for defensive purposes, incidentally provides means for dealing with
domestic discontent. Fifthly, it panders to those who talk of prestige
and think that prestige depends upon the size of a nation's armaments.
For the sake of these things many would be willing to take the risk of
war which the Balance of Power involves. But most of those who use the
phrase are unconscious of these motives, and use it as they use many
another phrase, simply because they know not what it means. For,
assuredly, no sane person who had examined the Balance of Power, as it
existed before the war, could ever advocate it as a means of peace.

Indeed, whenever there has been the prospect of a practical Balance of
Power, its votaries have shown by their action that they knew their
creed was nonsense. The late war, for instance, might have been ended in
1916 on the basis of a Balance of Power. There were a few who believed
that that was the best solution; but they were not our latter-day
believers in the Balance of Power. Their cry was all for a fight to a
finish and a total destruction of the Balance of Power by an
overwhelming victory for the Allies, and their one regret is that a
final blow by Marshal Foch did not destroy the last vestige of a German
army. What is the point of expressing belief in the Balance of Power
when you indignantly repudiate your own doctrine on every occasion on
which you might be able to give it effect? And what is the point of the
present advocacy of the Balance of Power by those who think themselves
neither visionaries nor blind? Do they wish to restore the military
strength of Germany and of Russia and to see an Alliance between them
confronting a Franco-British union, compelled thereby to be militarist
too? Is it really that they wish to be militarists and that the League
of Nations, with its promise of peace, retrenchment, and reform, is to
them a greater evil than the Balance of Power?