t with incorporation. As
the ruler of Paris gradually overcame his vassals, one after another, by
warfare or diplomacy, he annexed their counties to his royal domain, and
governed them by lieutenants sent from Paris. Self-government was thus
crushed out in France, while it was preserved in England. And just as
Rome achieved its unprecedented dominion by adopting a political method
more effective than any that had been hitherto employed, so England,
employing for the first time a still higher and more effective method,
has come to play a part in the world compared with which even the part
played by Rome seems insignificant. The test of the relative strength of
the English and Roman methods came when England and France contended for
the possession of North America. The people which preserved its
self-government could send forth self-supporting colonies; the people
which had lost the very tradition of self-government could not. Hence
the dominion of the sea, with that of all the outlying parts of the
earth, fell into the hands of men of English race; and hence the
federative method of political union--the method which contains every
element of permanence, and which is pacific in its very conception--is
already assuming a sway which is unquestionably destined to become
universal.

Bearing all this in mind, we cannot fail to recognize the truth of the
statement that the great wars of the historic period have been either
contests between the industrial and the predatory types of society or
contests incident upon the imperfect formation of great political
aggregates. Throughout the turmoil of the historic period--which on a
superficial view seems such a chaos--we see certain definite tendencies
at work; the tendency toward the formation of larger and larger
political aggregates, and toward the more perfect maintenance of local
self-government and individual freedom among the parts of the aggregate.
This two-sided process began with the beginnings of industrial
civilization; it has aided the progress of industry and been aided by
it; and the result has been to diminish the quantity of warfare, and to
lessen the number of points at which it touches the ordinary course of
civilized life. With the further continuance of this process, but one
ultimate result is possible. It must go on until warfare becomes
obsolete. The nineteenth century, which has witnessed an unprecedented
development of industrial civilization, with its attenda