While in some States a restriction of armaments is natural and justifiable, it is easily understood that France must strain every nerve to secure her full recognition among the great military nations of Europe.  Her glorious past history has fostered in her great political pretensions which she will not abandon without a struggle, although they are no longer justified by the size of her population and her international importance.  France affords a conspicuous example of self-devotion to ideals and of a noble conception of political and moral duties.

In the other European States, as in France, external political conditions and claims, in combination with internal politics, regulate the method and extent of warlike preparations, and their attitude, which necessity forces upon them, must be admitted to carry its own justification.

A State may represent a compact unity, from the point of view of nationality and civilization; it may have great duties to discharge in the development of human culture, and may possess the national strength to safeguard its independence, to protect its own interests, and, under certain circumstances, to persist in its civilizing mission and political schemes in defiance of other nations.  Another State may be deficient in the conditions of individual national life and in elements of culture; it may lack the resources necessary for the defence and maintenance of its political existence single-handed in the teeth of all opposition.  There is a vast difference between these two cases.

A State like the latter is always more or less dependent on the friendliness of stronger neighbours, whether it ranks in public law as fully independent or has been proclaimed neutral by international conventions.  If it is attacked on one side, it must count on support from the other.  Whether it shall continue to exist as a State and under what conditions must depend on the result of the ensuing war and the consequent political position—­factors that lie wholly outside its own sphere of power.

This being the case, the question may well be put whether such a State is politically justified in requiring from its citizens in time of peace the greatest military efforts and correspondingly large pecuniary expenditure.  It will certainly have to share the contest in which it is itself, perhaps, the prize, and theoretically will do best to have the largest possible military force at its disposal.  But there is another aspect of the question which is at least arguable.  The fighting power of such a State may be so small that it counts for nothing in comparison with the millions of a modern army.  On the other hand, where appreciable military strength exists, it may be best not to organize the army with a view to decisive campaigning, but to put the social objects of military preparation into the foreground, and to adopt in actual warfare a defensive policy calculated to gain time, with a view to the subsequent interference of the prospective