The unity of our own France was forged by agelong struggles between the separate provinces. At one time every province, even every village, was a fatherland. For more than a hundred years the Armagnacs and the Burgundians (my ancestors) went on breaking one another's heads, to discover in the end that they were men of one blood. The war which is now mingling the blood of France and of Germany, is leading the French and the Germans to drink from the same cup to their future union, like the barbaric heroes of the epic age. Struggle and bite as they may, their very grapple binds them together. These armies which are endeavouring to destroy one another, have become more akin in spirit than they were before they faced one another in battle. They can kill one another, but at least they now know one another, whereas ignorance is the nethermost circle of death. Numerous testimonies from the opposing fronts have borne clear witness to the mutual desire of the soldiers, though still fighting, to understand one another. Men who from trench to enemy trench watch one another while taking aim, may remain foes, but they are no longer strangers. At no distant day a union of the nations of the west will form a new fatherland, which itself will be but a stage upon the road leading to a still greater fatherland, that of Europe. Do we not already see the dozen states of Europe, divided into two camps, unwittingly attempting to build a federation wherein war between nations will be no less sacrilegious than would now be war between provinces; a federation in which the duty of to-day will be the crime of to-morrow? Has not the need for this future union been affirmed by the most conflicting voices: by William II, who spoke of the "United States of Europe";[3] by Hanotaux, with his "European Confederation";[4] by Ostwald, and Haeckel of lamentable memory, with their "Society of States"? Each one, doubtless, worked for his own saint; but all these saints served the same master!... Nay more, the gigantic chaos wherein, as if amid the throes that occurred when the earth was still molten, all the human elements from the three continents of the Old World are clashing one against another, is a racial alchemy preparing, alike by force and by spiritual factors, alike by war and by peace, the coming fusion of the two halves of the world, of the two hemispheres of thought, of Europe and Asia. I do not talk utopia. For some years this drawing together has been preluded by a thousand signs, by mutual attraction in the realms of thought and of art, in the realms of politics and of commerce. The war has merely accelerated the movement; and while the war yet rages, men are at work on behalf of this cause. Two years ago, in one of the belligerent states, there were founded great institutes for the comparative study of the civilisations of Europe and of Asia, and to promote their mutual penetration.