the leading Powers continue to have unsatisfied ambitions which
look practicable; but eventually it will necessarily have its effect.
Each war, as it occurs, even if it does not finally settle some
conflicting claims, will most assuredly help to teach the warring
nations just how far they can go, and will help, consequently, to
restrict its subsequent policy within practicable and probably
inoffensive limits. It is by no means an accident that England and
France, the two oldest European nations, are the two whose foreign
policies are best defined and, so far as Europe is concerned, least
offensive. For centuries these Powers fought and fought, because one of
them had aggressive designs which apparently or really affected the
welfare of the other; but the result of this prolonged rivalry has been
a constantly clearer understanding of their respective national
interests. Clear-headed and moderate statesmen like Talleyrand
recognized immediately after the Revolution that the substantial
interests of a liberalized France in Europe were closely akin to those
of Great Britain, and again and again in the nineteenth century this
prophecy was justified. Again and again the two Powers were brought
together by their interests only to be again divided by a tradition of
antagonism and misunderstanding. At present, however, they are probably
on better terms than ever before in the history of their relations; and
this result is due to the definite and necessarily unaggressive
character of their European interests. They have finally learned the
limits of their possible achievement and could transgress them only by
some act of folly.

In the course of another fifty years the limits of possible aggression
by Germany and Russia in Europe will probably be very much better
defined than they are to-day. These two Powers will seek at the
favorable moment to accomplish certain aggressive purposes which they
secretly or openly entertain, and they will succeed or fail. Each
success or failure will probably be decisive in certain respects, and
will remove one or more existing conflicts of interest or ambiguities of
position. Whether this progressive specification of the practicable
foreign policies of the several Powers will soon or will ever go so far
as to make some general international understanding possible, is a
question which no man can answer; but as long as the national principle
retains its vitality, there is no other way of reaching a