The idea of a balance of power was gradually developed from the feeling that States do not exist to thwart each other, but to work together for the advancement of culture.  Christianity, which leads man beyond the limits of the State to a world citizenship of the noblest kind, and lays the foundation of all international law, has exercised a wide influence in this respect.  Practical interests, too, have strengthened the theory of balance of power.  When it was understood that the State was a power, and that, by its nature, it must strive to extend that power, a certain guarantee of peace was supposed to exist in the balance of forces.  The conviction was thus gradually established that every State had a close community of interests with the other States, with which it entered into political and economic relations, and was bound to establish some sort of understanding with them.  Thus the idea grew up in Europe of a State-system, which was formed after the fall of Napoleon by the five Great Powers—­England, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, which latter had gained a place in the first rank by force of arms; in 1866 Italy joined it as the sixth Great Power.

“Such a system cannot be supported with an approximate equilibrium among the nations.”  “All theory must rest on the basis of practice, and a real equilibrium—­an actual equality of power—­is postulated,"[D] This condition does not exist between the European nations.  England by herself rules the sea, and the 65,000,000 of Germans cannot allow themselves to sink to the same level of power as the 40,000,000 of French.  An attempt has been made to produce a real equilibrium by special alliances.  One result only has been obtained—­the hindrance of the free development of the nations in general, and of Germany in particular.  This is an unsound condition.  A European balance of power can no longer be termed a condition which corresponds to the existing state of things; it can only have the disastrous consequences of rendering the forces of the continental European States mutually ineffective, and of thus favouring the plans of the political powers which stand outside that charmed circle.  It has always been England’s policy to stir up enmity between the respective continental States, and to keep them at approximately the same standard of power, in order herself undisturbed to conquer at once the sovereignty of the seas and the sovereignty of the world.

[Footnote D:  Treitschke.]

We must put aside all such notions of equilibrium.  In its present distorted form it is opposed to our weightiest interests.  The idea of a State system which has common interests in civilization must not, of course, be abandoned; but it must be expanded on a new and more just basis.  It is now not a question of a European State system, but of one embracing all the States in the world, in which the equilibrium is established on real factors of power.  We must endeavour to obtain in this system our merited position at the head of a federation of Central European States, and thus reduce the imaginary European equilibrium, in one way or the other, to its true value, and correspondingly to increase our own power.