range of our knowledge does little more than convince us how great are our evils.
Besides these leagues of a public and positive character, there may be tacit unions less apparent and yet not less real, resulting from a harmony of interests, an affinity of principles, a conformity of customs, or other factors that induce some common relationship between peoples who are divided. Thus may we say that all the Powers of Europe form a 'system'[1] among themselves uniting them by community of commerce, letters, manners, religion, and international law, and by regard for the maintenance of a resulting equilibrium, which it may be no one's special concern to maintain but which it would be less easy to destroy than many people think. There is a Society of the Peoples of Europe, with its roots in the past. From Rome have come to some of them codes of law. A stronger bond still, and one affecting more of them, is their religion. We must allow also for the facilities and the vast variety of intercourse among the peoples of Europe. We can speak, therefore, of 'a Europe' in a real sense in which we cannot conceive Asia or Africa. In Asia or in Africa we have merely a collection of peoples with nothing in common except that they belong to the same continent. But when we speak of 'Europe' the word at once suggests to the mind a real society founded on a community of manners, customs, religion, and even laws; and none of the peoples making up this Society can recede from its place and function in it without at once being the cause of troubles.
No doubt, it is easy to make sharp the contrasts that facts seem to force upon us—easy to set perpetual dissensions and the savagery of wars against the benevolence of the religion that is professed, the cruelty of the deed against the humanity of the maxim, the harshness of policy against the so great
- ↑ 'Une sorte de système.'
