Page:Armistice Day.djvu/336

314 "It is familiar, also, to the English and has lately been pressed there as the probable final solution of the Irish question.

"It has insistently suggested itself as the solution of the Balkan problem.

"In a lesser way it already is represented in the structure of Austria-Hungary.

"This principle of nation building, of international building through federation, certainly has in it the seeds of the world's next great development—and we Americans are in a position both to expound the theory and to illustrate the practice. It seems to me that this is the greatest work which America will have to do at the end of this war.

"These are the things which I am writing to my European correspondents in the several belligerent countries by every mail.

"The cataclysm is so awful that it is quite within the bounds of truth to say that on July 31 the sun went down upon a world which never will be seen again.

"This conflict is the birth-throe of a new European order of things. The man who attempts to judge the future by the old standards or to force the future back to them will be found to be hopelessly out of date. The world will have no use for him. The world has left behind forever the international policies of Palmerston and of