As I see the situation there really are only three contestants in the war—­England, Russia, and Germany.  France, Belgium, and Austria are important auxiliaries, but they are playing to a certain extent secondary roles.

England’s real object is the utter defeat of Germany—­nothing more nor less than that—­and if this is accomplished England will have control of Europe.  It must be remembered that the English Government and English people frequently have asserted that they would not be satisfied with mere defeat of Germany’s armed forces, but that her power must be permanently paralyzed.

If England should accomplish this, with Germany, its army and its navy, thus wholly out of the way, no one would be left for England to fear in future upon the high seas.

That might be the chief significance of England’s complete victory, and its complete significance would be that every nation in the world would have to do the British bidding, for should any one refuse she could completely destroy its commerce and shut off its overseas supplies.

In the cases of most nations overseas supplies include material vital to the continuance of life and happiness; to every nation, in these days of a developed and habitual foreign trade, overseas supplies are actually essential, even when they do not necessarily include meats and wheat and other foodstuffs.

The effect upon the United States of such an English victory would be most disastrous.

The alliance between England and Japan is likely to be permanent.  That is something which Americans cannot afford to forget for a moment.

England needs Japan in the Far East, especially as an ally in case of need, which at some time is certain to arrive, against Russia; and Japan for many reasons needs the strength of English backing, without which her financial and political situation soon would become most dangerous, if not collapse.

Such a permanent alliance would have this consequence upon us, that without even the probability of difficulties with either England or Japan—­and, personally, I do not believe that such a probability need be feared—­we nevertheless year after year would be compelled to increasingly prepare for what may be defined as the disagreeable possibility of the eventuation of a disagreeable possibility.

Certainly we should be under the necessity of notably and, therefore, very expensively, increasing our naval armament; we should be under the necessity of large expenditures for coast defense.

Corollary military cost would be enormous and burdensome.  The preparation which would be imposed on us as a necessity by such a permanent alliance would be sufficiently extensive and expensive to burden our people heavily and handicap our national progress.

It might involve, perhaps, even a greater hardship in our case than militarism has involved in Germany.  It is improbable that the average American realizes the part which absence of such burdens has played in our national development so far; it would be difficult for the average American who has not studied the whole subject carefully to estimate accurately the part which the imposition of such a burden would be sure to play in our future.