f 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.

THE ALTERNATIVE

We have, indeed, to face the facts, and the facts about the Balance of
Power must dominate our deliberations and determine the fate of our
programmes. There may be no more war for a generation, but there can be
no peace with a Balance of Power. There can be nothing better than an
armed truce; and an armed truce, with super-dreadnoughts costing from
four to eight times what they did before the war, is fatal to any
programme of retrenchment and reform. We