of chronic warfare can result, until some principle of union is evolved
by which disputes can be settled in accordance with general principles
admitted by all. Among peoples that have never risen above the tribal
stage of aggregation, such as the American Indians, war is the normal
condition of things, and there is nothing fit to be called
_peace_,--there are only truces of brief and uncertain duration. Were it
not for this there would be somewhat less to be said in favour of great
states and kingdoms. As modern life grows more and more complicated and
interdependent, the Great State subserves innumerable useful purposes;
but in the history of civilization its first service, both in order of
time and in order of importance, consists in the diminution of the
quantity of warfare and in the narrowing of its sphere. For within the
territorial limits of any great and permanent state, the tendency is for
warfare to become the exception and peace the rule. In this direction
the political careers of the Greek cities assisted the progress of
civilization but little.

Under the conditions of Graeco-Roman civic life there were but two
practicable methods of forming a great state and diminishing the
quantity of warfare. The one method was _conquest with incorporation_,
the other method was _federation_. Either one city might conquer all
the others and endow their citizens with its own franchise, or all the
cities might give up part of their sovereignty to a federal body which
should have power to keep the peace, and should represent the civilized
world of the time in its relations with outlying barbaric peoples. Of
these two methods, obviously the latter is much the more effective, but
it presupposes for its successful adoption a higher general state of
civilization than the former. Neither method was adopted by the Greeks
in their day of greatness. The Spartan method of extending its power was
conquest without incorporation: when Sparta conquered another Greek