The theory of the Balance of Power is built upon the idea that states act for their own interests in the restraint of one another from overweening ambition. At bottom it is selfish. It assumes a state of rivalry; and it is necessary to the theory that as fast as one side gains in strength the other shall gain also. If the Entente nations acquire Morocco, Tripoli, Cyrenaica, and parts of Persia, the central powers must gain also or they are over-balanced. And who is to determine how much they shall gain? Manifestly each will strive to get all it can. The very process of gaining stimulates antipathy and makes war a probability.
Another observation that is worthy of consideration is that balance is logically possible only when more than two sides are opposed to one another. When Great Britain, France and Russia had varying purposes it was not difficult for Bismarck to play one against the other and so keep the equilibrium. But when it happened that the central powers became so strong that they constituted a threat against every other nation in the world, it was natural for the other nations to unite to check them. In such a condition no true balance of power could exist, and it was folly to expect that theory to serve as it served in former days.
One of the things the world ought to learn from the war that now afflicts it is that no nation can conquer the world by stealth. It is one of the happy shortcomings of political selfishness that its agents usually fancy they can cover their tracks. How often do we see a bad politician doing something wrong in the false confidence that while he knows what he is doing the people cannot see it! So with Germany in the years before the war. Making her plans for large accretions of power, she thought she could steal a march on other nations and gain in a spurt a position from which at a later time she could extend her power by other and still larger sweeps of conquest. She did not think that the other nations would take part until it was too late.
But the rest of the world was as wide awake as she. No man in England accustomed to view political things in the large failed to see the instant the war began that the hour of crisis for his country was at hand. If Great Britain had not fought in August, 1914, she would have been the stupidest nation in the world. To have allowed her greatest rival to sit down in the French channel ports would have been suicidal for her. The only probable explanation of Germany’s failure to realize this is that she had become so confident of the superiority of her own mind that she thought all other minds were sodden.
In a similar way, when she had carried on the war for two years and a half and resorted to the submarine in ruthless attacks on American ships of commerce, she should have known that she was giving the United States a reason for participating in the war at a time when it was clear to most Americans that their national safety demanded that they should take part. If by this kind of battle the Germans forced Europe to bend to her, what could we expect in the future? The very imminence of German success demanded that the United States should throw herself into the struggle. And after the war is over this truth will be written indelibly in the pages of history: No great nation can be allowed to conquer the world piecemeal.
CHAPTER IX
IF THE SUBMARINES FAIL
The German people say the submarines will not fail. They seem to think that what they call the highest achievement of the scientific mind of Germany cannot fail. There is little doubt that they pin on this arm of the service their last hope of securing a decision in actual warfare. If it fails them they can look forward only to a long course of sheer dogged resistance, hoping they can last longer than their adversaries. Let us consider the probable results respectively of the success and the failure of the submarine campaign.
If the under-sea boats do all the Germans expect of them the result is soon told. Great Britain will be forced to make lame and inefficient war, France will be unable to do more than hold on to the line that she occupies, and the United States, unable to send her vast army across the seas in large numbers, will not be able to repair the loss of strength that her allies sustain. Under such circumstances Russia, even if she should recover from her present state of weakness, could hardly deliver the blows that would bring Germany to reason.