In all I have said hitherto about the tsar’s idea of preserving peace no definite plan has been mentioned. His most specific utterance was to ask for a league of nations, but he said nothing of its powers, its specific organization, or the limits of its action. The suggestion was vague, probably because the mind of its author was itself vague. If taken seriously it could be made to serve as the foundation of a unified state of Europe which might hold all other states under its hand, a unified state largely under the domination of Russia. That its author had no such object in view is not to be doubted for an instant; but who could tell how long he would remain in his existing state of mind, and how soon he might be succeeded by a tsar of far other spirit? As a plan for permanent peace the Holy Alliance was impossible, not only because it was cast in religious forms and thrown to a world in which the authority of religion had lost much of its ancient hold on the minds of men of influence, but because its indefinite form made it a possible instrument of greater evils than war. Beneath its defects, however, was the great idea of a unified Europe, in which justice has the place of suspicion and intrigue, in which runs one law, one order, and one obedience to the majesty of the state. Alexander not only believed in such an ideal, but he was willing to cast his nation into the melting-pot in order to fuse such a state. He could have given no better proof of his support of his ideal. Of course, it was ahead of the time, how much so it is hard to say. The widespread popular longing for permanent peace would have gone far in accepting unification of the states, and in this sphere of opinion the religious cast of the scheme was not a great disadvantage. The thing which stood firmly in its way was the dull practicality of the upper, ruling class. If it could have passed these lions in the way, it might have had a chance of working its way forward into some acceptable form of a league in perpetuity. But it is a big _if_ that I have used. Upper ruling classes know more about government than the lower classes, and that is a source of conservatism. The lower classes, knowing little, usually act upon their impulses; the members of the upper, ruling class, having information in varying degrees, usually strike an average of mediocre enlightenment, and it is a difficult thing for a new idea to gain possession of them. In 1815 the upper, ruling class was well settled in power in Europe, and it was most convinced of its superior wisdom. It never accepted the tsar’s plan; and failing to get its acceptance the plan was futile. CHAPTER IV EUROPE UNDER THE CONCERT OF THE POWERS