All the same he is a dastard child.
There is a definite, visible Progress in the affairs of this world. Jesus Christ at the end of his life prayed to God that all men might become One, "As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us."
The history of the world for eighteen hundred and seventy years since he spoke has shown the steady fulfilment of the hope expressed in this prayer.
Men are nearer unity—they are nearer to being one—than they were then.
Thus, at that moment each tribe in unknown America was at war with each other tribe. At this moment there is not one hostile weapon used by one American against another, from Cape Bathurst at the north to the southern point of Patagonia.
At that moment Asia, Africa, and Europe were scenes of similar discord. Europe herself knows so little of herself that no man would pretend to say which Longbeards were cutting the throats of other Longbeards, or which Scots were lying in ambush for which Britons, in any year of the first century of our era.
Call it the "Philosophy of History," or call it the "Providence of God," it is certain that the unity of the race of man has asserted itself as the Saviour of mankind said it should.
In this growing unity of mankind it has come about that the Sultan of Turkey cannot permit the massacre of Armenian Christians without answering for such permission before the world.
It has come about that no viceroy, serving a woman, who is the guardian of a boy, can be permitted to starve at his pleasure two hundred thousand of God's children. The world is so closely united—that is to say, unity is so real—that when such a viceroy does undertake to commit such an iniquity, somebody shall hold his hands.
The story of Philip Nolan was published in such a crisis that it met the public eye and interest. It met the taste of the patriotic public at the moment. It was copied everywhere without the slightest deference to copyright. It was, by the way, printed much more extensively in England than it was in America. Immediately there began to appear a series of speculations based on what you would have said was an unimportant error of mine. My hero is a purely imaginary character. The critics are right in saying that not only there never was such a man, but there never could have been such a man. But he had to have a name. And the choice of a name in a novel is a matter of essential importance, as it proved to be here.