In this age of sacred egoisms and oppressed nationalities the drama—or melodrama—of international politics has been enriched by a variety of distressed heroines, in the shape of small nations, whose salvation has inspired professions of altruism slightly incompatible with the previous records of the rescuers as revealed to the impartial observer. The shortage of paper and man-power notwithstanding, the printing presses of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon worlds have poured forth an undiminished stream of most enheartening and uplifting sentiment relating to the rights and virtues of subject races.
