about in Rome. Radical writers, like Andre Maurel, have sought arguments in my work to combat the colonial and imperialistic policy. The imperialists also, like Pinon, have looked for arguments to support their stand-point. Was I not merely demonstrating that the policy of expansion is a kind of universal and constant law, which periodically actualises itself through the working of the same forces, in the same ways?
It is not to be thought that the age of Caesar, so disturbed, so stormy, is our only mirror in the story of Rome. When I write the account of the imperial society of the first and second centuries, our own time will be able to recognise even more of itself, to see what must be the future of Europe and America, if for a century or two they have no profound political and social upheavals. In that great pax Romana lasting two centuries, we may study with special facility a phenomenon to be found in all rich civilisations cultured and relatively at peace--the phenomenon to me the most important in contemporary European life, the feminising of all social life; that is, the victory of the feminine over the masculine spirit. Do not fancy that the feminists, the problems and the disputes
