For let any Unionist glance round the world outside the British Empire. He will find that the British do not stand alone in their trust in the Home Rule principle. Nearly every great Empire in the world rests upon Home Rule as its basis. Even Russia, perhaps the most centralised of all, has its provincial councils, known as the Zemstvos, and it was one of M. Stolypin's most daring actions that he even broke the letter of the Russian Constitution in order to strengthen the Zemstvos of Eastern Russia. Finland, too, a province of Russia, possesses a larger form of local government than is even being demanded by Ireland. It is a curious irony of the present situation that many of those Britons who refuse self-government to Ireland are most diligent in watching the action of Russia in relation to the powerful and--up to the present--almost independent Parliament of Finland. THE GERMAN EMPIRE If we pass from Russia to the other great human combinations, we shall find the principle of Home Rule far more extensively and powerfully developed. Take China, a combination of 400,000,000 of human beings, now changing before our eyes from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional republic. But whether as a monarchy or a republic, China has always rested her rule on gigantic and almost autonomous provinces, under separate Viceroys. Those provinces have doubtless been subject to the same autocratic control as China herself, but with the change in her central government they will probably pass by an easy transition into Home Rule provinces. Or come nearer home to an Empire which most Englishmen imagine to be the most centralised in the world--the German Empire. That Empire rests upon a basis of twenty-six autonomous governments, varying from autocracies at one end to republics at the other. The German Empire contains within it every form and shape of human community, varying from sheer mediaevalism to extreme modernism. But whatever the form or shape of these separate governments, they are all alike in having control over their own local affairs. Most of the great states of Germany still possess control even over their own railways. They have their own Parliaments, their own judges, and, in many cases, their own reigning sovereigns. It was part of the wisdom of the founders of the German Empire that they made no attempt to interfere with these local powers. They contented themselves with combining all those forces for common defence, including them under a common tariff, and giving to them a common vote for a common assembly at the centre. In other words, Germany rests upon the two principles of unity and division, and in that combination lies its strength. THE UNITED STATES