THE WORLD 379

to absorb the peoples of Northern Europe helped to destroy it.
The Catholic Church, and the Holy Roman Empire, took up the
conception. The latter was at all times restricted to Central
Europe, and had only a few periods of successful practice under
exceptionally able rulers. The Church, while exercising a great
unifying influence, did not prevent the development of national
Sovereign States in Western Europe. The power which such a
State could wield was a recommendation for nationalism, and by
the nineteenth century, the whole world was organised into
Sovereign States, great and small. Meanwhile, trade had brought
them all into close contact with one another, so that the need for
agreed policy was greater. The invention of destructive and very
costly armaments meant that unless peaceable relations could be
preserved, mankind would do itself serious—perhaps irreparable—
damage. Such relations are only preserved between parties who
recognise some common rules of conduct, and do not make their
own wishes the sole test of right action.

This, then, is the problem of world politics;—for economic
and military reasons, the political structure of the world ought to
resemble a great society much more closely than itdoes; the claims
of each State to Sovereignty, and the rivalries of empires impede
progress towards a great society. The British Empire contains
the possibilities of a great society, but has not developed them;
nor does it account for more than a quarter of the world's area
or population. The Soviet Union is another example of a great
society over part of the world, embracing one-sixth of the area,
and rather less than one-tenth of the population, 180,000,000
people of different races. But the three nations—Germany, Italy
and Japan—which have recently formed an Anti-Communist
Pact, appear both as rivals to the British Empire, and enemies
to the Soviet Union. There is no universal society of mankind.
The Roman method of joining peoples together, in the first
instance, by conquest, is out of the question. Moreover, the idea
of the nation rests on history, language, and other facts, so that
even within a universal society, nations would have a part to play.