This fact indicates what a thousand other facts of history also indicate, that civilization and the peaceful arts contribute to the longevity of nations--not only by promoting personal comfort, and by removing causes of internal strife, and thus enabling large bodies of people to dwell together happily, but also by increasing their military power.

Every nation which has achieved greatness has cultivated assiduously both the arts of peace and the arts of war.

Every nation which has long maintained that greatness has done so by maintaining the policy by which she acquired it.

_Every nation that has attained and then lost greatness, has lost it by losing the proper balance between the military and the peaceful arts; never by exalting unduly the military, but always by neglecting them, and thereby becoming vulnerable to attack_.
In other words, the history of every great nation that has declined shows three periods, the rise, the table-land of greatness, and the decline.

During the rise, the military arts hold sway; on the table-land, the arts of peace and war are fairly balanced; during the decline the peaceful arts hold sway.