r own interest has dictated that
she should resist there the enterprise of empire, and join in the defensive
efforts of the threatened States. To any State of Europe that has conceived
the ambition to dominate the Continent this policy of England has seemed
as contrary to the interests of civilization as the policy of the Papacy
appeared in Italy to an Italian patriot like Machiavelli. He wanted Italy
enslaved, in order that it might be united. And so do some Germans now want
Europe enslaved, that it may have peace under Germany. They accuse England
of perpetuating for egotistic ends the state of anarchy. But it was not
thus that Germans viewed British policy when the Power that was to give
peace to Europe was not Germany, but France. In this long and bloody game
the partners are always changing, and as partners change so do views.
One thing only does not change, the fundamental anarchy. International
relations, it is agreed, can only turn upon force. It is the disposition
and grouping of the forces alone that can or does vary.

But Europe is not the only scene of the conflict between empire and
the balance. Since the sixteenth century the European States have been
contending for mastery, not only over one another, but over the world.
Colonial empires have risen and fallen. Portugal, Spain, Holland, in turn
have won and lost. England and France have won, lost, and regained. In
the twentieth century Great Britain reaps the reward of her European
conflicts in the Empire (wrongly so-called) on which the sun never sets.
Next to her comes France, in Africa and the East; while Germany looks out
with discontented eyes on a world already occupied, and, cherishing the
same ambitions all great States have cherished before her, finds the
time too mature for their accomplishment by the methods that availed in
the past. Thus, not only in Europe but on the larger stage of the world
the international rivalry is pursued. But it is the same rivalry and it
proceeds from the same cause: the mutual aggression and defence of beings
living in a "state of nature."

Without this historical background no special study of the events that led
up to the present war can be either just or intelligible. The feeling of
every nation about itself and its neighbours is determined by the history
of the past and by the way in which that history is regarded. The picture
looks different from every point of view. Indeed, a comprehension of the
causes of the w