st caused any organic union. The
nations have met like partners at a ball and danced to the tune of the
dynastic or religious quarrel which happened to be paramount at the
time. The grouping of nations in alliances has simply been a means of
more effective prosecution of military campaigns, a temporary
convenience to be discarded when no longer needed. If the example of the
past is to be followed, then Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and
America, though holding hands now, will separate when the war is over,
and may find it necessary to use the same hands for chastizing each
other. Alliances have been political games and devices, useful or
useless according to the shrewdness of their instigators, but of no
value in promoting love between nations. Old-time enemies become
friends, and old-time friends become enemies at the command of the
political drill-sergeant. England was the hereditary enemy of France.
Prussia was the ally of England. In the war of the Austrian succession,
France in alliance with Prussia fought England and Austria. During the
Seven Years War Prussia, allied to England, fought Austria allied to
France. England, allied to France and Turkey, fought Russia in the
Crimea. Turn the kaleidoscope of history and you see the English driven
out of Normandy, Napoleon defiling Moscow, the Russians attacking
Montmartre. Any schoolboy, can trace the changing partners in the grand
alliances of the past, or refuse to commit them to memory on account of
the bewildering fluctuations in international friendship.

A fiery common hate, though acting as a powerful cement for a time, is
no guarantee of durability. Napoleon and the French were hated by the
nations, as Wilhelm and the Germans are hated to-day. Rapacious designs
for hegemony have always brought about a corresponding amount of
defensive unity on the part of those whose independence was threatened.
Whether it is Spain or France or Germany that dreams of world-supremacy,
the result is international combination. Richelieu and Bismarck rouse
the same resentment. A great hatred cannot by itself create a lasting
unity, for hatred is apt to grow out of bonds, and, having settled its
legitimate prey outside the circle, generally ends by turning on its
neighbours within it.

Who can deny that nations have been made by conquest? Heroic
self-defence, anger, bitter opposition to the violation of liberty, are
of little avail if the psychological factors are favourable