her great men of learning and her painters surpassing those of all other
countries save Italy? So the small Scandinavian nations have given to
the world famous men of science, from Linnaeus downwards, poets like
Tegner and Björnson, scholars like Madvig, dauntless explorers like
Fridthiof Nansen. England had, in the age of Shakespeare, Bacon, and
Milton, a population little larger than that of Bulgaria to-day. The
United States, in the days of Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and
Hamilton and Marshall, counted fewer inhabitants than Denmark or
Greece."[19]

In all their internal politics and social advancement, Switzerland,
Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Finland (until the paw of the Bear
was on her) and Belgium (till the claw of the Spread-Eagle) have been
well to the fore. It is they who have carried on the banner of idealism
which Germany herself uplifted when she was a small people or a group of
small peoples. It is they who have really had prosperous, healthy,
independent, and alert populations. How much more interesting, we may
say, would Europe be under the variety of such a regime than under the
monotonous bureaucracy and officialism of any Great Power! And to some
such scheme we must adhere. It would mean, of course, the alliance of
all the States of Western Europe, large and small (and including both a
remodelled Germany and a largely remodelled Austria) in one great
Federation--whose purpose would be partly to unite and preserve Europe
against any common foe, from the East or elsewhere, and partly to
regulate any overweening ambition of a member of the Federation, such as
might easily become a menace to the other members. A secondary but most
important result of the formation of such a United States of Europe
would be that while each State would probably preserve a small military
establishment of its own, the enormous and fatal incubus of the present
armaments system would be rendered unnecessary, and so at last the