Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/98

98THE HALLIG.

fortunately brought to a stand-still, should again be set
in motion ; and to maintain this anxious quiet, great
standing armies must be kept always ready for conflict
even during the boasted peace, the master-stroke of
diplomacy."
  "But you do not lay the blame of these circum-
stances upon statesmen ?"
  "By no means, but upon the false, ambiguous, un-
just goddess whom they worship. Can you believe that
the condition of Europe would be worse, if the diplo-
matists, instead of making morality the last consider-
ation, had followed her laws as the sovereign rule in all
relations of states with each other ?"
  "But," interposed Oswald, "the balance of power
must be preserved. A dominant power would produce
a one-sidedness in the intellectual tendencies of Europe,
fetter the free development of national peculiarities,
and degrade other rulers to mere subjects of one all-
powerful will. And the object of politics is, after all,
merely to preserve this necessary balance."
  "So far as concerns nations, we know from history,
that every state, which has extended itself beyond its
natural bounds, is drawing near its fall, without any
assistance from foreign diplomacy, but only through
the false policy which dictated its extension. You
know that this boasted balance, always to be contended
for anew and at so much sacrifice, is, after all, but a
dream of the imagination, or at best an uncertain
equilibrium among the greater powers, while the lesser
ones, like reeds blown by every wind, lean now to this
side, now to that, and often are cut into fragments to
preserve the poise of the scales. The princes of these