scattered Empire, and who depended for food and raw materials on freedom
to sail our ships, the question of sea power adequate for security was
one of life or death. We could not sit still and allow Germany so to
increase her navy in comparison with ours that she could make other
Powers believe that their safest course was to throw in their lot and
join their fleets with hers. We were bound to seek to make and maintain
friendships, and to this end not only to preserve our margin of strength
at sea, but to make ourselves able, if it became essential, to help our
friends in case of aggression, thereby securing ourselves. That was the
new situation which in the final result the old military spirit in
Germany had created.

The balance of power is a dangerous principle; a general friendship
between all Great Powers, or, better still, a League of the Nations, is
by far preferable. But that consideration does not touch the actual
point, which is that we did not seek to set up the principle of
balancing that has given rise to so many questions. It was forced on us
and was a sheer necessity of the situation. We did all we could to avoid
it by negotiations with Germany, which, had they succeeded in the end,
would have relieved France and Russia as much as ourselves and would
have prevented the war.

Our efforts to preserve the peace ended in failure. The cause of that
failure was nothing that we failed to do or that France did. It was
proximately Austrian recklessness and indirectly, but just as strongly,
German ambition. A real desire in July, 1914, on the part of the Central
Powers to avoid war would have averted it. That Serbia may have been a
provocative neighbor is no answer to the reproaches made to-day against
the old Governments in Vienna and Berlin. They failed to take the steps
requisite if peace were to be preserved.