Arizona republican., 1905-06-26
PHOENIX, ARIZONA. JUNE 2s. 1905.
A Peace-Lovlng Nation.


 The decision of the Swedish par liament that union with Norway against thu Iatter's will ts not worth fighting for was not entirel-' unex- pected.
 The disadvantages of the union have not been exclusively on the Norwegian side. even though Sweden has supplied the monarch and has maintained the leadership of the dual monarchy. In fact, the calmness of the Swedes un- der these somewhat trying circum- stances and their reluctance to employ any kind of coercion against their neighbors seems to be a very impress sive contradiction of the claims of tyranny that have been urged as a vindicatien of the Norwegian desire for a seperate nationality.
 However else they may be described the acts of King Oscar and the Swed- ish parliament are not tyrannical, and it would be difficult to find in all his tory another example of such kindness and forbearance toward neighbOr people. And certainly neither England with its record of coercion toward Scotland Wales and Ireland, or the United States after its great struggle in putting down. the revolt of the southern states, is in a position to voice any criticism against Sweden for Its very very mild protest against the Norwegian secession.
 On the contrary. to the great major ity Of the worlds civilized people, the strangest thing about the whole mat ter will be the tendency Of the Scan dinavian race towards disintegration at a time when the general tendency of other races is in the contrary di- rection. All are familiar with the manner in which the German, British. French, Italian and Russian nations have been organized out of heterogeneous fragments. The desire of the NOrwegians for independence is an exception to historical tendency that is widely in evidence, and the willingness of Sweden to consent to the separation is another exception even more striking.
 So strong has been the tendency in the past two centuries to the building of these great federations. or empires, or world powers" as we have learned to call them, that We have come to look forward with confidence to the time when all the people of the world shall be organized into a single polit- ical structure in which the functions of local self government, of district or state sovereignty and of supreme cen tral authority shall be carefully ad- justed to compel world wide obedience to a general political system from which no human being shall be ex- empt.
 Possibly it is a good thing that the voices of Norway and of Sweden should arouse us from this too conf- dent certainty regarding the political future of the human race Evident ly the Scandinavian has little regard for the Tennysonian ideal, "the par Hament of Man, the Federation of the World" and much prefers to allow even a fraction of a single race to "N-N OUt iI7 O"ii uSStiily anu lO Seeh it's owP happiness according to its own ideals and it's own ideas. without the interference or the compuIslon Of its neighbors.
 There is certainly room for very pretty argument. and no chance for an authoritative decision, on the question of whether the world would. or would not be better off if the Twentieth cen turY should bring the disintegration of some of these huge structures of empire that it has been the toilsome and bloody work of the Nineteenth century to construct