Excerpt from The Empire on the Anvil: Being Suggestions and Data for the Future Government of the British Empire By the masses, but gathering strength with improved intercommunications and the growing recognition of essential mutual interests. The military assis tance, freely offered in the Sudan in 1885 and in South Africa in 1899 - 1902, supplied an object lesson alike of the strong sentiment of our fellow subjects overseas and of their military spirit, which powerfully appealed to the public imagination. Thus, in the years before the bursting of the storm, forces have come into play which have worked in the direction of closer political interchange and of tentative organisation for defence. Other forces of local origin have brought about the federation of two important groups of contiguous Colonies and may have helped to disseminate the federal idea. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.