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168 watch the biological development of the extant world to acquire the belief that a new organisation, vaster and more peaceful, is at hand. In proportion as humanity evolves, communications between men are multiplied. During the last century there occurred a sudden and enormous improvement in the technical means for the exchange of ideas. To give one example only. In former days the circulation of letters throughout the whole world did not exceed one hundred thousand a year. To-day, the postal correspondence in Germany amounts to a milliard letters a year (15 per head), whereas formerly the number was 1 per 1,000 of the population. About forty years ago, in the countries which now form parts of the postal union, three milliards of letters, etc., were posted annually. By the year 1906 the number had increased to thirty-five milliards; and by 1914, to fifty milliards. (In Germany, 1 per head every 10 days; in Great Britain, 1 per head every 3 days.) We have further to consider the increased speed of communication. Distance no longer exists for the telegraph; “the entire civilised world has become a large room in which we can all talk with one another.”

Such changes cannot fail to influence social life. In earlier times, any thought of union or federation between the various states of Europe remained utopian, were it only on account of the difficulty and slowness of communications. As Nicolai says, a state cannot extend to infinite proportions; it must be able to act promptly upon the different parts of its organism. To a certain extent, therefore, its size is a function of the rapidity of communications. In prehistoric times, a traveller could cover only about 12 miles a day; when wheeled traffic became established, the daily postal journey extended to 60 miles, and in the later days of mail-coach development, this distance was more than doubled; towards 1850, the railway service was able to cover 375 miles a day; modern trains range to 1,250 miles a day; an express service covering 6,000 miles or more a day is already within the scope of technical possibilities. For barbarians, the country was limited to a mountain valley. The states that existed at the close of