the purpose of the British Government which fashioned the
policy in question was to leave no stone unturned in the endeavor to
find a way of keeping the peace between Germany and the Entente Powers.
Now success in that endeavor was not a certainty, and it was necessary
to insure against the risk of failure. The second branch of British
policy related to the provision for defense rendered imperative by the
element of uncertainty which was unavoidable. The duty of the
Government of this country was to make sure that, if their endeavor to
preserve peace failed, the country should be prepared, in the best way
of those that were practicable, to face the situation that might emerge.

Impetuous persons ask why, if there was even a chance of a great
European war in which we might be involved, we did not appreciate the
magnitude of what was at stake, and, laying everything else aside,
concentrate our efforts on the immediate fashioning of such vast
military forces as we possessed toward the end of the war? The answer
will be found in the fourth chapter. We were aware of the risk, and we
took what we thought the best means to meet it. Had we tried to do what
we are reproached for not having done, we must have become weaker before
we could have become stronger. For this statement I have given the
military reasons. In a time of peace, even if the country had assented
to the attempt being made, it is certain that we could not have
accomplished such a purpose without long delay. It is probable that the
result would have been failure, and it is almost certain that we should
have provoked a "preventive war" on the part of Germany, a war not only
with a very fair prospect, as things then stood, of a German success,
but with something else that would have looked like the justification of
a German effort to prevent that country from being encircled. Such a war
would, with equal likelihood, have been the outcome even of the
proclamation at such a time of a military alliance between the Entente
Powers.

Other critics, belonging to a wholly different school of political
thought, ask why we moved at all, and why we did not adhere to the good
old policy of holding aloof from interference in Continental affairs.
The answer is simple. The days when "splendid isolation" was possible
were gone. Our sea power, even as an instrument of self-defense, was in
danger of becoming inadequate in the absence of friendships which should
insure that other n