And yet men continued to speak of the Balance of Power as though there had been no change, and as though Castlereagh’s ideas were as applicable to the novel situation as they had been to the old!  That illustrates the tyranny of phrases.  Cynics have said that language is used to conceal our thoughts.  It is difficult to resist the conclusion that phrases are used to save us the trouble of thinking.  We are always giving things labels in order to put them away in their appropriate pigeon-holes, and then we talk about the labels without thinking about them, and often forgetting (if we ever knew) the things for which they stand.  So we Pelmanised the Balance of Power, and continued to use the phrase without in the least troubling to ask what it means.  When I asked at the Foreign Office whether diplomatists meant by the Balance of Power the sort of simple balance between two great alliances like the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, I was told “yes”; and there was some surprise—­since the tradition of Castlereagh is strong in the service—­when I pointed out that that was an entirely different balance from that of which Castlereagh had approved as a guarantee of peace.  You remember the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland—­an excellent text-book for students of politics—­and how the cat gradually faded away leaving only its grin behind it to perplex and puzzle the observer.  So the body and the substance of Castlereagh’s Balance of Power passed away, and still men talk of the grin and look to the phrase to save them from war.  Whether to call them visionaries or the blind, I do not know.

MISCHIEVOUS HALLUCINATION

In either case, it is a mischievous hallucination; for the simple Balance of Power between two great combinations is not only no guarantee of peace, but the great begetter of fear, of the race for armaments, and of war.  Consider for a moment.  If you want a balance, you want to have it perfect.  What is a perfect balance between two opposing weights or forces?  It is one which the addition of a feather-weight to either scale will at once and completely upset.  Now what will that equipoise produce?  The ease with which the balance may be destroyed will produce either on one side the temptation to upset it, and on the other fear lest it be upset, or fear on both sides at once.  What indeed was it but this even balance and consequent fear which produced the race for armaments?  And what does the race for armaments result in but in war?  If we want war, we need only aim at a Balance of Power, and it will do the rest.  So far from being a guarantee of peace, the Balance of Power is a sovereign specific for precipitating war.