Essays in Liberalism | Page 9

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