There has been a growing apprehension, mounting in the later months to something like the rank of a settled conviction, that the Republic has been marked down for reduction to a vassal state by the dynastic Empire now engaged with its European adversaries.

In so saying that the Republic has been marked down for subjection it is not intended to intimate that deliberate counsel has been had by the Imperial establishment on that prospective enterprise; still less that a resolution to such effect, with specification of ways and means, has been embodied in documentary form and deposited for future reference in the Imperial archives.

All that is intended, and all that is necessary to imply, is that events are in train to such effect that the subjugation of the American republic will necessarily find its place in the sequence presently, provided that the present Imperial adventure is brought to a reasonably auspicious issue; though it does not follow that this particular enterprise need be counted on as the next large adventure in dominion to be undertaken when things again fall into promising shape.

This latter point would, of course, depend on the conjuncture of circumstances, chief of which would have to be the exigencies of imperial dominion shaping the policy of the Empire's natural and necessary ally in the Far East.

All this has evidently been coming more and more urgently into the workday deliberations of the American administration.