DREAM OF UNIVERSAL EMPIRE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXII, Issue LXXII, 21 December 1916, Page 2

DREAM OF UNIVERSAL EMPIRE.

Professor Collins, or Christiania University, writes as follows in the Norwegian paper Tidens Tegn:— "The military history of modern Europe moves on great monumental lines, which are beginning to stand clearly forth in the light of present events.

"Four times in the course of four centuries has a single European State been so powerful and so ambitious that it has sought to win the overlofdship of Europe, and thereby of the world • The_ Spam of Philip 11., the France of Louis XIV., the France of Napoleon 1., and now, at last, Germany. Four times have less powerful mfltiary States formed a great coalition to avert a new Roman Empire, built upon conquest. "The dream of 'universal monarchy,' inherited from the Romans, has three times suffered shipwreck, and is presumably on the point of running on the rocks a fourth time. And this time may not improbably prove to be the last. In that case it is a new era Ibf which we are witnessing the unspeakable birthpangs. "England has in every case acted in its own well-considered interest, but at the same timj?, whether purposely or not, in the interest of the whole European family. To the advantage of all, no less than to their own, the British have kept the way open towards a far higher form of world-«tate than any universal monarchy."