the chief European nations, a degree of true “like-mindedness,” which forms the psychical basis of some rudimentary internationalism in the field of politics. Indeed it is curious and instructive to observe that while some of those most insistent upon “like-mindedness” and “common experience,” as the tests of a true social area, apply them in defence of existing nationalities and in repudiation of attempts to absorb alien nationalities, others, like Professor Giddings, apply them in the advocacy of expansion and Imperialism.
Surely there is a third alternative to the policy of national independence on the one hand, and of the right of conquest by which the more efficient nation absorbs the less efficient nation on the other, the alternative of experimental and progressive federation, which, proceeding on the line of greatest common experience, shall weave formal bonds of political attachment between the most “like-minded” nations, extending them to others as common experience grows wider, until an effective political federation is established, comprising the whole of “the civilised world,” i.e. all those nations which have attained a considerable fund of that “common experience” comprised under the head of civilisation.