Empire. Without her navy, the island home of the British Empire would be nothing more than a beleaguered fortress, doomed to surrender to any assailant after six months of misery, without a shot being fired. The British fleet was literally the bulwark and stay of every British citizen. If, as Germany now asserts, strategical necessity can excuse the violation of every code of honour, how much more might the law of self-preservation have justified the forcible limitation of Germany's naval preparations?

Strong as were these arguments, they did not suffice to overcome the old British doctrine of live and let live; they did not even convince a very strong section that there was any real or grave danger. Many, who admitted that Germany's naval policy exceeded the necessities of defence, held that she was entitled to her ambitions, and that it would be immoral to attempt to thwart them until they had blossomed into actual aggression. The main body of the pacifists denied that Germany had any ambitions or designs of aggression at all. True, the language of the Emperor smacked of ambition, but allowance must be made, they said, for the exuberance of a ruler in the raw vigour of life and not without a decorative sense and taste. The Navy League and Count Reventlow talked big, but they were driven to their verbal excesses by the pronounced peaceful instincts of the German people. Bernhardi was only a brilliant soldier, wrapped up in his profession, and therefore bellicose. As for the professors, it was well known what professors are; always striving after some new thing, faddists evolving impossible theories; men who, like Benedict, must still be talking though nobody heeds them. The Germans were wise in all things, except in keeping so many soldiers and building so many ships; and, after all, that was

IGNORING THE MENACE

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only because they did not possess a really democratic constitution. Once the people got control

it was

to be observed how Socialism was growing!— the Krupps, the militarists and the professors would have to retire into seclusion. The best way of helping the innate pacifism of the Germans to assert itself would be to show we had no unworthy suspicion of them; and to set them a good example by cutting down our naval estimates; or, perhaps better still, by shutting down our arsenals and dockyards altogether. Pacifism could no further go.

Although this last wild proposal was confined to a few extremists, the idea of a reduction of naval expenditure received great support; it even became the avowed policy of the Liberal Party in England. Circumstances prevented the attainment of their design; but they steadily endeavoured to mould those circumstances to its attainment. That a good example might be set to other nations the Government even went so far as to reduce its own estimates.

CHAPTER IX

WHAT DID ENGLAND DO FOR PEACE?

WITH the accession of the Liberal Party to power in England at the end of 1905, the relations between Great Britain and Germany entered upon a new phase. Hitherto England had been content to go her own way, pursuing a policy of national defence, based upon a proportionate two-power preponderance of naval strength. This had long been accepted as the minimum of security; but it had become increasingly difficult to maintain with the growth of the German navy. With this great naval strength, however, England had sought to avoid giving or taking offence; she had, excepting in the Crimean War, steered clear of European conflict for a century. At the same time she had been much occupied in adjusting differences between other Powers; never attempting to base her own naval and military policy on abstractions, or to influence unduly the policy of other nations. Indeed, relying on her insular position, she had effectively abstained from international agree

ments.

When the Liberal Government took office they inherited a well-defined naval programme. Consistently with their former protests against "unproductive" expenditure on armaments, they resolved, and entered upon a policy of retrenchment; they sought to make arrangements with Germany which would enable them to combine economy with national security. Their first step was to present reduced Naval Estimates in March, 1906; but in the same

ENGLAND REDUCES NAVAL PROGRAMME 175 month Germany amended her Navy Law of 1900

which itself doubled the Von Tirpitz programme of 1897 - by adding six large cruisers to her fleet.

A government less honest in its desire for peace might well have seen in this act a reason, perhaps an excuse, for abandoning professions which had well served their electoral purposes, but which also represented the long-sustained and expressed policy of their party. The Government of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, however, refused to be diverted from their pacific aims. Their reply to the increase of the German naval programme was, in July, 1906, to put forward amended Naval Estimates which reduced the March programme 25 per cent. in battleships, 33 per cent. in submarines, and 60 per cent. in ocean-going destroyers. Their professed reason for this bold step was declared to be the invitation of the Tsar to the Powers for another conference on the reduction of armaments. The failure of the previous conference gave little hope for the second; but, that nothing should be left undone to increase the chances of success, England resolved to prove her own sincerity; to give a lead to her neighbours and rivals by reducing her own rate of shipbuilding actually below what had been, by her First Lord of the Admiralty, represented as a fair margin of safety.

The step was sensational and apparently gallant, but it was not politics; and, as was prophesied by many critics, it proved futile and even dangerous to British interests. The policy failed completely. It became an error which Great Britain never quite repaired. So far from moving Germany to respond with a similar measure of curtailment, it gave her an opportunity to reduce the lead of England; and she seized it. The Kaiser refused to hear of disarma

ment in any degree, or of anything that restricted the will and ambition of Germany. He thought the Conference nonsensical, and roundly declared that if disarmament was to be on its agenda Germany would stay outside. He was aiming at naval strength as an instrument of diplomacy, as a symbol of national strength, as a "big stick" to be used when "the Day" was come.

Nevertheless, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman would not yield without further effort. In an article in The Nation, early in 1907, he pleaded that a subject so urgent as the reduction of naval and military expenditure should not be excluded from the Conference; and that Great Britain would even make substantial reductions on her 1906 programme if others were willing to follow her. Within a month the answer came from Prince Bülow, that any discussion of such a subject would be unpractical " even if it should not involve risks." This declaration he emphasized in March, 1908, by an acceleration of the Kaiser's naval programme. This had the effect of increasing the German navy by four battleships in advance of the original programme. That was the cynical and challenging answer to the British Government's desire, free from ulterior motives, for a reduction of armaments; so lifting the burden of defence somewhat from the back of the worker in every country of Europe.

It

At this point England took alarm. Experts began to calculate how soon, at the then rate of progression, the German navy would become a really formidable and dangerous rival of the British. was no longer a question of building against two Powers. It was a case of preserving a superiority over one Power, almost at England's very door. Other nations might exist and flourish without mari