It put the Fabian strategy out of date, and led to the doctrine of a defensive offense.
Gradually it came true, with the continued advance in those industrial arts that lend themselves to strategic uses, and it came also to be realised, that no corner of the earth was any longer secure by mere favor of distance and natural difficulty, from eventual aggression at the hands of any provident and adventurous assailant,--even by help of a modicum of defensive precaution.

The fear of aggression then came definitively to take the place of international good-will and became the chief motive in public policy, so fast and so far as the state of the industrial arts continued to incline the balance of advantage to the side of the aggressor.

All of which served greatly to strengthen the hands of those statesmen who, by interest or temperament, were inclined to imperialistic enterprise.

Since that period all armament has conventionally been accounted defensive, and all statesmen have professed that the common defense is their chief concern.

Professedly all armament has been designed to keep the peace; so much of a shadow of the peaceable bias there still stands over.
Throughout this latest phase of modern civilisation the avowed fear of aggression has served as apology, possibly as provocation in fact, to national armaments; and throughout the same period any analysis of the situation will finally run the chain of fear back to Prussia as the putative or actual, center of disturbance and apprehension.