Let them take the debate which had recently been carried on with so much vivacity on the subject of Imperial expansion. There was a process of expansion which was as normal, as necessary, as inseparable, and unmistakable a sign of vitality in a nation as the corresponding processes in the growing human body. We might control and direct it by oversight and by means adapted to the end, but we could not arrest it. ... [I]t was not part of the most illustrious apostles and disciples of Liberalism to condemn expansion in the sense which he had described it.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Let them take the debate which had recently been carried on with so much vivacity on the subject of Imperial expansion. There was a process of expansion which was as normal, as necessary, as inseparable, and unmistakable a sign of vitality in a nation as the corresponding processes in the growing human body. We might control and direct it by oversight and by means adapted to the end, but we could not arrest it. ... [I]t was not part of the most illustrious apostles and disciples of Liberalism to condemn expansion in the sense which he had described it." in the context of "H. H. Asquith, speech in Darwen, Lancashire (27 January 1899), quoted in The Times (28 January 1899), p. 8" to mean that wisdom is timeless.