To say, "We must take measures for defence" is equivalent to saying, "Someone is likely to attack us," which is equivalent to saying, "Someone has a motive for attacking us." In other words, the basic fact from which arises the necessity for armaments, the ultimate explanation of European militarism, is the force of the motive making for aggression. (And in the word "aggression," of course, I include the imposition of superior force by the threat, or implied threat, of its use, as well as by its actual use.)
That motive may be material or moral; it may arise from real conflict of interest, or a purely imaginary one; but with the disappearance of prospective aggression disappears also the need for defence.
The reader deems these platitudes beside the mark?
I will take a few sample criticisms directed at this book. Here is the London Daily Mail:
The bigger nations are armed, not so much because they look for the spoils of war, as because they wish to prevent the horrors of it; arms are for defence.1
And here is the London Times:
No doubt the victor suffers, but who suffers most, he or the vanquished?"2
The criticism of the Daily Mail was made within three months of a "raging and tearing" big navy campaign, all of it based on the assumption that Germany was "looking for the spoils of war," the English naval increase being thus a direct outcome of such motives. Without it, the question of English increase would not have arisen.3 The only justification for the clamor for increase was that England was liable to attack; every nation in Europe justifies its armaments in the same way; every nation consequently believes in the universal existence of this motive for attack.