Europe and America.

War sympathy and war co-operation are so intense between America and her European allies, and the physical relationship has become so close, that the discovery by the London press of a new political union should not be startling. A curious sensation comes, however, of reading in the London Daily Mail that: "Never again will it be possible for Americans to think they have one set of interests and Europe another." The shedding of American blood on European soil welds the hemispheres, according to this view.

But it easy to confuse American hearts with American heads; as easy as it always has been to confuse American political policy with American commercial policy. Sympathy, even the sympathy of a common sorrow, cannot bridge the Atlantic. America will remain distinctively American, Europe stanchly European. American and European affairs will hereafter meet at many points; American and European national lives will remain far apart--assuming that the theory of competition continues as the sustaining power of existence individual and national.

This planet can no more be moulded into a community of thought than it can be forged or frozen into a single climate. Geography's constitution may not be amended by Europe's majority vote.

Though the graves of our soldier dead will become hallowed ground, dearly dreadful to memory, there will remain in a practical sense "one set of interests" for America. Destiny had so written even before Washington's time.

Every American shrinks from the thought of being linked politically with Europe. He feels the selfishness and the pride of nationality which are his rightful heritage. He will squirm at the many dissertations sure to come on the subject of European and American political union. --New York Sun