It can no longer be denied that it is possible to unite the whole globe in such organizations, now that international law, with its hypothesis of the union of many states in one humanity, extends over the greater part of the inhabited earth. There is a steadily-increasing interdependence of the nations of the world, especially of those which give themselves to commerce and manufactures, and alike of those which need a foreign field for a share of their capital. These ties unite them alike for good and evil, and render the prosperity of each dependent on the equal prosperity of all the rest. When this great truth is well understood, it may, perhaps, become the peacemaker of the world. Nations have their defects and passions like individuals, and well-established international laws, conventions, and unions are necessary to protect the weak and helpless from the strong and ambitious. CHAPTER XXI. SWITZERLAND AND THE EUROPEAN SITUATION. Switzerland has no small influence on the affairs of Europe, as well by its situation as by its warlike genius. There is much of history, but still more political anomaly, written in the very conglomerate map of Switzerland. It is a land of unfulfilled destiny. The eye traces its great water-courses into the most important countries of civilized Europe, and recognizes the lines down which potent influences, social and political, are to descend. Its political boundaries do not coincide with those of nature; they are erratic, the result of wars and political vicissitudes. On the one hand, France shoots out spurs of her territory into Switzerland, and Switzerland, on the other hand, by the force of circumstances, has overlapped Italian ground, taking in Ticino south of the main chain of the Alps, which is Italian in climate and flora; a large part of the Grisons is east of the Rhine, and of the ranges separating it from Tyrol; while Schaffhausen and a couple of villages in the Canton of Basel are altogether on the north side of the line, the German town of Constanz is to the south of the line. Again, if a Swiss wishes to pass from the Rhine valley to Geneva by the south bank of the lake, he must cross French territory in order to do so. The southwest frontier of Switzerland stops at Geneva, instead of extending to the Jura, which forms its natural frontier. Military writers have pointed out that the easiest route for an investing force from Germany would be through Switzerland; and similarly for a force from France, over the Jura, by Zurich, to the Rhine at Schaffhausen. “That a power which was master of Switzerland could debouch on the theatre of operations of the Rhone, the Saône, Po, or Danube; from Geneva an army could march on Lyons, from Basel it could gain the valley of Saône by Belfort, from Constance the Danube could be reached; Italy could be invaded, and the lines of defence of that country against France and Austria turned.”[117]