It is already illustrated in the present war; Italy has broken away from a definite and formal alliance which every one supposed would range her on the German side.  There is at least a possibility that she may finally come down upon the Anglo-Franco-Russian side.  You have Japan, which little more than a decade ago was fighting bitterly against Russia, today ranged upon the side of Russia.

The position of Russia is still more startling.  In the struggles of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Britain was almost always on the side of Russia; then for two generations she was taught that any increase of the power of Russia was a particularly dangerous menace.  That once more was a decade ago suddenly changed, and Britain is now fighting to increase both relatively and absolutely the power of a country which her last war on the Continent was fought to check.  The war before that which Great Britain fought upon the Continent was fought in alliance with Germans against the power of France.  As to the Austrians, whom Britain is now fighting, they were for many years her faithful allies.  So it is very nearly true to say of nearly all the combatants respectively that they have no enemy today that was not, historically speaking, quite recently an ally, and not an ally today that was not in the recent past an enemy.

These combinations, therefore, are not, never have been, and never can be permanent.  If history, even quite recent history, has any meaning at all, the next ten or fifteen or twenty years will be bound to see among these tan combatants now in the field rearrangements and permutations out of which the crushed and suppressed Germany that is to follow the war—­a Germany which will embrace, nevertheless, a hundred million of the same race, highly efficient, highly educated, trained for co-ordination and common action—­will be bound sooner or later to find her chance.

If America should by any catastrophe join Britain or any other nation for the purpose of maintaining a “balance of power” in the world, then indeed would her last state be worse than her first.  The essential vice of the balance of power is that it is based upon a fundamentally false assumption as to the real relationship of nations and as to the function and nature of force in human affairs.  The limits of the present article preclude any analysis of most of the monstrous fallacies, but a hint can be given of one or two.

First, of course, if you could get such a thing as a real “balance of power”—­two parties confronting one another with about equal forces—­you would probably get a situation most favorable to war.  Neither being manifestly inferior to the other, neither would be disposed to yield; each being manifestly as good as the other, would feel in “honor” bound to make no concession.  If a power quite obviously superior to its rival makes concessions the world may give it credit for magnanimity in yielding, but otherwise it would always be in the position of being compelled to vindicate its courage.  Our notions of honor and valor being what they are, no situation could be created more likely to bring about deadlocks and precipitate fights.  All the elements are there for bringing about that position in which the only course left is “to fight it out.”