Partitioning Poland had been under discussion for more than a century. Since then, the country had lost the character of a private home and had become more like a public highway on which foreign armies could disport themselves whenever and however they pleased. Were the other states supposed to put a stop to that? Were they supposed to be continually in arms in order to guard the political sanctity of the Polish frontier? That would have been to ask for the morally impossible. Poland in those days was, politically speaking, little better than an uninhabited steppe. This open prairie land, located in the midst of other states, could neither be shielded from their encroachments, nor could its political integrity be guaranteed by others. For all these reasons one should find the silent demise of Poland no more strange than that of the Crimean Tartar state. The Turks were certainly more concerned about the Crimea than any of the European states were in saving Poland; but they realized that it would simply be a waste of effort to try and protect an unresisting steppe.
To return to our subject: we believe we have shown that as a rule the defender can count on outside assistance more than can the attacker; and the more his survival matters to the rest—that is, the sounder and more vigorous his political and military condition—the more certain he can be of their help.
Naturally, the factors listed here as being the real means of defense will not all be available in every case. Some may be missing in one case, some in another; but they all come under the general heading of defense.
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