onic
State, the Holy German Empire of the Habsburg, has equally perished
through clericalism. Catholicism is an international power, and the
State must be national. Catholicism is encroaching and threatening the
national State, and the State must remain independent and supreme;
therefore Catholicism, ultramontanism, clericalism, are absolutely
incompatible with the modern State.

XXII.--THE NECESSITY OF GREAT POWERS.

Inasmuch as power is the main attribute of the State, it follows that
only those States which are sufficiently strong in population, in
territory, and in financial resources, have a right to exist. There is
a definite limit below which a State cannot fulfil its mission nor
defend its existence. We must not be deceived by the example of such
States as Athens, Venice, Holland, and Florence, which, although
apparently small in territory, yet played an important part in
political history. Those States were only small in outward appearance;
in reality they were either the centres of a vast political system,
like Athens and Florence, or the centres of a vast colonial empire,
like Venice and Holland. Moreover, in modern times, the whole
relations and proportions of States have undergone a fundamental
change. Everything is on a larger scale, and there is an almost
general tendency in modern times for all national States to expand and
to absorb into themselves the smaller neighbouring States. It may
almost be said that modern history is made up mainly of the conflicts
between five or six leading States. Contemporary Europe had resulted
in the unstable equilibrium of the five dominant Powers of Britain,
Russia, Austria, France, and Germany. Europe has almost consolidated
into a pentarchy.

XXIII.--THE ANOMALY OF THE SMALL STATE.

If it be true that the national State almost inevitably must develop
into a great Power, conversely it is no less true that small States
are an anomaly. Treitschke never ceased to rail at the monstrosity of
petty States, at what he calls, with supreme contempt, the
"_Kleinstaaterei_." Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, are not really
States. They are only artificial and temporary structures. Holland
will one day be merged into the German Empire and recover its pristine
glory.

The smallness of the State produces a corresponding meanness of
spirit, a narrowness of outlook. Small States are entirely absorbed by
their petty economic interests and party dissensions. They only exist
as t