But no one who thinks that power--whether a Monopoly, a Balance, or even
a Community of Power is the ultimate guardian angel of our peace, has
the root of the matter in him. Men, said Burke, are not governed
primarily by laws, still less by force; and behind all power stands
opinion. To believe in public opinion rather than in might excludes the
believer from the regular forces of militarism and condemns him as a
visionary and blind. For advocates of the Balance of Power bear a
striking resemblance to the Potsdam school; and even so moderate a
German as the late Dr. Rathenau declared in his unregenerate days before
the war that Germans were not in the habit of reckoning with public
opinion. Nevertheless, there is a frontier in the world which for a
century and more has enjoyed a security which all the armaments of
Prussian militarism could not give the German Fatherland; and the
absolute security of that frontier rests not upon a monopoly nor a
community, still less upon a balance of power, but on the opinion held
on both sides of that frontier that all power is irrational and futile
as a guarantee of peace between civilised or Christian people.
Let us look at that frontier for a moment. It is in its way the most
wonderful thing on earth, and it holds a light to lighten the nations
and to guide our feet into the way of peace. It runs, of course, between
the Dominion of Canada and the United States of America across the great
lakes and three thousand miles of prairie; and from the military and
strategic point of view it is probably the worst frontier in the world.
Why then is it secure? Is it because of any monopoly or community or
balance of power? Is it because the United States and the British
Empire are under a common government, or because there is along that
frontier a nicely-balanced distribution of military strength? No, it is
secure, not in spite of the absence of force, but because of the absence
of force; and if you want to destroy the peace of that frontier from end
to end, all you need to do is to send a regiment to protect it, launch a
_Dreadnought_ on those lakes, and establish a balance of power. For
every regiment or warship on one side will produce a regiment or warship
on the other; and then your race for armaments will begin, and the
poison will spread until the whole of America becomes like Europe, an
armed camp of victims to the theory of strategic frontiers and of the
Balance of Power.
Those theories, their application, and their consequences recently cost
the world thirty million casualties and thousands of millions of pounds
within a brief five years, and yet left the frontiers of Europe less
secure than they were before. Three thousand miles of frontier in North
America have in more than a hundred years cost us hardly a life, or a
limb, or a penny. As we put those details side by side we realise
_quantula regitur mundus sapientia_--with how little wisdom do men rule
the world. Yet the truth was told us long ago that he that ruleth his
spirit is better than he that taketh a city, and we might have learnt by
our experience of the peace that the only conquest that really pays is
the conquest of oneself.
The real peace of that North American frontier is due to no conquest of
Americans by Canadians or of Canadians by Americans, but to their
conquest of themselves and of that foolish pride of "heathen folk who
put their trust in reeking tube and iron shard." Let us face the facts,
whatever the visionaries and the blind may say. So be it. The war is a
fact, and so is the desolation it has wrought. But that Anglo-American
frontier is also a fact, and so is that century of peace which happily
followed upon the resolution to depend for the defence of that frontier
on moral restraint instead of on military force. Verily, peace hath her
victories not less renowned than those of war.