we urge it on Europe as a means of peace, we cannot object if others
turn our own argument against us in other quarters of the globe; and
wherever you have a Balance of Power you will have a race for armaments
and the fear of war.

The Balance of Power is, in fact, becoming as obsolete as the Monopoly
of Power enjoyed by the Roman Empire. It is a bankrupt policy which went
into liquidation in 1914, and the high court of public opinion demands a
reconstruction. The principle of that reconstruction was stated by
President Wilson, a great seer whose ultimate fame will survive the
obloquy in which he has been involved by the exigencies of American
party-politics and the short-sightedness of public opinion in Europe. We
want, he said, a Community of Power, and its organ must be the League of
Nations. Nations must begin to co-operate and cease to counteract.

I am not advocating the League of Nations except in the limited way of
attempting to show that the Balance of Power is impossible as an
alternative unless you can re-create the conditions of a century ago,
restore the individual independence of a number of fairly equal Powers,
and guarantee the commonwealth of nations against privy conspiracy and
sedition in the form of separate groups and alliances. But there is one
supreme advantage in a Community of Power, provided it remains a
reality, and that is that it need never be used. Its mere existence
would be sufficient to ensure the peace; for no rebel State would care
to challenge the inevitable defeat and retribution which a Community of
Power could inflict. It has even been urged, and I believe it myself,
that Germany would never have invaded Belgium had she been sure that
Great Britain, and still less had she thought that America, would
intervene. It was the Balance of Power that provoked the war, and it was
the absence of a Community of Power which made it possible.