Power in Europe whose ambitions are a menace to the peace
of the world--one only. I do not think that Americans as a rule
understand this, but it is true and there can be no harm in saying so,
for neither in her press nor in the mouths of her statesmen are those
ambitions denied by that Power herself. Indeed they are insisted on to
the taxpayer as the reason why she needs so powerful an army and a
fleet. It is not suggested that Germany's ambitions are other than
legitimate and inevitable: it would be difficult for either Englishman
or American to say that with grace. I am not arguing against Germany; I
am arguing for Peace.

Germany says frankly enough that she is cooped up within boundaries
which are intolerable--that she is an "imprisoned Power." She argues,
still with perfect frankness, that it was a mere accident that, to her
misfortune, she came into being as a great Power too late to be able to
get her proper share of the earth's surface, wherein her people might
expand and put forth their surplus energy. The time when there was
earth's surface to choose was already gone. But that fact has in no way
lessened the need of expansion or destroyed the energy. She must burst
her prison walls, she says. It would have been better could she have
flowed out quietly into unoccupied land--as the United States has done
and as Great Britain has done--but that being impossible, she must flow
where she can. And ringed around her are other Powers, great or small,
which bar her way. Therefore she needs the army and the fleet. It is
logical and it is candid.

It is evident that the Franco-Russian Alliance makes the bursting of her
banks difficult in what might seem to be the most natural direction. The
Anglo-French _entente_ and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance--perhaps even
more Germany's own partnership in the Triple Alliance with Italy and
Austria--also constitute obstacles which at least necessitate something
more of an army and more of a fleet than might otherwise have been
sufficient for her purpose. But those barriers are not in the long run
going to avert the fulfilment of--or at least the endeavour to
fulfil--that purpose.

There is only one instrumentality, humanly speaking,--one Power,--which
can ultimately prevent Germany from using that army and that fleet for
the ends for which they are being created; and that instrumentality
happens to be the United States. It is difficult to see how Germany can
make any break for fre