ace,
therefore, these outlying others are taken for granted, very much as one
takes the nimbus for granted in speaking of one of the greater saints of
God.

* * * * *

So the argument returns to the alternative: Peace by unconditional
surrender and submission, or peace by elimination of Imperial Germany
(and Japan). There is no middle course apparent. The old-fashioned--that
is to say nineteenth-century--plan of competitive defensive armament and
a balance of powers has been tried, and it has not proved to be a
success, even so early in the twentieth century. This plan offers a
substitute (_Ersatz_) for peace; but even as such it has become
impracticable. The modern, or rather the current late-modern, state of
the industrial arts does not tolerate it. Technological knowledge has
thrown the advantage in military affairs definitively to the offensive,
particularly to the offensive that is prepared beforehand with the
suitable appliances and with men ready matured in that rigorous and
protracted training by which alone they can become competent to make
warlike use of these suitable appliances provided by the modern
technology. At the same time, and by grace of the same advance in
technology, any well-designed offensive can effectually reach any given
community, in spite of distance or of other natural obstacles. The era
of defensive armaments and diplomatic equilibration, as a substitute for
peace, has been definitively closed by the modern state of the
industrial arts.

Of the two alternatives spoken of above, the former--peace by submission
under an alien dynasty--is presumably not a practicable solution, as has
appeared in the course of the foregoing argument.

The modern nations are not spiritually ripe for it. Whether they have
reached even that stage of national sobriety, or neutrality, that would
enable them to live at peace among themselves after elimination of the
Imperial Powers is still open to an uneasy doubt. It would be by a
precarious margin that they can be counted on so to keep the peace in
the absence of provocation from without the pale. Their predilection for
peace goes to no greater lengths than is implied in the formula: Peace
with Honour; which assuredly does not cover a peace of non-resistance,
and which, in effect, leaves the distinction between an offensive and a
defensive war somewhat at loose ends. The national prestige is still a
live asset in the mind of the