For a decade and more all Western Europe has been threatened by German truculence; the German, inflamed by the victories of 1870 and 1871, has poured out his energy in preparation for war by sea and land, and it has been the difficult task of France and England to keep the peace with him.  The German has been the provocator and leader of all modern armaments.  But that is not going on.  It is already more than half over.  If we can avert war with Germany for twenty years, we shall never have to fight Germany.  In twenty years’ time we shall be talking no more of sending troops to fight side by side on the frontier of France; we shall be talking of sending troops to fight side by side with French and Germans on the frontiers of Poland.

And the justification of that prophecy is a perfectly plain one.  The German has filled up his country, his birth-rate falls, and the very vigour of his military and naval preparations, by raising the cost of living, hurries it down.  His birth-rate falls as ours and the Frenchman’s falls, because he is nearing his maximum of population It is an inevitable consequence of his geographical conditions.  But eastward of him, from his eastern boundaries to the Pacific, is a country already too populous to conquer, but with possibilities of further expansion that are gigantic.  The Slav will be free to increase and multiply for another hundred years.  Eastward and southward bristle the Slavs, and behind the Slavs are the colossal possibilities of Asia.

Even German vanity, even the preposterous ambitions that spring from that brief triumph of Sedan, must awaken at last to these manifest facts, and on the day when Germany is fully awake we may count the Western European Armageddon as “off” and turn our eyes to the greater needs that will arise beyond Germany.  The old game will be over and a quite different new game will begin in international relations.

During these last few years of worry and bluster across the North Sea we have a little forgotten India in our calculations.  As Germany faces round eastward again, as she must do before very long, we shall find India resuming its former central position in our ideas of international politics.  With India we may pursue one of two policies:  we may keep her divided and inefficient for war, as she is at present, and hold her and own her and defend her as a prize, or we may arm her and assist her development into a group of quasi-independent English-speaking States—­in which case she will become our partner and possibly at last even our senior partner.  But that is by the way.  What I am pointing out now is that whether we fight Germany or not, a time is drawing near when Germany will cease to be our war objective and we shall cease to be Germany’s war objective, and when there will have to be a complete revision of our military and naval equipment in relation to those remoter, vaster Asiatic possibilities.