the same plan, all filling up some of the great out­line, and the present becomes more intelligible and the future more hopeful if we see how it is growing out of a past, if we understand how it is linked with events that have gone before. And so, looking at what is being done today, amid all the confusion of the building we may see how, as a matter of fact, the plan is being [2] followed, and may forecast the future because we have caught a glimpse of the whole.

Now I know of only two books in which an outline is given of the whole story of evolution from the beginning to its ending on our globe. One is a series of ancient books, repeating very much the same story that has come down from the far past, in India, whose name, Purana, simply means old. There you may read the story of the world with no distinction made, save that of succession, between past and future. Similarly, in H. P. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine you may also find an outline of the world’s story from beginning to end consecutively traced. Both those come from the same source, from the reports of great seers who have studied the occult records, where there is neither past nor future, but all is looked upon as present. Because they are the work of great seers reading the same records they tell us the same story, though in the one case in ancient and in the other in modern words. The Secret Doctrine is less obscure, less difficult to follow, than the Puranic writings, but both give the same outline; and it is to that outline that for a moment I would direct your attention now.

I am conscious that in running over for a few moments that record of the past, I may be seeming to give you a somewhat dry and un­interesting history; but if it seem to be dry, if to you it appear uninteresting, it is the fault of the speaker and not of the subject. For [3] what can be more profoundly interesting to humankind than to see outstretched before it some record of its immemorial past; what more inspiring than to realise that you and I and all the nations of the world, made up of countless I’s and You’s, have been treading an appointed path, have been working out a definite destiny, have been passing from strength to strength, from knowledge to knowledge; that, as we have climbed in the past, so shall we climb higher in the future; that, as we have evolved in the millennia behind us, so a mightier evolu­tion stretches in the millennia in front of us? Oh, if I could convey to you one tithe of the interest and the inspiration that I have found in the study of those records, then, though names, races, dates, may be dry in themselves, they would form an entrancing story of the past stretching onward into the dim regions of the future.

And now for the rough outline. The occult records tell us that the story of our globe has as a drama seven acts: seven great Continents form the stage on which the drama is played; seven great Races, each on its own continent, are the actors who play in the drama; and as the actors on the stage pass on from act to act, so the nations of the world, in new forms, pass on from act to act in the world-drama. We are not newcomers in our world; we have lived here many times before; and the story of the past is the story of our childhood; now [4] we are reaching our maturity, to go onward to the highest point that on this earth we shall reach. I need not trouble with the first of those two continents, nor the Races that dwelt upon them, for they were scarcely human; rather embryos of humanity were they than men as we know men. But there are four great continents that I would ask you to glance at for a moment: two of the past that have largely vanished; one of the present that is threatening to change; one of the future that is beginning to emerge. The names are all given in the Puranas, but the Samskrt would interest you but little; in fact, the only interest lies in the fact that they are given in a list; just as you might give a list of the countries of Europe, so m that ancient book are the names of the continents given one after another, without caring whether they be of the past or the future. They are there recognised as part of the world-story, and each has its own name. Three of them you will recognise the two of the past and the one of the present, under names more familiar in the West. The first, Lemuria, which stretched where now the Pacific rolls. Australia forms the southern part of that mighty continent, New Zealand also was related to it; Easter Island was a mountain top, the rest submerged beneath the ocean; then Madagascar was also a part of that great land; and so up northwards where the mighty Pacific Ocean stretches, there [5] in far-off days lay the continent of Lemuria, which the great German Haeckel speaks of as the cradle of the Human Race. And rightly so. For, as I said, the two preceding continents had but the embryos of humanity upon them, and man, full-formed as we know man, took birth on that third continent of Lemuria It has passed away; it was destroyed by volcanic outbreaks, by fire, by tremendous explosions, as the sea rushed into gulfs rent by the subterranean fires. And so Lemuria was torn into pieces, vanished, having played its part; and the mighty waves rolled over it, leaving only here and there a remnant, and a tradition in the older story of mankind.

And then the growth of humanity passed on from that third Race that occupied Lemuria, of whom the pure negroes are the remnants in the world of today, to another great stage of growth on another continent that has also disappeared, the continent that stretched from Europe to America, the mighty continent of Atlantis. That Atlantis existed is now practi­cally being accepted on all sides. Some of you may have noticed lately how archaeological research on the western coast of Africa has been unburying the ruins of mighty cities, which their discoverer points to as evidence of the high place attained by the Atlantean civilisation. Atlantis, after having sent its children over the whole world of today, living many of them in North America as the North [6] American Indians, colonising Egypt and making one of the mighty Egyptian Empires, spread­ing over the North of Asia as the Turanians, the Mongols - a tremendous stretch of a Race that still forms the majority of mankind on earth. But its great civilisation perished, not by fire, but whelmed under the waters of the ocean, leaving myths and legends behind in many a country - the Flood of Noah, the Flood of Deucalion, and many another story spread over practically the whole world. Atlantis, by several mighty catastrophes split into pieces, whelmed under floods, also perished, though so many of the Race of its blood survived.

And then another great continent, slowly rising, was prepared for the habitation of the next great Race, the fifth. Europe, swampy for ages after it rose above the level of the sea, began to be prepared for the inhabitants that should dwell upon its surface. The great country of Hindustan, rising also south of the Himalayas, was for long one mass of swamp, uninhabitable by man, until, before the Aryans entered it, some of the outlying nations of the Atlantean people had poured through the Himalayan gorges, and made a mighty civilisa­tion where now India stretches and her Aryan peoples are found. And the fifth Race, the Aryan, was taken away from Atlantis nearly 80,000 years before the Christian era - for in the lifetime of Races you must count by mil­lennia, not by centuries - gathered before one [7] of the great catastrophes, led out by their leader, the Manu, stopping for a short while in Arabia, then northwards to the north of Asia, and finally settling where now the Gobi Desert spreads, where at that time there was a great inland sea, and the land was fertile, fitted for the dwelling and the support of a huge population; that was the cradle-land of our Race, that the home of the mighty people who gradually stretched their power and their numbers over the lands that had risen for their habitation out of the seas.

Before I deal further with them let me turn to the next point, with regard to the continents, so that I may link the coming continent with those that have perished, and with the conti­nent of Asia and Europe, which is the heritage of the great fifth Race. Here, because I would not have you think that I am only tell­ing you Theosophical dreams, let me turn to the eminently respectable body, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and learn from the geological section, as it met in the last annual meeting, how this question of continents, new as well as old, is being studied by the scientific mind today. I find that Association discussing the formation of a new continent in the Pacific Ocean. Now if you turn to the Secret Doctrine you will find that H. P. Blavatsky declared (she published her book in 1888, when science had not yet dreamed of what now it recognises) that the [8] new continent would arise where Lemuria disappeared, that as Lemuria vanished under the waves of the Pacific Ocean so would the new continent rise above those waves for the home of the new Race. We find in the discussion that occurred that that continent is already beginning to rise. The rapid emergence of the Bogoslof Islands, near Alaska, has caused some alarm among geologists, for they think that if the new continent should emerge at the same rate at which these islands have arisen, a tidal wave would be created which would practically engulf the world. That is the point which was discussed last autumn, and details were given as to the area of the new continent. It is to stretch from the Philippine Islands, Japan, and the Aleutian Islands to the islands of south-eastern Asia, the Malay Peninsula, and Borneo, being about some 4000 miles long, so far as the formative forces are con­cerned. Then our scientists went on to explain that there is under the Pacific an area called the Fiery Ring of the Pacific, that it is an area of earthquake activity, so active that during the last twenty months no fewer than 1071 earth­quakes have been observed, earthquakes so powerful, bringing about such sudden changes, that the officers and crew of the United States steamship “Albatross” watched a great out­burst which formed an island round the volcanic peak that was thrown up, and the peak climbed upward till it reached a height of 1000 feet [9] above sea-level. Obviously, if you have great earthquakes under the ocean, there is a danger of tidal waves; as we saw not so very long ago, when a vast tidal wave swept down upon the coast of Japan and spread ruin for many a mile. And if, say the scientists, this continent arises over so vast an area at a rate so rapid, so peril­ous, then will not a wave be generated which shall sweep away the whole of humanity, and engulf the world in a flood to which the Flood of Noah was but as nothing?

But it is not thus that these mighty changes come. Destruction, yes, that is true, but limited, not world-destruction. When Atlantis was perishing by catastrophe after catastrophe large numbers of people perished, certainly; vast waves swept over the adjoining lands; when its last island, Poseidonis, sank, a great tidal wave swept over the Mediterranean Sea, spreading ruin along all its coasts, emptying, by the accompanying disturbance, the Sahara Sea, so that the desert stretches now where once that ocean rolled. Such great catastrophes in the past most certainly may be followed by great catastrophes in the future; but they are not all together; they are spread, with intervals of thousands, tens of thousands of years. These great seismic changes, while locally destructive, shall never destroy the human Race, and while that continent is rising, gradually, now and then an outburst and then a rest of thousands of years, the Race that is to inhabit it will be [10] slowly preparing on the adjacent continent of America.

Looking, then, at that as one of the great impending, physical changes, you can see it is only on a line with the past story of our globe. Other continents have sunk, other continents have risen; why, then, should men’s hearts be troubled when the old story is told once again on earth? Convulsions and catastrophes, they are one of the means of human progress; unless they took place from time to time the world would not he able to support her children, for the soil of earth grows exhausted with the multitude of the people who are fed from it; and from time to time the old soil is wisely whelmed beneath the waters of a new ocean, in order that it may become virgin again - may arise for the building of a new civilisation, for the home of a new people. Oh! nature is only the garment in which God enshrouds Himself; her catastrophes are only means for the working out of mightier ends; and why should you be troubled, you who are immortal spirits? For continents may break up, continents may emerge, but the human Race is immortal in its origin and in its growth, and there is nothing to be afraid of, even if the foundations of the earth be moved.

Looking at that calmly, quietly, knowing it has happened in the past, and will happen again in the future, let us glance at the Races to which I alluded who are connected with the [11] continent; I am only concerned now with our own fifth Race. But I want you for a moment to follow me, thinking of it as in Central Asia, in the cradle-land, sending out its sub-divisions to subdue and inherit the world. Two of these have well-nigh passed away. The second sub-race, as we call it, an offshoot of the mother Race, this sub-race went out to Arabia, to Egypt, to Africa, built great empires, but now has passed away, and only remnants of it are left in the Arabs and some of the tribes allied to the Arabian peoples. We may let it go; its story is over.

Then came the third sub-race, the Iranian, which made the great Persian Empire - not the later Empire of Cyrus and Darius, but the old Empire that lasted for 28,000 years in the Persian and Mesopotamian lands; that also has practically vanished. Only a remnant, 80,000 Parsis in India, represent that once splendid people, that once mighty sub-race that made so great an empire.

But two sub-divisions of the Race remain as well as the mother-stock, the fourth and the fifth. They left Central Asia some 20,000 years ago, the fourth settling in Georgia, Armenia, and Kurdistan, and on the southern slopes of the Caucasus, spreading down into Asia Minor, and there giving rise to many nations known in history. The most ancient Greeks of all, really Greek in stock, usually called Pelasgians, who, according to the priests who spoke to Plato, checked the great wave of Atlantean invasion [12] when it rolled towards Egypt, and threatened the ancient land of Greece, they were the first European families that grew out of this great sub-­race, and they only entered Europe some 10,000 years before the time of Christ. The fifth, leaving Central Asia about the same time, went along a more northerly course to the shores of the Caspian Sea, settling themselves in Dag­hestan and on the northern slopes of the Cau­casus, and remaining there for long, long ages, for some 11,500 years. The fourth sub-race spread through Europe along the southernmost part; it gave us the mighty power of Greece, with its splendid art, with its wonderful litera­ture; it made the Republic and the Empire of Rome; it spread onward into Spain, Spain that well-nigh grasped a World-Empire when she sent her children across the Atlantic, conquered Mexico and Peru; she might have made a World-Empire, had it not been for the national sins of the Inquisition, of the expulsion of the Jews, the expulsion of the Moors, and the cruelties that undermined her rule. For there is a justice which weighs the deeds of nations as well as of men, and no nation may go against righteousness and against mercy, and hope to keep its place among the leading nations of the world. And then that same great fourth sub-race went upwards through France, popu­lated the British Isles, and settled down for many a long, long year, building up the civilizations in the lands it had conquered. [13]

Meanwhile, its successor, the fifth sub-race, coming into Europe about 1500 years later, settled first in Poland, and then, as the swamps of Central Europe gradually dried up and made Europe habitable, it sent out a great Slavonic family; then the Letts, Lithuanians, and Prussians; then the great Germanic peoples; and, lastly, the Goths and the Scandinavians. Of different types, those two sub-races; just as you see in the Root-Race type the difference between yourselves and, say, the Mongolian, the Turanian, the racial type, so you can see the difference between the Kelt and the Teuton in the general form of face, of head, of colouring. You see in the Kelt the round head, dark hair, dark eyes, the somewhat slight and shorter form; you see in the Teuton the longer head, fair hair, blue or light-coloured eyes, large, strong stature. Then, mixing the one with the other, of course the type is largely lost, but if you look at them in the pure type, say, the Italian and the Scandinavian, you see at once the difference between these two great sub-races that have made Europe their home.

And now, if we follow these sub-races further, we find that they gradually spread over the world; especially is that true of the last offshoot, the fifth, or Teutonic, sub-race. You find it there with the Goths and Scandinavians that belong to it, making nations, kingdoms, in Northern Europe; but it has not stopped in Northern Europe, it has spread over the known world. [14] You see it leaping across to America and mak­ing there the mighty Republic of the West, and the northern Canadian Dominion, becoming mightier year by year; and just as it leapt across the Atlantic, so also it leapt southward, colonised Australia, New Zealand, took partly South Africa - there mingling with the Dutch blood - where the great Federation is being built up today. And it was not satisfied with spread­ing over many a colony and making the English tongue practically the language that more than any other today can carry you over the civilised world; we find that it also spread into Asia, and there arises a question of immense interest that I will turn to in a moment.

But before turning to that, for that has to do with the great Empire of the fifth Race, let me remind you that a fifth Race is not final - a sixth and seventh have to come; also as the Teutonic represents the fifth sub-division of the great Aryan stock, there must still be two more sub-divisions to grow, to develop, to evolve. Once more H. P. Blavatsky tells us in the Secret Doctrine that on the American continent will gradually develop the sixth sub-division of this mighty Race; that it is there, near the home of the Root-Race that is to be born, that this sub-race of our own Race will grow up and differentiate itself as the earlier sub-races have done. That is happening in America today. Once again I do not ask you to take Theosophical ideas, but evidence that comes from [15] the scientific world outside. Now Europe has poured her people, immigration on immigration, into the great crucible of the United States. America has welcomed them, has allowed them to settle; for long has it been building up a nation. But what a change! The first settlers that came from England, that settled in what they called, in their love for the old country, New England, those were a type very different from the type growing in America today. It was affected by climate, by conditions, and was shaped largely into the North American Indian type - the rather lantern jaws, the long face, the prominent cheek-bones, the rather straight hair, the type that you know, if I may use a not very courteous word, as the Yankee. That is a type of the North American Indian sort, resembling the previous possessors of the land.

The new type is nothing of the kind; the new type is really new, and the leading ethno­logist of America, in making a report to the American Government on his investigations, gave this as the result: That a new race is growing up in America, marked, distinguishable, and clear. He gave the measurement of the head, the type of the features; he pointed out the square jaw, the well-cut face; a type in­tellectual, strong-willed, and becoming more and more numerous in the United States. Why, you can see it yourself if you keep your eyes open and happen to visit America, for the type is becoming marked in every restaurant [16] that you go into; you can pick them out as a new type, a fine type, full of intellect and power, and promising much for the future of the world. It is the sixth sub-race, the sixth sub-division of the great Aryan people. It has the promise of the future within it; it is the type that will give birth to the next Root-Race in humanity, that will inhabit the continent that is beginning to emerge in the Pacific.

So that you have there, from outside sources entirely, evidence of the new continent, evidence of the new sub-race, physical changes round you and before you that pass by you unnoticed, because you do not realise the significance which underlies them. There is really the advantage the Theosophist has over most of you. He has studied the subject in the history of the past; he has acquainted himself with the records where that history is told; he has looked at the great plan, seen its outline, and when some little bit is tossed up, as you might see a fragment of a child’s puzzle thrown up and wonder what the fragment meant detached from all the rest - if you have seen the picture, ah, then you know where the fragment will fit in when the other fragments have been found. And so, in the study of the great picture we recognise the fragments as they appear, and know the place which they will occupy in the finished picture, because the plan indicates their meaning, and in the great mosaic each fragment has its place. [17]

And so we see a growing sub-race, a growing continent; but what is to come before that race grows into power, before that continent is fit, thousands upon thousands of years hence, for human habitation? Other changes are going on right before our eyes. What is their significance? Your feeling - the older amongst you will, I know, agree with me in this - is changing towards your Colonies, and their feel­ing is changing towards you. I spoke of the great change which had occurred by the spread­ing of the fifth sub-race; but when I was a young girl, brought up as I was in a Whig family, I used to hear remarks about the Colonies very different from the remarks I hear today. They were spoken of grudgingly, with the hope that they would break away and make Kingdoms, Republics, as they pleased of their own. They were not looked on as parts of a mighty Empire; they were not considered as daughters of the Motherland, who in other parts of the world should keep links close and loving with the land whence they had gone out. And in the Colonies themselves there was much of the same idea - independence, separation, each in its own country, its own nation, its own people. But how different now! Now the Mother Country is loved in every Colony, now the Mother Country sends out her love to all her many children far across the seas. Now they come and gather together in great Imperial Conferences. What would have been thought [18] of an Imperial Conference in the days, say, when any of you of my own generation were children? An Imperial Council is being spoken of, not a mere Conference now and again, but a permanent Council, in which every part of the Empire shall be represented, not once and again coming across for a few weeks, but permanently, regularly, one Empire, and one Imperial Council to deal with all with which that Empire is concerned. Oh, if that feeling had been in England and in her Colonies more than a century ago, our American brethren would not have made tea in the harbour at Boston and begun the American Revolution. Those Colonies would still be part of the Empire, still bound in love to the Motherland; and that great blunder of trying to tyrannise and making need for resistance will never again be permitted within this Empire, for that lesson has been learned once for all, and it will never need to be learned again. But there is a lesson that is needed to be learned. I spoke of the Mother Race, I spoke of the cradle-land, and that land was emptied through some 8000 years as immigration after immigration crossed the Himalayas, and took the great Aryan Root­-Race into India. Beginning in 18,000 B.C., those incursions finished perhaps some 10,000 B.C., and since then the Aryan has multiplied and increased, until that mighty land of India is peopled by children of that Race. Many have tried to conquer, to rule, India. The [19] Greeks came; they were rolled back, leaving many a precious trace behind them. For the conquest of one country by another is not, as many people think, an evil thing. It mingles the peoples, it gives the knowledge of one to the other. The Greeks, who conquered and then were chased out of India, left behind them many a trace on Indian Art which made it more beautiful, more gracious than it was before. And then the Mughals came and made their mighty Empire, coming from Turkestan and other parts of Asia. In a great flood they rolled down into India and made a mighty Empire whose centre was at Delhi, and they lived among the Indian people. But India has conquered them more than they have conquered India; for they are no longer foreigners, they are at home in the house of India the Mother, and those children of the conquerors of the past are proud today to call themselves Indians, for they have grown into the land, and they will never leave again the land that has become so much their own.

And then from Europe many another nation came. The Dutch came and made colonies - ­how much of them now remains? The Portu­guese - they have fragments of Indian land today. The French came, but where are the French colonies now? Chandernagore and Pondicherry - that is all that France can claim of Indian soil. And then England came, the youngest child of the Mother-Race, and grew [20] and increased in power, spread over the Indian land, conquered with the help of Indians the Indian people. Ah, you should never forget that! You could not have conquered India by your own power; you only conquered her because many of her children desired your coming and joined their swords with yours. I have seen in an English paper: “We conquered India by the sword, and we hold her by the sword”. You never conquered her by the English sword, but only by alliance with large numbers of the Indian people, and you do not and cannot hold her save by her own consent. The late Viceroy, Lord Minto, spoke a true word when he said: “If India did not want us to stay here, we could not remain three weeks”. That is true. A few thousand English people, many millions of Indians. Oh, never forget, when you blame the English rule in India, that it could not be if against India’s will. Here and there, yes, you may find a few, but very few, who would break the link, and if it is broken it will be England’s fault.

Now you cannot leave out India in the World­-Empire that you are building; and that is where your Colonies are making a terrible, a frightful mistake. There is no land in all the world in which the Indian cannot travel freely save in English Colonies and under the English flag. Do you realise what that means? A Japanese can go into British Columbia if he has fifty dollars in his pocket, but if one of the citizens [21] of this great Empire, an Indian, goes there, 200 dollars he must produce before he is allowed to come in. Any other Oriental may travel freely in Canada; the Indian, no. He must come direct from India, otherwise he is not allowed in, and if some of his friends have settled in the United States he cannot visit them and go back into Canada. There is another side to self­-government in the Colonies; for it is under­mining the Empire in India. The Indian resents being treated as an outcast under the flag that he is asked to be proud of, and to shed his blood to defend. You might have lost South Africa had it not been for the Indians who died there, and who nursed your wounded on the battle-field. But now for many a year the Indians have been struggling for decent treatment, and they are treated shamefully under the self-government of South Africa. You must remember this, and recall that you cannot have an Empire, imperial, world­-governing, without India as an integral part thereof. You have made this necessary. Young India is working for a United India because you have taught her the ways of liberty, and given her a single tongue. Oh, do not think only of the few mad boys who, pressed on into crime by their elders, who remained safe here in Europe, sacrificed themselves, thinking that they were patriots when they were only criminals - saddest of all disillusioning for the young and the deceived. Oh, do not think of [22] that; they are but a handful; but think of the millions of Indians who love and honour England, who support her rule, who defend her flag.

There are two men living here today who have done more to touch the heart of India and knit her to England than any other two living men. One is the Prince of Wales who went through India, and who said at the Guild­-hall in a famous speech that India must be ruled by sympathy; he is now George V., King of England, Emperor of India, whom may God preserve. And the other is the Viceroy who has left her shores, Lord Minto, who in the midst of danger stood firm and calm, who trusted Indians in the day when assassina­tion was prevalent in the capital, and kept an Indian guard round Government House when others would have put Scotchmen there and sent away the Indians from guarding him. For how shall India trust us, he said, if we do not trust India? And he said those words and acted on them at a moment when his life arid his wife’s life were in peril, for he held that love and trust are mightier weapons than fear and suspicion. You do not always know your greatest men, and the debt that the Empire owes to him will be a difficult debt to pay.

And now a great change is to occur. For the first time in the history of the world, a Monarch of the West is to be crowned in the East. He who a few days hence will sit upon

[23] the ancient stone to be crowned and anointed King in Westminster - he, with a statesman’s insight, with an Imperial thought, is going over to the Indian capital, capital of Hindu and Mussulman alike, that again the Crown may be set upon his head, and that in India he may be crowned as Emperor of India. Never before has that been seen in history; never before has such an honour been paid to a part of the Empire; and when thus England and India are linked together by the most powerful of all ties, the tie of imagination and emotion, can you not see in that the promise of a mighty Empire in which East and West shall be joined together, and each shall help the other with the special powers that it has? And since this change of policy, a change is coming over India. The Indian Civil Service, on the whole a splendid service, though many an error may be laid to its charge, is trying honestly, bravely, thoroughly, to accommodate itself to the new position, and to show sympathy to rather than to stand apart from the Indian people. Viceroy, Governors, and others, one after another, have called for courtesy, for gentleness, for mutual respect; and that Service is loyally trying to meet the changed conditions, and to do what its rulers have demanded. And so there is hope; if only the Colonies do not destroy it.

But among these impending changes on the surface of our globe it is necessary that men should understand how Empires are builded [24] and how Nations grow. This mighty World-Empire of the fifth Root-Race will have England and India for its centre, and the great outlying countries of America and Germany for a mighty buttress on either side. America is drawing nearer to us, nearer day by day. Oh, will not Germany also link herself by bonds of peace with this country? And when Britain, America, Germany, India, the great Colonies, are all linked together in one pact of peace, who shall dare to break that peace proclaimed on earth, who shall dare to speak of war when such a Power speaks for peace?

Looking around on all the changes, trying to grasp their meaning, and seeing them, not as isolated facts, but as part of a divine plan, you may realise that under the growth of a World­-Religion, and the preparation for the coming of a World-Teacher, the nations are drawing nearer together, the land is being builded for the future, for the Race that shall inhabit it; and while that slow building is going on the mighty Empire of the fifth Root-Race is arising. Oh, if you would have it so, learn that it means responsibility, that it means duty, that it means righteousness. If you would be part of an Empire that will last, you must grow into a liberty which is self-controlled, and learn that only m service to the race is perfect freedom. [25]