l that was to follow that at that point stands, looking down the
vista of the centuries, the brilliant and sinister figure of Machiavelli.
From that date onwards international policy has meant Machiavellianism.
Sometimes the masters of the craft, like Catherine de Medici or Napoleon,
have avowed it; sometimes, like Frederick the Great, they have disclaimed
it. But always they have practised it. They could not, indeed, practise
anything else. For it is as true of an aggregation of States as of an
aggregation of individuals that, whatever moral sentiments may prevail, if
there is no common law and no common force the best intentions will be
defeated by lack of confidence and security. Mutual fear and mutual
suspicion, aggression masquerading as defence and defence masquerading as
aggression, will be the protagonists in the bloody drama; and there will
be, what Hobbes truly asserted to be the essence of such a situation, a
chronic state of war, open or veiled. For peace itself will be a latent
war; and the more the States arm to prevent a conflict the more certainly
will it be provoked, since to one or another it will always seem a better
chance to have it now than to have it on worse conditions later. Some
one State at any moment may be the immediate offender; but the main and
permanent offence is common to all States. It is the anarchy which they
are all responsible for perpetuating.

While this anarchy continues the struggle between States will tend to
assume a certain stereotyped form. One will endeavour to acquire supremacy
over the others for motives at once of security and of domination, the
others will combine to defeat it, and history will turn upon the two poles
of empire and the balance of power. So it has been in Europe, and so it
will continue to be, until either empire is achieved, as once it was
achieved by Rome, or a common law and a common authority is established
by agreement. In the past empire over Europe has been sought by Spain,
by Austria, and by France; and soldiers, politicians, and professors in
Germany have sought, and seek, to secure it now for Germany. On the other
hand, Great Britain has long stood, as she stands now, for the balance of
power. As ambitious, as quarrelsome, and as aggressive as other States, her
geographical position has directed her aims overseas rather than toward
the Continent of Europe. Since the fifteenth century her power has never
menaced the Continent. On the contrary, he