Granted that the development of military strength is the first duty of every State, since all else depends upon the possibility to assert _power_, it does not follow that the State must spend the total of its personal and financial resources solely on military strength in the narrower sense of army and navy. That is neither feasible nor profitable. The military power of a people is not exclusively determined by these external resources; it consists, rather, in a harmonious development of physical, spiritual, moral, financial, and military elements of strength. The highest and most effective military system cannot be developed except by the co-operation of all these factors. It needs a broad and well-constructed basis in order to be effective. In the Manchurian War at the critical moment, when the Japanese attacking strength seemed spent, the Russian military system broke down, because its foundation was unstable; the State had fallen into political and moral ruin, and the very army was tainted with revolutionary ideas. The social requirement of maintaining military efficiency, and the political necessity for so doing, determine the nature and degree of warlike preparations; but it must be remembered that this standard may be very variously estimated, according to the notion of what the State's duties are. Thus, in Germany the most violent disputes burst out whenever the question of the organization of the military forces is brought up, since widely different opinions prevail about the duties of the State and of the army. It is, indeed, impossible so to formulate and fix the political duties of the State that they cannot be looked at from another standpoint. The social democrat, to whom agitation is an end in itself, will see the duty of the State in a quite different light from the political _dilettante_, who lives from hand to mouth, without making the bearing of things clear to himself, or from the sober Statesman who looks to the welfare of the community and keeps his eyes fixed on the distant beacons on the horizon of the future. Certain points of view, however, may be laid down, which, based on the nature of things, check to some degree any arbitrary decision on these momentous questions, and are well adapted to persuade calm and experienced thinkers. First, it must be observed that military power cannot be improvised in the present political world, even though all the elements for it are present.