This was the Fight for Right, the war to vindicate the moral law in the relations of States. The political necessities of the Balance of Power have prevented the country from pledging its power, untrammelled, to the maintenance of Right. The two objects are in theory and practice incompatible. The Balance of Power is in fact an assertion of the principle of _Macht-Politik_, of the principle that Might makes Right. CHAPTER IV MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY The War revealed this: However great the military power of a State, as in the case of France; however great its territorial extent, as in the case of the British Empire; or its economic resources and geographical isolation as in the case of the United States, the conditions of the present international order compel that State to resort to Alliance as an indispensable part of its military defence. And the peace reveals this: that no Alliance can long resist the disruptive forces of nationalist psychology. So rapid indeed has been the disintegration of the Alliance that fought this War, that, from this one cause, the power indispensable for carrying out the Treaty imposed upon the enemy has on the morrow of victory already disappeared. So much became patent in the year that followed the signing of the Treaty. The fact bears of course fundamentally upon the question of the use of political power for those economic ends discussed in the preceding pages. If the economic policy of the Treaty of Versailles is to be carried out, it will in any case demand a preponderance of power so immense and secure that the complete political solidarity of the Alliance which fought the War must be assumed. It cannot be assumed. That Alliance has in fact already gone to pieces; and with it the unquestioned preponderance of power. The fact bears not only upon the use of power for the purpose of carrying an economic policy--or some moral end, like the defence of Nationality--into effect. The disruptive influence of the Nationalisms of which alliances are composed raises the question of how far a military preponderance resting on a National foundation can even give us political security. If the moral factors of nationality are, as we have seen, an indispensable part of the study of international economics, so must those same factors be considered as an indispensable part of the problem of the power to be exercised by an alliance. During the War there was an extraordinary neglect of this simple truth. It seemed to occur to no one that the intensification of the psychology of nationalism--not only among the lesser States but in France and America and England--ran the risk of rendering the Alliance powerless after its victory. Yet that is what has happened.