"The greatest obstacle in the path of a United States of Europe is the existence of a regularly centralized, modern state in continental Europe today," said W. L. Langer '15, assistant professor in the department of History, when asked to comment on the consolidation of the states of Europe as proposed by Premier Briand. "The plan may have a beautiful ideal, but it seems to me to be utterly impracticable. There are too many obstructions that must be ironed out before anything can be done.

"With regard to any possible objection of the United States to the forming of such a league, there should not be one. Yet, as long ago as 1890, such an idea was suggested with the avowed purpose of opposing this country from an economic standpoint." Although there would in all probability be no hostility to the United States in the formation of such a league, were it practicable, such hostility would be very likely to develop, owing to the natural trade competition that would spring up.

"But the feasibility of such an organization is greatly to be doubted. Europe is too broken up, too much a conglomeration of conflicting and opposing races, for such a plan to be carried out, at least at the present time. Each state is a single unit, highly centralized, composite; and there must be a tremendous change before it is possible to imagine a political union of nations, beyond what has so far been done in the formation of the League of Nations. And the organization is little more than a group gathered together with the purpose of preventing war, and settling disputes.

"The only practical organization might be one based on an economic standpoint. Therein lies a possibility to be considered within the visible future; and that type of organization might be of great value to the persons concerned.

"But as far as concerns a real political union, the consideration of the many race antagonisms, the lingual differences, the varieties of organization, the differences of interest; all these seem to me to make the plan seem to be nothing further than a high conception, not to be carried out definitely until some period in the far distant future. It is only a beautiful ideal towards which the world can progress; for the tremendous difficulties, cultural, religious, and historical, seem too great to be overcome during the present era."