It is in the great crises of its history that the essential unity of the race is revealed. The Wars of Independence were a unanimous movement, an expression of profound solidarity. In 1865, after half a century of isolation, the democracies of the Pacific once more united to oppose Spain's attempt at reconquest. Soldiers of different nations, who had already fought in bygone battles, but against each other, now fought side by side for the common liberty. The same unity of inspiration has brought the nations together in opposition to many projects of conquest: the expedition of Flores against Ecuador, of France against Mexico, and the Anglo-French alliance against Rosas. At the second Hague Congress in 1907 Latin America revealed to the Western world the importance of her wealth and the valour of her men, and supported her ideal of arbitration; to the Monroe doctrine she opposed the doctrine of Drago, and, without preliminary understanding, asserted her unity. No other continent offers so many reasons for union, and herein lies the chief originality of Latin America. In Europe states and races are in conflict, and the unstable equilibrium is maintained only by means of alliances. Religions, political systems, traditions, and languages differ. History is merely a succession of turbulent hegemonies: of Spain, England, France, and Germany. We find artificial nations, like Austria; unions of democratic and theocratic peoples, like the Franco-Russian Alliance; rival empires of the same race, like England and Germany; political alliances of alien races, like Germany and Italy; and the dispersion of peoples painfully seeking to recover their lost unity, like the Poles, the Irish, and the Slavs. The federation of Europe is a Utopian dream. {340} Africa is not yet autonomous; it is a vast group of enslaved peoples of primitive races, colonised by the great European powers. There the Anglo-Saxon genius is seeking to establish a political union between English and Dutch, and one day, perhaps, the empire dreamed of by Cecil Rhodes will stretch from Cairo to the Cape. But the unity of Africa is impossible; for the colonists come to the Dark Continent as conquerors, as the representatives of hostile interests; they can but quarrel over Morocco, Tripoli, and the Congo. Oceania possesses only a partial unity in the Australian commonwealth, the work of England. In Asia it is still more impossible to guess whence a future unity might arise. Mussulmans and Buddhists share India; Japan has won only an ephemeral superiority; China retains all her irreducible independence; in Manchuria and Korea Russian and Asiatic interests are opposed; in Turkestan, Persia, and Tibet the conflicts of race and religion are enough to destroy any hope of union.