  A fictitious discussion is taken as a point of origin to present novel
physical insight into the nature of gauge theory and the potential energy of
QCD and QED at short distance. Emphasized is the considerable freedom in the
cut-off function which eventually can modify the Coulomb potential of two
charges at sufficiently small distances. Emphasized is also that the parameters
of the regularization function (the ``cut-off scale'') should not be driven to
infinity but kept constant in line with the modern interpretation of
renormalization theory. The paper restricts to general aspects. The technical
paraphernalia and the comparison with experiment are shifted to a sequence of 4
subsequent stand-alone and sufficiently small papers to be published
immediatelely hereafter.
