The principle of the Commonwealth is not a European principle:  it is a world-principle.  It does not proceed upon the expectation of a United States of Europe; for all the Great Powers of Europe except Austria-Hungary (and some of the smaller, such as Holland, Belgium, and Portugal) are extra-European Powers also.  Indeed if we contract our view, with Gladstone and Bismarck and the statesmen of the last generation, to European issues alone, we shall be ignoring the chief political problem of our age—­the contact of races and nations with wide varieties of social experience and at different levels of civilisation.  It is this great and insistent problem (call it the problem of East and West, or the problem of the colour-line) in all its difficult ramifications, political, social, and, above all, economic, which makes the development of the principle of the Commonwealth the most pressing political need of our age.  For the problems arising out of the contact of races and nations can never be adjusted either by the wise action of individuals or by conflict and warfare; they can only be solved by fair and deliberate statesmanship within the bosom of a single State, through the recognition by both parties of a higher claim than their own sectional interest—­the claim of a common citizenship and the interest of civilisation.[1] It is here, in the union and collaboration of diverse races and peoples, that the principle of the Commonwealth finds its peculiar field of operation.  Without this principle, and without its expression, however imperfect, in the British Empire, the world would be in chaos to-day.

[Footnote 1:  The most recent example of this is the settlement of the very difficult dispute between India and South Africa.]

We cannot predict the political development of the various Great Powers who between them control the destinies of civilisation.  We cannot estimate the degree or the manner in which France, freed at last from nearer preoccupations, will seek to embody in her vast dominion the great civilising principles for which her republic stands.  We cannot foretell the issue of the conflict of ideas which has swayed to and fro in Russia between the British and the Prussian method of dealing with the problem of nationality.  Germany, Italy, Japan—­here, too, we are faced by enigmas.  One other great Commonwealth remains besides the British.  Upon the United States already lies the responsibility, voluntarily assumed and, except during a time of internal crisis,[1] successfully discharged, of securing peace from external foes for scores of millions of inhabitants of the American continent.  Yet with the progress of events her responsibilities must yearly enlarge:  for both the immigrant nationalities within and the world-problems without her borders seem to summon her to a deeper education and to wider obligations.

[Footnote 1:  French occupation of Mexico, 1862, during the American Civil War, when the Monroe Doctrine was temporarily in abeyance.]