That antithesis comes out wherever the problem of preserving the peace
of the world is seriously and intelligently discussed. Six years ago,
when he began to turn his attention to this subject, Lord Robert Cecil
wrote and privately circulated a memorandum in which he advocated
something like a League of Nations. To that memorandum an able reply was
drafted by an eminent authority in the Foreign Office, in which it was
contended that out of the discussion "the Balance of Power emerges as
the fundamental factor." That criticism for the time being checked
official leanings towards a League of Nations. But the war went on,
threatening to end in a balance of power, which was anything but welcome
to those who combined a theoretical belief in the Balance of Power with
a practical demand for its complete destruction by an overwhelming
victory for our Allies and ourselves. Meanwhile, before America came
in, President Wilson was declaring that, in order to guarantee the
permanence of such a settlement as would commend itself to the United
States, there must be, not "a Balance of Power but a Community of
Power."
Opinion in England was moving in the same direction. The League of
Nations Society (afterwards called "Union") had been formed, and at a
great meeting on 14th May, 1917, speeches advocating some such league as
the best means of preventing future wars were delivered by Lord Bryce,
General Smuts, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Hugh Cecil, and
others. Labour was even more emphatic; and, responding to popular
opinion, the Government, at Christmas, 1917, appointed a small committee
to explore the historical, juridical, and diplomatic bearings of the
suggested solution. A brief survey sufficed to show that attempts to
guarantee the peace of the world resolved themselves into three
categories: (1) a Monopoly of Power, (2) Balance of Power, and (3)
Community of Power. Rome had established the longest peace in history by
subjugating all her rivals and creating a _Pax Romana_ imposed by a
world-wide Empire. That Empire lasted for centuries, and the idea
persisted throughout the middle ages. In modern times Philip II. of
Spain, Louis XIV. of France, Napoleon, and even the Kaiser were
suspected of attempting to revive it; and their efforts provoked the
counter idea, first of a Balance of Power, and then in these latter days
of a Community of Power. The conception of a Monopoly of Power was by
common consent abandoned as impossible and intolerable, after the rise
of nationality, by all except the particular aspirants to the monopoly.
The Balance of Power and the Community of Power--in other words, the
League of Nations--thus became the two rival solutions of the problem of
permanent peace.