"True internationalism is not the enemy of the nationalistic principle.
"On the contrary, it helps true nationalism to thrive. The Vermonter is more a Vermonter because he is an American, and there is no reason why Hungary, for example, should not be more than ever before Hungarian after she becomes a member of the United States of Europe.
"Europe, of course, is not without examples of the successful application of the principle of federation within itself. It so happens that the federated State next greatest to our own is the German Empire. It is only forty-three years old, but their federation has been notably successful. So the idea of federation is familiar to German publicists.
"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."
America's Great Work.
"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 expand 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 curtain went down upon a world which never will be seen again.