Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Rise of the Empire What is it that has awaked the British peoples from their dreamy isolation? Fast steamers, telegraph cables, cheap postage, popular educa tion: these have helped us to see and hear more of each other, and to realize how near we are even to the uttermost parts of the earth.. And we are being driven as well as drawn together. As we read the extraordinary charges fabricated against us by certain writers in the French, German and Russian press, charges that are not only read but believed by many in the land of their invention, we realize that dangerous things are sometimes done by deluded people. Instinctively we gather closer together, back to back and shoulder to shoulder, ready for an onslaught which sanity would forbid. 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.