Duke of Northumberland and a Defensive Alliance Let us not delude ourselves la the belief that any international organization would act as a substitute for an alliance for preserve ing the peace of the world, ex-borted the Duke of Northumberland, addressing the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution on the subject of European wars and their lessons.
The cause and features of the greatest war in our history from which we had just emerged' were just the same, he said, as those of former wars. History showed that we had invariably failed to profit by the experience of war, and there were unfortunately no signs that we had learned our lesson yet. What Germany tried to do in 1914 had been tried over and_ over again, and it would be tried in the future. We had recently been informed by certain distinguished people that the balance of power was a very wicked policy. That, of course, was nonsense. There was nothing particularly wicked or virtuous about it. It was merely commonsense. The recognition of the balance of power had kept before the eyes of the British public the fact that Continental affairs were an intimate concern of our own: that our national existence might be threatened in the event of a European war, and that, in such an emergency, British military intervention on the Continent was absolutely essential.
Our security depended, and Had always depended, on an effective alliance of those nations whose security was vital to our own. The alliance. to be effective, must be supported by sufficient naval and military strength and by ensuring that the public would understand and support our foreign policy. That was not militarism. Nobody suggested that we should maintain an army on the Continental scale, although it was absurd to suppose that any army not based on the principle of compulsory service was adequate for present day requirements. Conscription was popularly supposed to be the result of an aggressive purpose of a military nation, and to have been one of the causes of the late war. It was nothing of the kind.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.