STUDIES IN POLITICAL AREAS 461
strengthen the union of the whole, as in the case of Russia's expansion to the Black Sea or that of the United States to the Pacific through the acquisition of one and a half million square miles of territory. The disintegrating tendencies in the extreme east and west of Canada did not abate till the Dominion had learned to value and utilize, both politically and economically, the huge, continent-like territory which lay between the two oceans. The strength of a space not yet filled up lies in the future, in its wealth of hopes and plans. Russia's great territory in the north, east, and southeast must make amends for much that is unsatisfactory in the condition of the older, more densely populated provinces. The great dreams of its endless possibil- ities awaked by its possession lure the judgment far away from the hard circumstances near at hand, which the people feel they may at any time throw off by migration.
Conflicts, which in narrow, congested quarters are always working deeper, tend to become more superficial when they find room to spread out and make different combinations. In larger territories racial differences and prejudices are less pronounced, and particularly true in this sense is the expression, "the ration- alism of colonial peoples." Germans and French are not so antagonistic to one another in Africa as in Europe. Only where the home governments purposely carry their political principles into their distant territories also do these come to a clash, as, for instance, when the Seven Years' War was transplanted to the shores of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence. The great enter- prises of colonizing England promoted the union of England and Scotland, just as the wide field which Russia offered in Asia caused many a German, Polish, and Armenian arm to devote itself more willingly to the service of the empire. The colonial policy of Germany, too, has in this sense a national importance. Even in the unnecessarily noisy foreign policy of the United States it is difficult to get rid of the thought that this, also, is intended to draw off the ever active forces of political disinte- gration from mischief. In the earlier decades, when the conflict between the North and South had not yet been fought out, this
