t even apart from this influence, as already noted, America cannot
escape the military any more than she has escaped the commercial and
financial effects of this war. She may never be drawn into active
military co-operation with other nations, but she is affected none the
less--by a demand for a naval programme immensely larger than any
American could have anticipated a year since, by plans for an enormously
enlarged army.

That, it will be argued, is the one thing needed--to be stronger than
our prospective enemy. And, of course, any enemy--whether he be one
nation or a group--who really does contemplate aggression, would on his
side take care to be stronger than us. War and peace are matters of two
parties, and any principle which you may lay down for one is applicable
to the other. When we say "Si vis pacem, para bellum" we must apply it
to all parties. One eminent upholder of this principle has told us that
the only way to be sure of peace is to be so much stronger than your
enemy that he will not dare to attack you. Apply that to the two parties
and you get this result--here are two nations or two groups of nations
likely to quarrel. How shall they keep the peace? And we say quite
seriously that they will keep the peace if each is stronger than the
other.

This principle, therefore, which looks at first blush like an axiom, is,
as a matter of fact, an attempt to achieve a physical impossibility and
always ends, as it has ended in Europe on this occasion, in explosion.
You cannot indefinitely pile up explosive material without an accident
of some sort occurring; it is bound to occur. But you will note this:
that the militarist--while avowing by his conduct that nations can no
longer in a military sense be independent, that they are obliged to
co-operate with others and consequently depend upon some sort of an
arrangement, agreement, compact, alliance with others--has adopted a
form of compact which merely perpetuates the old impossible situation on
a larger scale! He has devised the "balance of power."

For several generations Britain, which has occupied with reference to
the Continent of Europe somewhat the position which we are now coming to
occupy with regard to Europe as a whole, has acted on this
principle--that so long as the powers of the Continent were fairly
equally divided she felt she could with a fair chance of safety face
either one or the other. But if one group became so much stronger than
the othe