Politics & Power Quote by Arthur Henderson

Henderson is naming a temptation that never really dies: the urge to treat world politics as a permanent bar fight where the only rule is who’s holding the biggest bottle. The phrase “elements of opinion” is doing quiet but pointed work. He’s not blaming whole nations; he’s isolating factions - elites, parties, interest groups - who can survive, even thrive, in instability. It’s an early recognition that “public opinion” is not one thing, and that hawkish minorities often punch above their weight.

The sentence is built as a grim escalation. “Balance of power” sounds almost respectable, even scholarly, until Henderson peels back its romance and shows the mechanics underneath: “unrestricted and unregulated armaments,” then “international anarchy,” and finally “preparation for war.” He’s stripping the euphemisms off great-power realism, arguing that behind the tidy geometry of alliances sits an arms race with a deadline.

Context matters: Henderson is speaking from the interwar world, when the League of Nations and disarmament efforts were pitched as moral progress but were constantly undermined by countries hedging, rearming, and betting that old-school deterrence would keep them safe. His intent is preventative - to delegitimize the “return” to pre-1914 habits by framing it not as prudence but as relapse.

Subtext: the real enemy isn’t only foreign rivals; it’s domestic political appetite for fear, prestige, and military readiness that masquerades as common sense. Henderson is warning that peace collapses less from surprise than from people quietly welcoming its collapse.