WHERE THE LINE IS DRAWN

There is yet another fatal objection to the Balance of Power due to the
change in circumstances since the days of Castlereagh. He could afford
to think only of Europe, but we have to think of the world; and if our
specific has any value it must be of world-wide application. We cannot
proclaim the virtues of the Balance of Power and then propose to limit
it to the land or to any particular continent. Now, did our believers in
the Balance of Power ever wish to see power balanced anywhere else than
on the continent of Europe? That, if we studied history in any other
language than our own, we should know was the gibe which other peoples
flung at our addiction to the Balance of Power. We wanted, they said, to
see a Balance of Power on the continent of Europe, to see one half of
Europe equally matched against the other, because the more anxiously
Continental States were absorbed in maintaining their Balance of Power,
the keener would be their competition for our favour, and the freer
would be our hands to do what we liked in the rest of the world.

Was that a baseless slander? Let us test it with a question or two. Did
we ever want a Balance of Power at sea? British supremacy, with a
two-to-one or at least a sixteen-to-ten standard was, I fancy, our
minimum requirement. Is British supremacy what we mean by a Balance of
Power? Again, did we ever desire a Balance of Power in Africa, America,
or Asia? We may have talked of it sometimes, but only when we were the
weaker party and feared that another might claim in those continents the
sort of Balance of Power we claimed on the sea. We never spoke of the
Balance of Power in the interests of any nation except ourselves and an
occasional ally. We cannot speak in those terms to-day. If we demand a
Balance of Power on land, we must expect others to claim it at sea; if