Considering these things I find myself driven, in closing my essay, to a serious examination of the possibility of creating a world federation out of the chaos that now floats over the globe--not an integrated world empire, with power over all phases of political action, but a federation that will have authority to regulate the forces that make for war. If such a thing could be created and accepted by the states of the world, it would make the present struggle, with all its horrors, the best and most fortunate event that has come to humanity since the beginning of the Christian era. If the war should result in the thorough defeat of the present régime in Germany, followed by the creation of a world federation into which Germany should be forced to come, with her pride so reduced that she could be kept obedient to the federation until the virus of world power should get out of her system, the world would have passed a milestone in civilization, and for our part in it future generations would thank us to the end of time. The organization of the American Union in 1787-1789 was a similar process on a smaller scale. So many of its features are analogous to conditions that suggest themselves in connection with the proposition of a world federation that it is worth while to recall them. If we are not led to conclude that a similar step should be taken at this time in the larger sphere, we shall at least have a clearer idea of what such a federation would mean, and it may happen that we shall conclude that it is not so difficult a thing to establish as appears on first sight. Before the war for independence the American colonies it is true, were not as separate as the present European states, but they were so distinct in their ideals and purposes that no one thought their union possible. When Franklin proposed a very mild sort of concentration in 1754 his suggestion was rejected in the colonies because it involved the surrender of some of the colonial separateness. Had no pressure come from the outside it is difficult to see what would have forced the thirteen colonies to come together. The external pressure was the conviction that Great Britain was about to adopt a policy by which the interests of the colonies would be subservient to the interests of British traders, thus destroying their partially avowed hope of a distinctly American policy. Then came seven years of war and four years of fear lest Great Britain should recover through American dissension what she had lost in the trial of arms. Under such conditions the newly liberated states were willing to form the American union.