Those of us who now favor a league or federation of states as a means of preserving peace perpetually may well study the crisis to which a similar system had come in the development of international relations in 1820. The tsar’s ideal was a thing of glory thrown before a sordid world. Not even he, as we see, was proof against the debasement of his surroundings. If his plan had been adopted by all the nations, it is likely that the time would have come when the confederation thus formed would have become an agency for reaction against which liberal views would have been unable to contend. On the other hand, we must not ignore the weight that a confederation would have had as an idea in promoting respect for liberal government. If it had been established under the protection of the tsar, it may well have been that Metternich would not have taken up the crusade of legitimacy, that the tsar and Castlereagh acting together in behalf of liberal institutions would have insured a steadier attitude on the part of the former, and that under such circumstances the kings of Spain and Naples would have been less inclined to the severe measures which provoked revolution. Of course, these are mere conjectures, but it is only fair to mention them as things to be said for the other side of the question. When we come to apply the lessons of 1815-1820 to the present day, we must not forget that conditions are now very greatly changed. It was the supremacy of arbitrary government in Europe that made the hopes of 1815 come to naught. Of all the agents who then controlled affairs in the great states of Europe, Castlereagh, next to the tsar, was the most liberal. If a plan of union were adopted after the present war, it might not be a success, but the failure would not be for the same reasons as those that brought the Alliance of 1815 to a nullity.