During
this period substantially all of the world achievements worth
remembering are to be credited to the people of European descent. The
first exception of any consequence is the wonderful rise of Japan
within the last generation--a phenomenon unexampled in history; for
both in blood and in culture the Japanese line of ancestral descent is
as remote as possible from ours, and yet Japan, while hitherto keeping
most of what was strongest in her ancient character and traditions,
has assimilated with curious completeness most of the characteristics
that have given power and leadership to the West.
During this period of intense and feverish activity among the peoples
of European stock, first one and then another has taken the lead. The
movement began with Spain and Portugal. Their flowering time was as
brief as it was wonderful. The gorgeous pages of their annals are
illumined by the figures of warriors, explorers, statesmen, poets, and
painters. Then their days of greatness ceased. Many partial
explanations can be given, but something remains behind, some hidden
force for evil, some hidden source of weakness upon which we cannot
lay our hands. Yet there are many signs that in the New World, after
centuries of arrested growth, the peoples of Spanish and Portuguese
stock are entering upon another era of development, and there are
other signs that this is true also in the Iberian peninsula itself.
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