The European authors
of the treaty had a large choice, and they chose to realize those
expectations which were held by those of their countrymen who wielded
the most power at home.
They came down the hierarchy from the Rights of Humanity to the Rights
of France, Britain and Italy. They did not abandon the use of symbols.
They abandoned only those which after the war had no permanent roots
in the imagination of their constituents. They preserved the unity of
France by the use of symbolism, but they would not risk anything for
the unity of Europe. The symbol France was deeply attached, the symbol
Europe had only a recent history. Nevertheless the distinction between
an omnibus like Europe and a symbol like France is not sharp. The
history of states and empires reveals times when the scope of the
unifying idea increases and also times when it shrinks. One cannot say
that men have moved consistently from smaller loyalties to larger
ones, because the facts will not bear out the claim. The Roman Empire
and the Holy Roman Empire bellied out further than those national
unifications in the Nineteenth Century from which believers in a World
State argue by analogy. Nevertheless, it is probably true that the
real integration has increased regardless of the temporary inflation
and deflation of empires.
6
Such a real integration has undoubtedly occurred in American history.
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