42 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



the West getting down to the first principles of 

 force. 



Up to the middle of the nineteenth century, even 

 in the midst of the fiercest, most prolonged and 

 most savage wars, the West had remained con- 

 sistently steadfast to its conception of civilization 

 as ripening towards a golden age of world peace. 

 The ideal of permanent goodwill among nations 

 and of international arbitration as an ultimate 

 substitute for war had continued to deepen its 

 hold on men's minds during the whole of the period. 

 The Congress of Vienna in 1814-5, at the close of 

 the Napoleonic wars of conquest, although it led to 

 reaction and was a congress of princes rather than 

 of peoples, was held under the influence of visions 

 of a coming age of permanent peace in the world. 

 In 1834 Mazzini and the " Young Europe " associa- 

 tion were dreaming of universal fraternity. In 

 1841 the poet Tennyson, in England, was singing 

 in fervent anticipation of the day when the battle 

 flags of the nations were to be furled in the parlia- 

 ment of man. Through the whole of this decade 

 up to the Saxon revolution in 1848-9 the struggle in 

 progress in most of the central States of Europe 

 was for constitutionalism, and the dreams of their 

 peoples were of lasting peace amongst States and 

 nationalities. A little later many of the foremost 



