This is the more emphasized when we remember that the best men of Russia are looking forward wistfully, not to the enlargement, but to the dissolution, of the unwieldy giant--"stupid with the stupidity of giants, ferocious with their ferocity"--and the rise in its stead of a multiplicity of self-contained, self-knowing communities, "whose members will be united together by organic and vital sympathies, and not by their common submission to a common policeman." How small and thin a pretence is all the talk of national prestige when the matter is tested by its relation to the individual is shown by the commonplaces of our everyday social intercourse. In social consideration everything else takes precedence of nationality, even in those circles where Chauvinism is a cult. British Royalty is so impressed with the dignity which attaches to membership of the British Empire that its Princes will marry into the royal houses of the smallest and meanest States in Europe, while they would regard marriage with a British commoner as an unheard-of _mésalliance_. This standard of social judgment so marks all the European royalties that at the present time not one ruler in Europe belongs, properly speaking, to the race which he rules. In all social associations an analogous rule is followed. In our "selectest" circles an Italian, Rumanian, Portuguese, or even Turkish noble, is received where an American tradesman would be taboo. This tendency has struck almost all authorities who have investigated scientifically modern international relations. Thus Mr. T. Baty, the well-known authority on international law, writes as follows: