That, it will be argued, is the one thing needed—­to be stronger than our prospective enemy.  And, of course, any enemy—­whether he be one nation or a group—­who really does contemplate aggression, would on his side take care to be stronger than us.  War and peace are matters of two parties, and any principle which you may lay down for one is applicable to the other.  When we say “Si vis pacem, para bellum” we must apply it to all parties.  One eminent upholder of this principle has told us that the only way to be sure of peace is to be so much stronger than your enemy that he will not dare to attack you.  Apply that to the two parties and you get this result—­here are two nations or two groups of nations likely to quarrel.  How shall they keep the peace?  And we say quite seriously that they will keep the peace if each is stronger than the other.

This principle, therefore, which looks at first blush like an axiom, is, as a matter of fact, an attempt to achieve a physical impossibility and always ends, as it has ended in Europe on this occasion, in explosion.  You cannot indefinitely pile up explosive material without an accident of some sort occurring; it is bound to occur.  But you will note this:  that the militarist—­while avowing by his conduct that nations can no longer in a military sense be independent, that they are obliged to co-operate with others and consequently depend upon some sort of an arrangement, agreement, compact, alliance with others—­has adopted a form of compact which merely perpetuates the old impossible situation on a larger scale!  He has devised the “balance of power.”

For several generations Britain, which has occupied with reference to the Continent of Europe somewhat the position which we are now coming to occupy with regard to Europe as a whole, has acted on this principle—­that so long as the powers of the Continent were fairly equally divided she felt she could with a fair chance of safety face either one or the other.  But if one group became so much stronger than the other that it was in danger of dominating the whole Continent, then Britain might find herself faced by an overwhelming power with which she would be unable to deal.  To prevent this she joined the weaker group.  Thus Britain intervened in Continental politics against Napoleon as she has intervened today against the Kaiser.

But this policy is merely a perpetuation on a larger scale of the principle of “each being stronger than the other.”  Military power, in any case, is a thing very difficult to estimate; an apparently weaker group or nation has often proved, in fact, to be the stronger, so that there is a desire on the part of both sides to give the benefit of the doubt to themselves.  Thus the natural and latent effort to be strongest is obviously fatal to any “balance.”  Neither side, in fact, desires a balance; each desires to have the balance tilted in its favor.  This sets up a perpetual tendency toward rearrangement, and regroupings and reshufflings in these international alliances sometimes take place with extraordinary and startling rapidity, as in the case of the Balkan States.