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It was because the Allies really adopted the doctrine of the mailed fist
that we are now suffering from the terrible economic difficulties and
dangers which surround us. I venture to insist on that now, because
there are a large number of people who have not abandoned that view.
There are still a number of people who think the real failure that has
been committed is not that we went wrong, as I think, in our
negotiations at Versailles, but that we have not exerted enough force,
and that the remedy for the present situation is more threats of force.
I am sure it won't answer. I want to say that that doctrine is just as
pernicious when applied to France as when applied to Germany. You have
made an agreement. You have signed and ratified a treaty; you are
internationally bound by that treaty. It is no use turning round and
with a new incarnation of the policy of the mailed fist threatening one
of your co-signatories that they are bound to abandon the rights which
you wrongly and foolishly gave to them under that treaty.

I am against a policy based on force as applied to Germany. I am equally
opposed to a policy based on force as applied to France. If we really
understand the creed for which we stand, we must aim at co-operation all
round. If we have made a mistake we must pay for it. If we are really
anxious to bring peace to the world, and particularly to Europe, we must
be prepared for sacrifices. We have got to establish economic peace, and
if we don't establish it in a very short time we shall be faced with
economic ruin. In the strictest, most nationalistic interests of this
country, we have to see that economic war comes to an end. We have got
to make whatever concessions are necessary in order to bring that peace
into being.

ECONOMIC PEACE

That is true not only of the reparation question; it is true of our
whole economic policy. We have been preaching to Europe, and quite
rightly, that the erection of economic barriers between countries is a
treachery to the whole spirit of the League of Nations, and all that it
means, and yet with these words scarcely uttered we turn round and pass
through Parliament a new departure in our economic system which is the
very contradiction of everything we have said in international
conference.

The Safeguarding of Industries Act is absolutely opposed to the whole
spirit and purpose which the League of Nations has in view. A reference
was made by your chairman to Lord Grey, and I saw in a very
distinguished organ of the Coalition an attack on his recent speech. We
are told that he ought not at this crisis to be suggesting that the
present Government is not worthy of our confidence, but how can we trust
the present Government? How is it possible to trust them when one finds
at Brussels, at Genoa, at the Hague, and elsewhere they preach the
necessity of the economic unity of Europe, and then go down to the House
of Commons and justify this Act on the strictest, the baldest, the most
unvarnished doctrine of economic particularism for this country? Nor
does it stop there. I told you just now that for me this doctrine on
which the League is based goes right through many other problems than
those of a strictly international character. You will never solve
Indian or Egyptian difficulties by a reliance on force and force alone.
I believe that the deplorable, the scandalous condition to which the
neighbouring island of Ireland has been reduced is largely due to the
failure to recognise that by unrestricted unreasoning, and sometimes
immoral force, you cannot reach the solution of the difficulties of that
country.

And in industry it is the same thing. If you are really to get a
solution of these great problems, depend upon it you will never do it by
strikes and lock-outs. I am an outsider in industrial matters. I am
reproached when I venture to say anything about them with the
observation that I am no business man. I can only hope that in this case
lookers-on may sometimes see most of the game. But to me it is
profoundly depressing when I see whichever section of the industrial
world happens to have the market with it--whether employers or
wage-earners--making it its only concern to down the other party as much
as it can. You will never reach a solution that way. You have to
recognise in industrial as in international affairs that the spirit of
co-operation, the spirit of partnership, is your only hope of salvation.

THE TWO CAUSES OF UNREST

What is the conclusion of what I have tried to say to you? There are at
the present time two great causes of fighting and hostility. There used
to be three. There was a time when men fought about religious doctrine,
and though I do not defend it, it was perhaps less sordid than some of
our fights to-day. Now the two great causes of fighting are greed and
fear. Generally speaking, I think we may say that greed in international
matters is a less potent cause of hostility than fear. The disease the
world is suffering from is the disease of fear and suspicion. You see it
between man and man, between class and class, and most of all between
nation and nation. People reproach this great country and other great
countries with being unreasonable or unwilling to make concessions. If
you look deeply into it you will find always the same cause. It is not
mere perversity; it is fear and fear alone that makes men unreasonable
and contentious. It is no new thing; it has existed from the foundation
of the world. The Prime Minister the other day said, and said quite
truly, that the provisions of the Covenant, however admirable, were not
in themselves sufficient to secure the peace of the world. He made an
appeal, quite rightly, to the religious forces and organisations to
assist. I agree, but after all something may be done by political
action, and something by international organisation. In modern medicine
doctors are constantly telling us they cannot cure any disease--all they
can do is to give nature a chance. No Covenant will teach men to be
moral or peace-loving, but you can remove, diminish, or modify the
conditions which make for war, and take obstacles out of the way of
peace. We advocate partnership in industry and social life. We advocate
self-government, international co-operation. We recognise that these are
no ends in themselves; they are means to the end; they are the
influences which will facilitate the triumph of the right and impede the
success of the wrong.

But looking deeper into the matter, to the very foundations, we
recognise, all of us, the most devoted adherents of the League, and all
men of goodwill, that in the end we must strive for the brotherhood of
man. We admit we can do comparatively little to help it forward. We
recognise that our efforts, whether by covenant or other means, must
necessarily be imperfect; but we say, and say rightly, that we have been
told that perfect love casteth out fear, and that any step towards that
love, however imperfect, will at any rate mitigate the terrors of
mankind.

THE BALANCE OF POWER

BY PROFESSOR A.F. POLLARD

Hon. Litt.D.; Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford; F.B.A.; Professor of
English History in the University of London; Chairman of the Institute
of Historical Research.

Professor Pollard said:--The usual alternative to the League of Nations,
put forward as a means of averting war by those who desire or profess to
desire permanent peace, but dislike or distrust the League of Nations,
is what they call the Balance of Power. It is a familiar phrase; but the
thing for which the words are supposed to stand, has, if it can save us
from war, so stupendous a virtue that it is worth while inquiring what
it means, if it has any meaning at all. For words are not the same as
things, and the more a phrase is used the less it tends to mean: verbal
currency, like the coinage, gets worn with use until in time it has to
be called in as bad. The time has come to recall the Balance of Power as
a phrase that has completely lost the value it possessed when originally
it was coined.

Recent events have made an examination of the doctrine of the Balance of
Power a matter of some urgency. The Allies who won the war concluded a
pact to preserve the peace, but in that pact they have not yet been able
to include Germany or Russia or the United States, three Powers which
are, potentially at any rate, among the greatest in the world. So, some
fifty years ago, Bismarck, who won three wars in the mid-Victorian age,
set himself to build up a pact of peace. But his Triple Alliance was not
only used to restrain, but abused to repress, the excluded Powers; and
that abuse of a pact of peace drove the excluded Powers, France and
Russia, into each other's arms. There resulted the Balance of Power
which produced the war we have barely survived. And hardly was the great
war fought and won than we saw the wheel beginning to revolve once more.
The excluded Powers, repressed or merely restrained, began to draw
together; others than Turkey might gravitate in the same direction,
while the United States stands in splendid isolation as much aloof as we
were from the Triple Alliance and the Dual Entente a generation ago.
Another Balance of Power loomed on the horizon. "Let us face the facts,"
declared the _Morning Post_ on 22nd April last, "we are back again to
the doctrine of the Balance of Power, whatever the visionaries and the
blind may say." I propose to deal, as faithfully as I can in the time at
my disposal, with the visionaries and the blind--when we have discovered
who they are.

By "visionaries" I suppose the _Morning Post_ means those who believe in
the League of Nations; and by the "blind" I suppose it means them, too,
though usually a distinction is drawn between those who see too much and
those who cannot see at all. Nor need we determine whether those who
believe in the Balance of Power belong rather to the visionaries or to
the blind. A man may be receiving less than his due when he is asked
whether he is a knave or a fool, because the form of the question seems
to preclude the proper answer, which may be "both." Believers in the
Balance of Power are visionaries if they see in it a guarantee of peace,
and blind if they fail to perceive that it naturally and almost
inevitably leads to war. The fundamental antithesis is between the
Balance of Power and the League of Nations.

BALANCE OR LEAGUE?

That antithesis comes out wherever the problem of preserving the peace
of the world is seriously and intelligently discussed. Six years ago,
when he began to turn his attention to this subject, Lord Robert Cecil
wrote and privately circulated a memorandum in which he advocated
something like a League of Nations. To that memorandum an able reply was
drafted by an eminent authority in the Foreign Office, in which it was
contended that out of the discussion "the Balance of Power emerges as
the fundamental factor." That criticism for the time being checked
official leanings towards a League of Nations. But the war went on,
threatening to end in a balance of power, which was anything but welcome
to those who combined a theoretical belief in the Balance of Power with
a practical demand for its complete destruction by an overwhelming
victory for our Allies and ourselves. Meanwhile, before America came
in, President Wilson was declaring that, in order to guarantee the
permanence of such a settlement as would commend itself to the United
States, there must be, not "a Balance of Power but a Community of
Power."

Opinion in England was moving in the same direction. The League of
Nations Society (afterwards called "Union") had been formed, and at a
great meeting on 14th May, 1917, speeches advocating some such league as
the best means of preventing future wars were delivered by Lord Bryce,
General Smuts, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Hugh Cecil, and
others. Labour was even more emphatic; and, responding to popular
opinion, the Government, at Christmas, 1917, appointed a small committee
to explore the historical, juridical, and diplomatic bearings of the
suggested solution. A brief survey sufficed to show that attempts to
guarantee the peace of the world resolved themselves into three
categories: (1) a Monopoly of Power, (2) Balance of Power, and (3)
Community of Power. Rome had established the longest peace in history by
subjugating all her rivals and creating a _Pax Romana_ imposed by a
world-wide Empire. That Empire lasted for centuries, and the idea
persisted throughout the middle ages. In modern times Philip II. of
Spain, Louis XIV. of France, Napoleon, and even the Kaiser were
suspected of attempting to revive it; and their efforts provoked the
counter idea, first of a Balance of Power, and then in these latter days
of a Community of Power. The conception of a Monopoly of Power was by
common consent abandoned as impossible and intolerable, after the rise
of nationality, by all except the particular aspirants to the monopoly.
The Balance of Power and the Community of Power--in other words, the
League of Nations--thus became the two rival solutions of the problem of
permanent peace.

THE THEORY OF BALANCE

The discussion of their respective merits naturally led to an inquiry
into what the alternative policies really meant. But inasmuch as the
Foreign Office committee found itself able to agree in recommending some
form of League of Nations, the idea of the Balance of Power was not
subjected to so close a scrutiny or so searching an analysis as would
certainly have been the case had the committee realised the possibility
that reaction against an imperfect League of Nations might bring once
more to the front the idea of the Balance of Power. The fact was,
however, elicited that the Foreign Office conception of the Balance of
Power is a conception erroneously supposed to have been expressed by
Castlereagh at the time of the Congress of Vienna, and adopted as the
leading principle of nineteenth century British foreign policy.

Castlereagh was not, of course, the author of the phrase or of the
policy. The phrase can be found before the end of the seventeenth
century; and in the eighteenth the policy was always pleaded by
potentates and Powers when on the defensive, and ignored by them when in
pursuit of honour or vital interests. But Castlereagh defined it afresh
after the colossal disturbance of the balance which Napoleon effected;
and he explained it as "a just repartition of force amongst the States
of Europe." They were, so to speak, to be rationed by common agreement.
There were to be five or six Great Powers, whose independence was to be
above suspicion and whose strength was to be restrained by the jealous
watchfulness of one another. If any one State, like France under
Napoleon, grew too powerful, all the rest were to combine to restrain
it.

Now, there is a good deal in common between Castlereagh's idea and that
of the League of Nations. Of course, there are obvious differences.
Castlereagh's Powers were monarchies rather than peoples; they were
limited to Europe; little regard was paid to smaller States, whose
independence sometimes rested on no better foundation than the inability
of the Great Powers to agree about their absorption; and force rather
than law or public opinion was the basis of the scheme. But none of
these differences, important though they were, between Castlereagh's
Balance of Power and the League of Nations is so fundamental as the
difference between two things which are commonly regarded as identical,
viz., Castlereagh's idea of the Balance of Power and the meaning which
has since become attached to the phrase. There are at least two senses
in which it has been used, and the two are wholly incompatible with one
another. The League of Nations in reality resembles Castlereagh's
Balance of Power more closely than does the conventional notion of that
balance; and a verbal identity has concealed a real diversity to the
confusion of all political thought on the subject.

Castlereagh's Balance of Power is what I believe mathematicians call a
multiple balance. It was not like a pair of scales, in which you have
only two weights or forces balanced one against the other. It was rather
like a chandelier, in which you have five or six different weights
co-operating to produce a general stability or equilibrium. In
Castlereagh's scheme it would not much matter if one of the weights were
a little heavier than the others, because there would be four or five of
these others to counterbalance it; and his assumption was that these
other Powers would naturally combine for the purpose of redressing the
balance and preserving the peace. But a simple balance between two
opposing forces is a very different thing. If there are only two, you
have no combination on which you can rely to counteract the increasing
power of either, and the slightest disturbance suffices to upset the
balance. Castlereagh's whole scheme therefore presupposed the continued
and permanent existence of some five or six great Powers always
preserving their independence in foreign policy and war, and
automatically acting as a check upon the might and ambition of any
single State.

THE CHANGE SINCE CASTLEREAGH

Now, it was this condition, essential to the maintenance of
Castlereagh's Balance of Power, which completely broke down during the
course of the nineteenth century. Like most of the vital processes in
history, the change was gradual and unobtrusive, and its significance
escaped the notice of politicians, journalists, and even historians. Men
went on repeating Castlereagh's phrases about the Balance of Power
without perceiving that the circumstances, which alone had given it
reality, had entirely altered. The individual independence and automatic
action of the Great Powers in checking the growing ambitions and
strength of particular States were impaired, if not destroyed, by
separate Alliances, which formed units into groups for the purposes of
war and foreign policy, and broke up the unity of the European system,
just as a similar tendency threatens to break up the League of Nations.
There was a good deal of shifting about in temporary alliances which
there is no need to recount; but the ultimate upshot was the severance
of Europe into the two great groups with which we are all familiar, the
Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy on one side, and the
Triple Entente between Russia, France, and Great Britain on the other.
The multiple Balance of Power was thus changed into a simple balance
between two vast aggregations of force, and nothing remained outside to
hold the balance, except the United States, which had apparently
forsworn by the Monroe Doctrine the function of keeping it even.

And yet men continued to speak of the Balance of Power as though there
had been no change, and as though Castlereagh's ideas were as applicable
to the novel situation as they had been to the old! That illustrates
the tyranny of phrases. Cynics have said that language is used to
conceal our thoughts. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that
phrases are used to save us the trouble of thinking. We are always
giving things labels in order to put them away in their appropriate
pigeon-holes, and then we talk about the labels without thinking about
them, and often forgetting (if we ever knew) the things for which they
stand. So we Pelmanised the Balance of Power, and continued to use the
phrase without in the least troubling to ask what it means. When I asked
at the Foreign Office whether diplomatists meant by the Balance of Power
the sort of simple balance between two great alliances like the Triple
Alliance and the Triple Entente, I was told "yes"; and there was some
surprise--since the tradition of Castlereagh is strong in the
service--when I pointed out that that was an entirely different balance
from that of which Castlereagh had approved as a guarantee of peace. You
remember the Cheshire cat in _Alice in Wonderland_--an excellent
text-book for students of politics--and how the cat gradually faded away
leaving only its grin behind it to perplex and puzzle the observer. So
the body and the substance of Castlereagh's Balance of Power passed
away, and still men talk of the grin and look to the phrase to save them
from war. Whether to call them visionaries or the blind, I do not know.

MISCHIEVOUS HALLUCINATION

In either case, it is a mischievous hallucination; for the simple
Balance of Power between two great combinations is not only no guarantee
of peace, but the great begetter of fear, of the race for armaments, and
of war. Consider for a moment. If you want a balance, you want to have
it perfect. What is a perfect balance between two opposing weights or
forces? It is one which the addition of a feather-weight to either scale
will at once and completely upset. Now what will that equipoise produce?
The ease with which the balance may be destroyed will produce either on
one side the temptation to upset it, and on the other fear lest it be
upset, or fear on both sides at once. What indeed was it but this even
balance and consequent fear which produced the race for armaments? And
what does the race for armaments result in but in war? If we want war,
we need only aim at a Balance of Power, and it will do the rest. So far
from being a guarantee of peace, the Balance of Power is a sovereign
specific for precipitating war.

Of course, there are arguments for a Balance of Power. Plenty of them,
alas! though they are not often avowed. It produces other things than
war. For one thing, it makes fortunes for munition firms. For another,
it provides careers for those who have a taste for fighting or for
military pomp. Thirdly, in order to maintain armies and navies and
armaments, it keeps up taxation and diverts money from social,
educational, and other reforms which some people want to postpone.
Fourthly, it gratifies those who believe that force is the ultimate
sanction of order, and, by necessitating the maintenance of large forces
for defensive purposes, incidentally provides means for dealing with
domestic discontent. Fifthly, it panders to those who talk of prestige
and think that prestige depends upon the size of a nation's armaments.
For the sake of these things many would be willing to take the risk of
war which the Balance of Power involves. But most of those who use the
phrase are unconscious of these motives, and use it as they use many
another phrase, simply because they know not what it means. For,
assuredly, no sane person who had examined the Balance of Power, as it
existed before the war, could ever advocate it as a means of peace.

Indeed, whenever there has been the prospect of a practical Balance of
Power, its votaries have shown by their action that they knew their
creed was nonsense. The late war, for instance, might have been ended in
1916 on the basis of a Balance of Power. There were a few who believed
that that was the best solution; but they were not our latter-day
believers in the Balance of Power. Their cry was all for a fight to a
finish and a total destruction of the Balance of Power by an
overwhelming victory for the Allies, and their one regret is that a
final blow by Marshal Foch did not destroy the last vestige of a German
army. What is the point of expressing belief in the Balance of Power
when you indignantly repudiate your own doctrine on every occasion on
which you might be able to give it effect? And what is the point of the
present advocacy of the Balance of Power by those who think themselves
neither visionaries nor blind? Do they wish to restore the military
strength of Germany and of Russia and to see an Alliance between them
confronting a Franco-British union, compelled thereby to be militarist
too? Is it really that they wish to be militarists and that the League
of Nations, with its promise of peace, retrenchment, and reform, is to
them a greater evil than the Balance of Power?

WHERE THE LINE IS DRAWN

There is yet another fatal objection to the Balance of Power due to the
change in circumstances since the days of Castlereagh. He could afford
to think only of Europe, but we have to think of the world; and if our
specific has any value it must be of world-wide application. We cannot
proclaim the virtues of the Balance of Power and then propose to limit
it to the land or to any particular continent. Now, did our believers in
the Balance of Power ever wish to see power balanced anywhere else than
on the continent of Europe? That, if we studied history in any other
language than our own, we should know was the gibe which other peoples
flung at our addiction to the Balance of Power. We wanted, they said, to
see a Balance of Power on the continent of Europe, to see one half of
Europe equally matched against the other, because the more anxiously
Continental States were absorbed in maintaining their Balance of Power,
the keener would be their competition for our favour, and the freer
would be our hands to do what we liked in the rest of the world.

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