Germany struggled through years of difficulty, conflict, and swaying tides of national passion towards the ideal of a united fatherland. The ideal has been realised; the men who made its attainment possible have won, not merely the gratitude of their countrymen, but the world's respect as well; even their acts of despotism are forgiven and more than half forgotten in the momentous significance of their one supreme {26} achievement. Today it seems as if their work of consolidated strength was the best guarantee of Europe's peace. Cavour's statue stands in the squares of Italian cities--his name lingers in Italian hearts. To Tuscan, Lombard, and Neapolitan alike he is 'our great Cavour'--the man whose courageous genius found a basis in facts for the conception of Italian unity, whose patient and resolute diplomacy made possible the satisfaction of the national aspiration. Canada has placed first on her roll of greatness the statesman, to whom she mainly owes the achievement of Federal unity. Thus beyond a doubt the men who have graven their names most deeply on the history of our time are those who have carried out in many lands and under varying conditions the work of national consolidation. American unity, German unity, Italian unity, Austro-Hungarian unity--the expansion of Russia without loss of unity--these are the accomplished facts of our time which we have to face. More than this. We do not need the philosophical historian to tell us, for the process is going on under our own eyes, that a governing tendency of the age is towards the union of many states into combinations of nearly equal strength--sometimes by fusion, sometimes by federation, sometimes by alliance. On the practical equipoise of two such great groups the equilibrium of Europe at this moment depends. Race adds its influence to the tendency. Pan-Sclavism--Pan-Latinism--Pan-Teutonism {27} are more than names. They are forces which play their part in moulding the destinies of nations and governments. The aspect of the whole world irresistibly suggests the thought that we are passing from a nation epoch to a federation epoch. That British people should fall in with this tendency is in the strict line of historical continuity. 'From clans in the north,' it has been truly said, 'and from a heptarchy in the south, England and Scotland grew into nations and thence into one nation.' In the great offshoots of the race abroad the tendency is renewed, and each step prepares the way for another and greater effort. To consolidate the empire which Chatham founded is the one manifest opportunity remaining in the British world for British statesmen to place their names in our history beside those of the greatest of the statesmen of the past.