States poisoned
with imperialism and in ruinous conditions of economy and finance, and
a too great Poland without a national basis and necessarily the enemy
of Russia and of Germany.

No people has always been victorious; the peoples who have fought most
wars in modern Europe, English, French and Germans, have had
alternate victories and defeats. A defeat often carries in its train
reconsideration which is followed by renewed energy: the greatness of
England is largely due to its steadfast determination to destroy the
Napoleonic Empire. What elevates men is this steadfast and persevering
effort, and a series of such collective efforts carries a nation to a
high place.

There is nothing lasting in the existing groupings. At the moment of
common danger eternal union and unbreakable solidarity are proclaimed;
but both are mere literary expressions.

Great Britain, the country which has the least need to make war, has
been at war for centuries with nearly all the European countries.
There is one country only against which it has never made war, not
even when a commercial challenge from the mercantile Republics of
Italy seemed possible. That country is Italy. That shows that between
the action of Italy there is not, nor can there be, contrast, and
indeed that between the two nations there is complete agreement in
European continental policy. It is the common desire of the two
nations, though perhaps for different reasons, that no one State shall
have hegemony on the continent. But between the years 1688 and 1815
Great Britain and France were at war for seventy years: for seventy
years, that is, out of a hundred and twenty-seven there was a state of
deadly hostility between the two countries.

General progress, evinced in various ways, above all in respect for
and in the autonomy of other peoples, is a guarantee for all. No
peoples are always victorious, none always conquered. In the time of
Napoleon the First the French derided the lack of righting spirit
in the German peoples, producers of any number of philosophers
and writers. They would have laughed at anyone who suggested the
possibility of any early German military triumph. After 1815 the
countries of the Holy Alliance would never have believed in the
possibility of the revolutionary spirit recovering; they were sure of
lasting peace in Europe. In 1871 the Germans had no doubt at all that
they had surely smothered France; now the Entente thinks that it has
surely