ut in the case of
Switzerland, where we have the community not in countries but cantons,
each with its own religion, its culture and self-government, and all at
peace under a polyglot and impartial common government. It is as plain
as daylight to anyone who is not blinded by patriotic or private
interests that such a country as Albania, which is mono-lingual indeed,
but hopelessly divided religiously, will never be tranquil, never
contented, unless it is under a cantonal system, and that the only
solution of the Irish difficulty along the belt between Ulster and
Catholic Ireland lies in the same arrangement.

Then; thirdly, there are the regions and cities possessing no
nationality, such as Constantinople or Bombay, which manifestly
appertain not to one nation but many; the former to all the Black Sea
nations, the latter to all India. Disregarding ambitions and traditions,
it is fairly obvious that such international places would be best under
the joint control of, and form a basis of union between, all the peoples
affected.

Now it is suggested here that upon these threefold lines it is possible
to work out a map of the world of maximum contentment and stability, and
that there will be a gravitation of all other arrangements, all empires
and leagues and what not, towards this rational and natural map of
mankind. This does not imply that that map will ultimately assert
itself, but that it will always be tending to assert itself. It will
obsess ostensible politics.

I do not pretend to know with any degree of certainty what peculiar
forms of muddle and aggression may not record themselves upon the maps
of 2200; I do not certainly know whether mankind will be better off or
worse off then, more or less civilised; but I do know, with a very
considerable degree of certainty, that in A.D. 2200 there will still be
a France, an Ireland, a Germany, a Jugo-Slav region, a Constantinople, a
Rajputana, and a Bengal. I do not mean that these are absolutely fixed
things; they may have receded or expanded. But these are the more
permanent things; these are the field, the groundwork, the basic
reality; these are fundamental forces over which play the ambitions,
treacheries, delusions, traditions, tyrannies of international politics.
All boundaries will tend to reveal these fundamental forms as all
clothing tends to reveal the body. You may hide the waist; you will only
reveal the shoulders the more. You may mask, you may muffle the b