great indeed.  It will not be long before this economic pressure will make it simply impossible for the states of Europe to keep up such military armaments as they are now maintaining.  The disparity between the United States, with a standing army of only twenty-five thousand men withdrawn from industrial pursuits, and the states of Europe, with their standing armies amounting to four millions of men, is something that cannot possibly be kept up.  The economic competition will become so keen that European armies will have to be disbanded, the swords will have to be turned into ploughshares, and thus the victory of the industrial over the military type of civilization will at last become complete.  But to disband the great armies of Europe will necessarily involve the forcing of the great states of Europe into some sort of federal relation, in which Congresses—­already held on rare occasions—­will become more frequent, in which the principles of international law will acquire a more definite sanction, and in which the combined physical power of all the states will constitute (as it now does in America) a permanent threat against any state that dares to wish for selfish reasons to break the peace.  In some such way as this, I believe, the industrial development of the English race outside of Europe will by and by enforce federalism upon Europe.  As regards the serious difficulties that grow out of prejudices attendant upon differences in language, race, and creed, a most valuable lesson is furnished us by the history of Switzerland.  I am inclined to think that the greatest contribution which Switzerland has made to the general progress of civilization has been to show us how such obstacles can be surmounted, even on a small scale.  To surmount them on a great scale will soon become the political problem of Europe; and it is America which has set the example and indicated the method.

Thus we may foresee in general outline how, through the gradual concentration of the preponderance of physical power into the hands of the most pacific communities, the wretched business of warfare must finally become obsolete all over the globe.  The element of distance is now fast becoming eliminated from political problems, and the history of human progress politically will continue in the future to be what it has been in the past,—­the history of the successive union of groups of men into larger and more complex aggregates.  As this process goes on, it may after many more ages of political experience become apparent that there is really no reason, in the nature of things, why the whole of mankind should not constitute politically one huge federation,—­each little group managing its local affairs in entire independence, but relegating all questions of international interest to the decision of one central tribunal supported by the public opinion of the entire human race.  I believe that the time will come when such a state of things will exist upon the earth, when it will