idea in the minds of the people composing it. Now, the largest
political idea that ever entered the mind--not of a man--not of a
governing class--but of a people, is the idea of the United States of
America. The "Pax Romana" was a great idea in its day, but it was
imposed from without, and by military methods, upon a number of subject
peoples, who did not realise and intelligently co-operate in it, but
merely submitted to it. It has its modern analogue in the "Pax
Britannica" of India. The idea of the United States, on the other hand,
gives what may be called psychological unity to one of the largest
political aggregates, both in territory and population, ever known to
history. In the modern world, there are only two political aggregates in
any wise comparable to it: the British Empire, whereof the idea is not
as yet quite clearly formulated; and the Russian Empire, whereof the
idea, in so far as it belongs to the people at all, is a blind and
slavish superstition. Holy Russia is a formidable idea, Greater Britain
is a picturesque and pregnant idea; but the United States is a
self-conscious, clearly defined and heroically vindicated idea, in whose
further vindication the whole world is concerned. It is only an
experiment, say some--an experiment which, thirty years ago, trembled
on the brink of disastrous failure, and which may yet have even greater
perils to encounter. This is true in a sense, but not the essential
truth. Let us substitute for "experiment" another word which means the
same thing--with a difference. The United States of America, let us say,
is a rehearsal for the United States of Europe, nay, of the world. It is
the very difficulties over which the croakers shake their heads that
make the experiment interesting, momentous. The United States is a
veritable microcosm: it presents in little all the elements which go to
make up a world, and which have hitherto kept the world, almost
unintermittently, in a state of battle and bloodshed. There are wide
differences of climate and of geographical conditions in the United