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.
Of course, there are arguments for a Balance of Power. Plenty of them,
alas! though they are not often avowed. It produces other things than
war. For one thing, it makes fortunes for munition firms. For another,
it provides careers for those who have a taste for fighting or for
military pomp. Thirdly, in order to maintain armies and navies and
armaments, it keeps up taxation and diverts money from social,
educational, and other reforms which some people want to postpone.
Fourthly, it gratifies those who believe that force is the ultimate
sanction of order, and, by necessitating the maintenance of large forces
for defensive purposes, incidentally provides means for dealing with
domestic discontent. Fifthly, it panders to those who talk of prestige
and think that prestige depends upon the size of a nation's armaments.
For the sake of these things many would be willing to take the risk of
war which the Balance of Power involves. But most of those who use the
phrase are unconscious of these motives, and use it as they use many
another phrase, simply because they know not what it means. For,
assuredly, no sane person who had examined the Balance of Power, as it
existed before the war, could ever advocate it as a means of peace.
Indeed, whenever there has been the prospect of a practical Balance of
Power, its votaries have shown by their action that they knew their
creed was nonsense. The late war, for instance, might have been ended in
1916 on the basis of a Balance of Power. There were a few who believed
that that was the best solution; but they were not our latter-day
believers in the Balance of Power. Their cry was all for a fight to a
finish and a total destruction of the Balance of Power by an
overwhelming victory for the Allies, and their one regret is that a
final blow by Marshal Foch did not destroy the last vestige of a German
army. What is the point of expressing belief in the Balance of Power
when you indignantly repudiate your own doctrine on every occasion on
which you might be able to give it effect? And what is the point of the
present advocacy of the Balance of Power by those who think themselves
neither visionaries nor blind? Do they wish to restore the military
strength of Germany and of Russia and to see an Alliance between them
confronting a Franco-British union, compelled thereby to be militarist
too? Is it really that they wish to be militarists and that the League
of Nations, with its promise of peace, retrenchment, and reform, is to
them a greater evil than the Balance of Power?