Federation and federation alone can help out the programme of the Peace Society. It cannot be pretended that it will do everything. To state the worst at once, it will not prevent war. Even the federations of the states of Germany and America, bound together by ties of blood and language and, in the latter case, of sentiment, were not strong enough within to keep out dissension and disunion.[101] Wars would not cease, but they would become much less frequent. “Why is there no longer war between England and Scotland? Why did Prussian and Hanoverian fight side by side in 1870, though they had fought against each other only four years before?... If we wish to know how war is to cease, we should ask ourselves how it _has_ ceased” (Professor D. G. Ritchie, _op. cit._, p. 169). Wars between different grades of civilisation are bound to exist as long as civilisation itself exists. The history of culture and of progress has been more or less a history of war. A calm acceptance of this position may mean to certain short-sighted, enthusiastic theorists an impossible sacrifice of the ideal; but, the sacrifice once made, we stand on a better footing with regard to at least one class of arguments against a federation of the world. Such a union will lead, it is said, to an equality in culture, a sameness of interests fatal to progress; all struggle and conflict will be cast out of the state itself; national characteristics and individuality will be obliterated; the lamb and the wolf will lie down together: stagnation will result, intellectual progress will be at an end, politics will be no more, history will stand still. This is a sweeping assertion, an alarming prophecy. But a little thought will assure us that there is small cause for apprehension. There can be no such standstill, no millennium in human affairs. A gradual smoothing down of sharply accentuated national characteristics there might be: this is a result which a freer, more friendly intercourse between nations would be very likely to produce. But conflicting interests, keen rivalry in their pursuit, difference of culture and natural aptitude, and all or much of the individuality which language and literature, historical and religious traditions, even climatic and physical conditions produce are bound to survive until the coming of some more overwhelming and far-spreading revolution than this. It would not be well if it were otherwise, if those “unconscious and invisible peculiarities” in which Fichte sees the hand of God and the guarantee of a nation’s future dignity, virtue and merit should be swept away. (_Reden an die deutsche Nation_,[102] 1807.) Nor is stagnation to be feared. “Strife,” said the old philosopher, “is the father of all things.” There can be no lasting peace in the processes of nature and existence. It has been in the constant rivalry between classes within themselves, and in the struggle for existence with other races that