Increasing political power and the consequent multiplication of possibilities of action constitute the only healthy soil for the intellectual and moral strength of a vigorous nation, as is shown by every phase of history.

The wish for culture must therefore in a healthy nation express itself first in terms of the wish for political power, and the foremost duty of statesmanship is to attain, safeguard, and promote this power, by force of arms in the last resort.  Thus the first and most essential duty of every great civilized people is to prepare for war on a scale commensurate with its political needs.  Even the superiority of the enemy cannot absolve from the performance of this requirement.  On the contrary, it must stimulate to the utmost military efforts and the most strenuous political action in order to secure favourable conditions for the eventuality of a decisive campaign.  Mere numbers count for less than ever in modern fighting, although they always constitute a very important factor of the total strength.  But, within certain limits, which are laid down by the law of numbers, the true elements of superiority under the present system of gigantic armies are seen to be spiritual and moral strength, and larger masses will be beaten by a small, well-led and self-devoting army.  The Russo-Japanese War has proved this once more.

Granted that the development of military strength is the first duty of every State, since all else depends upon the possibility to assert power, it does not follow that the State must spend the total of its personal and financial resources solely on military strength in the narrower sense of army and navy.  That is neither feasible nor profitable.  The military power of a people is not exclusively determined by these external resources; it consists, rather, in a harmonious development of physical, spiritual, moral, financial, and military elements of strength.  The highest and most effective military system cannot be developed except by the co-operation of all these factors.  It needs a broad and well-constructed basis in order to be effective.  In the Manchurian War at the critical moment, when the Japanese attacking strength seemed spent, the Russian military system broke down, because its foundation was unstable; the State had fallen into political and moral ruin, and the very army was tainted with revolutionary ideas.

The social requirement of maintaining military efficiency, and the political necessity for so doing, determine the nature and degree of warlike preparations; but it must be remembered that this standard may be very variously estimated, according to the notion of what the State’s duties are.  Thus, in Germany the most violent disputes burst out whenever the question of the organization of the military forces is brought up, since widely different opinions prevail about the duties of the State and of the army.