What makes this German Imperial establishment redoubtable, beyond comparison, is the very simple but also very grave combination of circumstances whereby the German people have acquired the use of the modern industrial arts in the highest state of efficiency, at the same time that they have retained unabated the fanatical loyalty of feudal barbarism.[9] So long, and in so far, as this conjunction of forces holds there is no outlook for peace except on the elimination of Germany as a power capable of disturbing the peace. [Footnote 9: For an extended discussion of this point, see _Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, especially ch. v. and vi.] It may seem invidious to speak so recurrently of the German Imperial establishment as the sole potential disturber of the peace in Europe. The reason for so singling out the Empire for this invidious distinction--of merit or demerit, as one may incline to take it--is that the facts run that way. There is, of course, other human material, and no small volume of it in the aggregate, that is of much the same character, and serviceable for the same purposes as the resources and man-power of the Empire. But this other material can come effectually into bearing as a means of disturbance only in so far as it clusters about the Imperial dynasty and marches under his banners. In so speaking of the Imperial establishment as the sole enemy of a European peace, therefore, these outlying others are taken for granted, very much as one takes the nimbus for granted in speaking of one of the greater saints of God. * * * * * So the argument returns to the alternative: Peace by unconditional surrender and submission, or peace by elimination of Imperial Germany (and Japan). There is no middle course apparent. The old-fashioned--that is to say nineteenth-century--plan of competitive defensive armament and a balance of powers has been tried, and it has not proved to be a success, even so early in the twentieth century. This plan offers a substitute (_Ersatz_) for peace; but even as such it has become impracticable. The modern, or rather the current late-modern, state of the industrial arts does not tolerate it. Technological knowledge has thrown the advantage in military affairs definitively to the offensive, particularly to the offensive that is prepared beforehand with the suitable appliances and with men ready matured in that rigorous and protracted training by which alone they can become competent to make warlike use of these suitable appliances provided by the modern technology. At the same time, and by grace of the same advance in technology, any well-designed offensive can effectually reach any given community, in spite of distance or of other natural obstacles. The era of defensive armaments and diplomatic equilibration, as a substitute for peace, has been definitively closed by the modern state of the industrial arts.