The notion is at least grandiose, and so stated seems almost too high and difficult for human nature to realize.  Yet for centuries it was applied, and applied with marvellous success.  Nor in spite of its apparent failure in the end has the idea of it ceased to dominate men’s minds.  I do not speak here of the transitory imitation of it by the Carolingians or of the attempt at the restitution or copy of it in the spiritual sphere of the Church, or again of its phantom survival in the ghostly form of the Holy Roman Empire.  But I would point to the way in which it still—­in thought—­controls us when without essential alteration of the idea we transfer its application to the nation and still look for the secret of its peace and strength in an organization of all its activities under a law proceeding from and enforced by a sovereign will resident somewhere within its structure, a law demanding and receiving obedience from all loyal subjects.  Nor is the hope extinct that the way to a wider or world-wide peace lies through the restoration of a similar system in its application to international relations.  Though I am unable to share this hope (or indeed the desire that its realization should be endeavoured after), I find it impossible to judge that it has yet lost its hold on men’s minds or is without elements of importance in view of our present problem and perplexity.

It is perhaps more profitable to ask what we have to learn from the history both of its success and its failure.  Of its success for a time and long time in the history of Europe there can be no doubt, and on its permanent effects rests much of what is most sound and stable in the civilization of modern Europe.  Peace there was because of it, and again because of it and what it accomplished Europe resisted and survived internal disorder and barbarian invasion so that, as I said above, what still exists as a united or allied Europe is the Roman or Romanized world.  Roman ideas and ideals still hold it together, although the Roman Empire has declined and fallen, and no other Empire has risen or, I trust, may rise, upon its ruins.  It is not my business to analyse the causes of that decline and fall, though a few words on them may not be out of place.  In the first place it declined and fell because those who administered ignored its economic substructure, paying no attention to the causes which were undermining its very material basis, or the enormous suffering which the neglect and consequent disorganization of that entailed.  In the second, and partly because of that neglect, they did not sufficiently strengthen its defences against external attack; I do not so much mean in the way of remissness in military preparation as by a surcease of the former policy of bringing their barbarous or semi-civilized neighbours into the higher system, and so extending the range of civilization.  It is perhaps fanciful to suggest that we are now suffering the penalty of the failure