again, a more than usually sagacious statesman, conscious of this quasi-organic relationship, boldly claimed, on the strength of it, generous or altruistic treatment for his erring but repentant country and had his claim allowed. But the peace-makers of the year 1919 were not of that calibre. With an eye only for the centrifugal forces of Europe they intensified the nationalist and suppressed the federative movements everywhere, throwing open the sluice gates to the flood of international anarchy. Therein lurks one of the main causes of Europe's decline.

It is worth noting that Europeanism as an ideal never wholly vanished from the political horizon. The common heritage handed down to the peoples of our Continent by their forbears included the tradition of their ideal solidarity. Of yore Europe had been unified as a congregation, the compacting principle in mediæval times being identity of religious beliefs. There were no other common interests then capable of cementing a union among its races and peoples. Membership of the universal Church was the sole line of cleavage and the one principle of cohesion. In those days, and for many subsequent generations, an armed conflict between two countries would automatically remain localised because it did not perceptibly affect the weal of their neighbours.

The European states-system of modern times was the outcome of a number of treaties construed in the light of an imaginary federation of countries anxious to uphold their own independence and ready to respect that of their neighbours. The groundwork was laid in the year 1648* at an ambassadorial board at which each State was represented by a delegate. It was about that time too that the various political communities visibly awoke to consciousness of their common interests and responsibilities. The practical result was an embryonic commonwealth cemented by rules of comity, the validity and binding force of which depended upon voluntary recognition on the part of the members. This recognition was liable to be withdrawn whenever one State had the will, and believed that it also possessed the power, to extend its frontiers by dint of violence. Louis XIV, Frederic the Great, and Napoleon organised

such sallies which, reacting upon the various communities, goaded Europe as a whole into concerted selfdefence, and it was always in the name of Europe as a whole that the larger breaches in the system were ultimately repaired. The general bent of the governments was to respect the status quo, and in case of need to protect it against the inroads of would-be overlords; and this tendency took palpable shape in military coalitions, congresses for the liquidation of wars and peace-treaties. In these ways the States of the old Continent were slowly moving in the direction of a formal federation, and in the meanwhile the shadowy over-State seemed strong enough and conscious enough to repel any effort to found a hegemony. On these principles and contingencies war and peace have hinged since the year 1648.

Thus, on the one hand, there was the natural process of cohesion already begun which, left to itself, would conceivably have culminated in a formal federation, and, on the other, a series of fitful attempts by ambitious statesmen to divert this international current into a national canal and found a sort of super-State like that dreamed of by Napoleon under the name of the Continental System. Each of these drifts kept the other in check, whereby progress was hampered and the stability of the European State-structure impaired. But the same fundamental idea underlay each-the growing necessity of compacting the various communities into a formal federation which should further common interests and present a united front to foreign enemies.

That idea was continuously in the air. It was accentuated by the shrinkage of distances occasioned by scientific inventions, by the increase of population,* and the inevitable trend towards co-operative action. Individualism had had its day and spent its force. Great and greater entities were being spontaneously formed in all walks of life. In short, the turn of association had come in the series of the terms of human progress. Long before, Peter the Great, irresistibly drawn towards Western civilisation, had applied for the European fran

* Since the year 1800 the population of Europe has increased two and a half times.

chise. And he had no qualms on the score of political differences, inasmuch as democracies were not yet in sight. It was the Tsardom, therefore, not Russia, that joined the continental autocracy. As a matter of fact the people resisted the innovation tooth and nail, and were martyrised in consequence. Theretofore Russia had been an Asiatic despotism. Peter, by way of qualifying for admission to the areopagus of cultured potentates, set himself to pluck up the Asiatic roots of Russian wont and training, but only succeeded in creating a Europeanised layer, an artificial class psychologically interesting but severed from the masses by an impassable chasm. Russia's intelligentsia was more alien from the bulk of the nation than was the latter from its Bulgarian, Serbian, or Slovenian kindred.

That process of Europeanisation has been reversed by the Bolsheviks with terrible thoroughness. By way of re-enlisting their country in the ranks of Asiatic races they removed their capital from the banks of the Neva to those of the Moskva, and slaughtered practically the entire Europeanised class created by Peter as its members fell into their hands. Nothing like this work of extermination had been witnessed since the time when Samuel said to Saul: "Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. For the Bolsheviks are thorough in their methods.

Down to the year 1917 Russia was expanding eastward and westward. This process was the effect of natural causes which have since been raised to their highest power by a fresh energising spirit which bursts all ordinary bounds. For Bolshevism is a religion by its fanaticism, intolerance, and belief in the impossible. It has been aptly likened to Islam, which was a terror to its non-conformist neighbours so long as it had the wherewithal to wage war on them. The mission of latter-day Russia is to Bolshevise the world, and especially the peoples of Europe, by fair means or foul. For how long will this task exceed its powers? Europe's western bulwark, hitherto formed by Teutonic States, has been razed by the Peace-makers, and a weaker human wall of Poles and Roumanians now stands guard

over the road to the West. But Russia is thirty times greater than Poland and Roumania combined, and four times greater than the rest of Continental Europe. Moreover, economically she is one and indivisible, militarily she has no match, ethically she has no scruples, and territorially she may be said to be immune from invasion. Russia is the spectre which some statesmen perceive looming in the offing, when they have leisure to look ahead.

If European peoples remain mutually hostile or isolated from each other, what chance have they of withstanding Russia and her Oriental neophytes? And should Germany be driven to her arms as a client and ally, then woe betide the West! As a member of the European sodality Russia was temporarily harmless. As a vast militarist federation of politico-social fanatics she is more than a match for any European people. If, therefore, a European sodality was desirable in pre-war times it is become a peremptory necessity to-day.

The Congress of Vienna had mooted the matter, proclaimed an association of the States of Europe, and, with the pretence of applying the doctrine, three Continental Governments actually undertook in a treaty * to be guided in their home and foreign policies by the principles of Christianity; and, on the strength of this joint resolution, claimed to act as the guardians of the European community. And there certainly followed a rough approximation to a Continental organisation. It might be described as a theocracy in which the place of the divinity was usurped by crowned, apotheosised, and modernised Vikings. After its establishment the leading statesmen met from time to time in the name of all Europe to compose differences among bickering States and determine their attitude towards rebellious nations. Thus, down to the outbreak of the Crimean War, the Great Powers looked upon themselves, and acted, as the spokesmen and trustees of this political concern. And they began fairly well, setting their faces against undue

* Russia, Austria, and Prussia, September 1815. Their association was known and brandmarked as the Holy Alliance, of which Castlereagh said that it was 6 a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense.'

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territorial expansion, and actually prevented war once or twice by exercising and enforcing moderation. But that Christian covenant, having been made by absolute monarchs and not by free peoples, was but a baited trap. Quite soon those self-constituted guardians of the European federation trod roughshod over their lofty principles and pulled down their own political structure. After the Treaty of Paris of 1856, the various nations of Europe formed a loose community held together by implicit consent and as a mere matter of expediency. This relative cohesion, which showed itself only on critical occasions, was one of the factors of Europe's greatness and also of the material prosperity of its individual peoples. In spite of the diversity of races and tongues, the clashing of aims, and the deep-seated propensity to quarrel, the character, enterprise, and adaptability of its peoples won for them the virtual mastery of the globe.

A peninsula rather than a continent, Europe, which is the smallest of the great geographical division of the planet,† thus became the overlord of the best part of it, influenced the inhabitants profoundly, and bade fair to remould them for good or evil. It swayed a territory seven times greater than its own, held the keys to the sciences, and sent its engineers, physicians, and teachers to reclaim jungles, fight deadly diseases, and dispel crass human ignorance. European workshops and factories were supplied with the most perfect machinery, and had the pick and choice of raw stuffs and the control of the markets of the world.

Relative cohesion was an indispensable condition of those advantages. To-day it is become an indispensable condition of the political and economical independence of each of the Continental States of Europe. Yet no practical steps are being taken to fulfil that condition. Before the war the need of union was discerned by one or two statesmen. The late Count Witte, who kept ever turning it over in his mind, discussed it on one or two occasions with the German Kaiser and Tsar Nicholas II

*For instance, Tsar Nicholas I waived his right to intervene in Turkey single-handed, although it had been conferred upon him by treaty.

+ It contains ten million square miles, as against forty millions in Africa and forty-three in America.