The relations of nations are thus still largely on the plane of
primitive life among individuals, or, since nations are made up of
civilized and semi-civilized persons, it would be fairer to say that the
relations of nations are comparable to those prevailing among
individuals when a group of men goes far out from civil society, to the
frontier, beyond the reach of courts of law and their police forces:
then nearly always there is a reversion to the rule of the strong arm.
That is what Kipling meant in exclaiming,

"There's never a law of God or man runs north of fifty-three."

That condition prevailed all across our frontier in the early days. For
instance, the cattle men came, pasturing their herds on the hills and
plains, using the great expanse of land not yet taken up by private
ownership. A little later came the sheep men, with vast flocks of
sheep, which nibbled every blade of grass and other edible plant down to
the ground, thus starving out the cattle. What followed? The cattle
men got together by night, rode down the sheep-herders, shot them or
drove them out, or were themselves driven out.

So on the frontier, in the early days, a weakling staked out an
agricultural or mining claim. A ruffian appears, who is a sure shot,
jumps the claim and drives the other out. It was the rule of the strong
arm, and it was evident on the frontier all across the country.

This is exactly the state that a considerable part of the world has
reached in international relationship to-day. Claim-jumping is still
accepted and widely practised among the nations. That is, in fact, the
way in which all empires have been built--by a succession of successful
claim-jumpings. Consider the most impressive of them all, the old Roman