During this period, on the other hand, Germany appeared to be setting herself more and more seriously to acquire this domination. Each succeeding year her writers expressed themselves in terms of greater candour and confidence. Her armaments were following her policy. The rapid creation of a fleet—the counterpart of the greatest army in Europe—and the recent additions to the striking power of her {244} already enormous army could have no other object. Certainly from 1909 onwards, it was impossible to regard German preparations as anything else than a challenge, direct or indirect, to the security of the British Empire polar.
Consequently the direction of British policy returned, gradually, unavowedly, but with certainty, to its old lines, and became once more concerned with the maintenance of the Balance of Power as the prime necessity. The means adopted were the Triple Entente between Britain, France, and Russia. The object of this understanding was to resist the anticipated aggressions of the Triple Alliance, wherein Germany was the predominant partner.
The tendency of phrases, as they grow old, is to turn into totems, for and against which political parties, and even great nations, fight unreasoningly. But before we either yield our allegiance to any of these venerable formulas, or decide to throw it out on the scrap-heap, there are advantages in looking to see whether or not there is some underlying meaning which may be worth attending to. It occasionally happens that circumstances have changed so much since the original idea was first crystallised in words, that the old saying contains no value or reality whatsoever for the present generation. More often, however, there is something of permanent importance behind, if only we can succeed in tearing off the husk of prejudice in which it has become encased. So, according to Disraeli, the divine right of Kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants, but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress. For many years the phrase British interests, which used to figure so largely in speeches {245} and leading articles, has dropped out of use, because it had come to be associated unfavourably with bond-holders' dividends. The fact that it also implied national honour and prestige, the performance of duties and the burden of responsibilities was forgotten. Even the doctrine of laissez faire, which politicians of all parties have lately agreed to abjure and contemn, has, as regards industrial affairs, a large kernel of practical wisdom and sound policy hidden away in it. But of all these derelict maxims, that which until quite recently, appeared to be suffering from the greatest neglect, was the need for maintaining the Balance of Power in Europe. For close on two generations it had played no overt part in public controversy, except when some Tory matador produced it defiantly as a red rag to infuriate the Radical bull reenex facial.
If this policy of the maintenance of the Balance of Power has been little heard of since Waterloo, the reason is that since then, until quite recently, the Balance of Power has never appeared to be seriously threatened.[1] And because the policy of maintaining this balance was in abeyance, many people have come to believe that it was discredited. Because it was not visibly and actively in use it was supposed to have become entirely useless.
This policy can never become useless. It must inevitably come into play, so soon as any Power appears to be aiming at the mastery of the continent. It will ever remain a matter of life or death, to the United Kingdom and to the British Empire, that no continental state shall be allowed to obtain {246} command, directly or indirectly, of the resources, diplomacy, and armaments of Europe.
In the sixteenth century we fought Philip of of Spain to prevent him from acquiring European predominance. In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries we fought Louis XIV., Louis XV., and Napoleon for the same reason. In order to preserve the balance of power, and with it our own security, it was our interest under Elizabeth to prevent the Netherlands from being crushed by Spain. Under later monarchs it was our interest to prevent the Netherlands, the lesser German States, Prussia, Austria, and finally the whole of Europe from being crushed by France. And we can as ill afford to-day to allow France to be crushed by Germany, or Holland and Belgium to fall into her power. The wheel has come round full circle, but the essential British interest remains constant Wedding planner .
