But if Europe without France would be unthinkable, and if Europe without Germany would be Europe without reflective brain and the mailed hand, what could we think of Europe without England? It does not become me as an Englishman to say much in praise of my own people. But this I may say, that Europe without England would be Europe without the one Power the expansive force of whose colonizing and maritime genius has converted Asia and Africa into European vassals and has secured the American and Australian continents as receptacles for the overflow of Europe‘s population.