The central idea of the Union which he proposed was to arrange that the whole of the countries forming it should be for postal purposes a single territory, and within that territory there was to be a uniform tariff. It was necessary that such a scheme should be large enough to make it possible for the greatest available number of administrations to adhere to it, and that the sacrifices that it would be needful to make would be more than compensated for by the development of postal traffic. Of course the idea met with great opposition. Financial experts shook their heads, and authoritatively declared that proposals for reducing and simplifying postal rates were a danger to the finances of their respective countries. In Great Britain, where the Post Office brings in annually a great revenue to the Treasury, there was also opposition: it was clear that under the new arrangement the British Government would have to do a great deal for nothing in the carrying of the world's letters. Nationalists of all countries saw in the proposal a menace to national sentiment and national glory. But over and above all these considerations was the great question of the public convenience, and people were beginning to understand the great principle of State administration, that a loss to one Department is not a loss to the State if the people benefit. Dr. Von Stephan was for twenty-five years the head of the German Postal Administration, and he attended more than one of the Congresses subsequent to that at Berne. At the Vienna Congress of 1891 he modestly resisted the idea that the Postal Union originated from his action. He said: “Ideas are not originated by any individual. They float in the atmosphere for a whole epoch, at first vaguely, then in a more distinct form, until they condense and precipitate themselves in taking body and life. The idea of unification is in harmony with the aspirations of our century: it prevails to-day in many of the domains of human activity: it constitutes the true motive power of human civilisation. As for our great machine of international exchange, it was, moreover, stimulated by this irrefutable fact, that the enormous masses which devolved upon it to handle, which increased from day to day, and extended from frontier to frontier, and to the furthest seas and latitudes, urgently demanded a simplification of the entire mechanism as the only means of making headway against its almost unlimited requirements and of maintaining indispensable rapidity and regularity. Such are the natural elements which were the true founders of the Universal Postal Union.”