Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/472

 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the Ural mountains lose their height between the broad plains of northeast Europe and northwest Asia. Further, because of the similarity of the country on both sides of the Urals, this barrier exerts still less effect ; it is simply a dividing line between the two halves of the empire, which in point of land and climate are one, and are in a fair way to become one in point of popula- tion also. The fact that it is the most undivided of all conti- nental powers contributes to the marked character of Russia.

Just as the struggle for existence in the plant and animal world always centers about a matter of space, so the conflicts of nations are in great part only struggles for territory ; and in all wars of modern history acquisition of land has been the prize to be gained by victory. In every historical age nations may be classified according to their idea of political space. That "mag- nificent understanding and organization of affairs," in which Mommsen found the Romans in the beginning inferior to Pyr- rhus and Mithridates, is the political sense of space which enabled the Anglo-Saxon races in the old and new worlds to get the best and largest colonial lands. It produces in North America a broad territorial policy, which almost from the begin- ning has been awake to territorial advantages. These it is always trying to increase, and in the process, unconsciously, an excellent practical geographical understanding has been shown in great projects, like those in Nicaragua, Hawaii, and Alaska, as also in small questions of boundary, like that of the Haro Strait. This sense can never become so developed in western and central Europe on account of the impossibility of acquiring larger territories. The European system of small, but intensively utilized, areas is inferior to the former just because it cannot be the system of the future, which, without intermission, today and for centuries, has been aiming to produce greater territories. The larger spacial conception necessarily falls into conflict with the smaller ; but even when it has been defeated, its principle has always carried off the victory, for the successful smaller territory has enlarged its area. As a rule, though, a small territory in conflict with a larger one is doomed to an early over-