ABSTRACT
The problem with the Americans is different. The continental partisans of European federation are often such because they are unaware of the significance of the federal formula, particularly under modern conditions, when the parallel would be not the American Constitution as framed in 1787, but the American Constitution after a century and a half of judicial and conventional interpretation. When Frenchmen say that they wish to see federal institutions set up at Strasbourg, it is not because they wish to see Paris reduced politically to the status of Albany or Harrisburg. The Americans know what it is they mean where the present is concerned, but employ a false analogy from the past to insist that what was possible for the United States is possible and indeed essential for Western Europe.
