any
rate in its extreme form of war with another country, although such
conflict is possible at any time; and we observed that British political
arrangements have been made rather with a view to the controversy
between parties at home than to united action in contest with a foreign
state.

We then glanced at the probable consequences to the British people of
any serious war, and at the much more dreadful results of failure to
obtain victory. We discussed the theories which lead some of our
countrymen to be unwilling to consider the nature and conditions of war,
and which make many of them imagine that war can be avoided either by
trusting to international arbitration or by international agreements
for disarmament. We agreed that it was not safe to rely upon these
theories.

Examining the conditions of war as they were revealed in the great
struggle which finished a hundred years ago, we saw that the only chance
of carrying on war with any prospect of success in modern times lies in
the nationalisation of the State, so that the Government can utilise in
conflict all the resources of its land and its people. In the last war
Great Britain's national weapon was her navy, which she has for
centuries used as a means of maintaining the balance of power in Europe.
The service she thus rendered to Europe had its reward in the monopoly
of sea power which lasted through the nineteenth century. The great
event of that century was the attainment by Germany of the unity that
makes a nation and her consequent remarkable growth in wealth and power,
resulting in a maritime ambition inconsistent with the position which
England held at sea during the nineteenth century and was disposed to
think eternal.

Great Britain, in the security due to her victories at sea, was able to
develop her colonies into nations, and her East India Company into an
Empire. But that same security caused her to forget her nationalism,
with the result that now her security itself is imperilled. During this
period, when the conception of the nation was in abeyance, some of the
conditions of sea power have been modified, with the result that the
British monopoly is at an end, while the possibility of a similar
monopoly has probably disappeared, so that the British navy, even if
successful, could not now be used, as it was a hundred years ago, as a
means of entirely destroying the trade of an adversary. Accordingly, if
in a future war Britain is to find a contin