A day will come when you France, you Russia, you Italy, you
England, you Germany, you all, nations of the continent, without losing your
distinct qualities and your glorious individuality, will be merged closely
within a superior unit and you will form the European brotherhood, just as
Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Lorraine, Alsace, all our provinces are merged
together in France. A day will come when the only fields of battle will be
markets opening up to trade and minds opening up to ideas. A day will come when
the bullets and the bombs will be replaced by votes, by the universal suffrage
of the peoples, by the venerable arbitration of a great sovereign senate which
will be to Europe what this parliament is to England, what this diet is to
Germany, what this legislative assembly is to France. A day will come when we
will display cannon in museums just as we display instruments of torture today,
and are amazed that such things could ever have been possible. A day will come when we shall see those
two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of
Europe, stretching out their hands across the sea, exchanging their products,
their arts, their works of genius, clearing up the globe, making deserts
fruitful, ameliorating creation under the eyes of the Creator, and joining
together to reap the well-being of all.
Nor is it necessary that four hundred years shall pass away
for that day to come. We live in a rapid period, in the most impetuous current
of events and ideas which has over borne away humanity; and at the period in
which we live, a year suffices to do the work of a century. But, French,
English, Germans, Russians, Slaves, Europeans, Americans, what we have to do in
order to hasten the advent of that great day? We must love each other! To love
each other is, in this immense labour of pacification, the best manner of
aiding God! God desires this sublime object should be accomplished. And to
arrive at it you are yourselves witnesses of what the Deity is doing on all
sides. See what discoveries are every day issuing from human genius –
discoveries which all tend to the same object – Peace! What immense progress!
What simplification! How nature is allowing herself to be more and more
subjugated by man! How matter every day becomes still more the handmaid of
intellect, and the auxiliary of civilization! How the causes of war vanish with
the causes of suffering! How people separated from each other so lately, now
almost touch! How distances become less and less; and this rapid approach, what
is it but the commencement of fraternity? Thanks to roads, Europe will soon be
larger than France was in the middle ages. Thanks to steam-ships, we now
traverse the mighty ocean more easily than the Mediterranean was formerly
crossed. Before long, men will traverse the earth, as the gods of Homer did the
sky, in three paces! But yet a little time, and the electric wire of concord
shall encircle the globe and unite the world.