All over the world society is organizing itself by strata. The English merchant goes on business to Warsaw, Hamburg, or Leghorn; he finds in the merchants of Italy, Germany, and Russia the ideas, the standard of living, the sympathies, and the aversions which are familiar to him at home. Printing and the locomotive have enormously reduced the importance of locality. It is the mental atmosphere of its fellows, and not of its neighborhood, which the child of the younger generation is beginning to breathe. Whether he reads the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ or _Tit-Bits_, the modern citizen is becoming at once cosmopolitan and class-centred. Let the process work for a few more years; we shall see the common interests of cosmopolitan classes revealing themselves as far more potent factors than the shadowy common interests of the subjects of States. The Argentine merchant and the British capitalist alike regard the Trade Union as a possible enemy--whether British or Argentine matters to them less than nothing. The Hamburg docker and his brother of London do not put national interests before the primary claims of caste. International class feeling is a reality, and not even a nebulous reality; the nebula has developed centres of condensation. Only the other day Sir W. Runciman, who is certainly not a Conservative, presided over a meeting at which there were laid the foundations of an International Shipping Union, which is intended to unite ship-owners of whatever country in a common organization. When it is once recognized that the real interests of modern people are not national, but social, the results may be surprising.[109] As Mr. Baty points out, this tendency, which he calls "stratification," extends to all classes: It is impossible to ignore the significance of the International Congresses, not only of Socialism, but of pacificism, of esperantism, of feminism, of every kind of art and science, that so conspicuously set their seal upon the holiday season. Nationality as a limiting force is breaking down before cosmopolitanism. In directing its forces into an international channel, Socialism will have no difficulty whatever[110].... We are, therefore, confronted with a coming condition of affairs in which the force of nationality will be distinctly inferior to the force of class-cohesion, and in which classes will be internationally organized so as to wield their force with effect. The prospect induces some curious reflections.