and Germany's consequent fear that war might be made upon her jointly by
France and Great Britain, gave a new stimulus to her naval ambition. She
could not now be content with a navy only as big as that of France, for she
might have to meet those of France and England conjoined. This defensive
reason is good. But no doubt, as always, there must have lurked behind it
ideas of aggression. Ambition, in the philosophy of States, goes hand in
hand with fear. "The war may come," says one party. "Yes," says the other;
and secretly mutters, "May the war come!" To ask whether armaments are for
offence or for defence must always be an idle inquiry. They will be for
either, or both, according to circumstances, according to the personalities
that are in power, according to the mood that politicians and journalists,
and the interests that suborn them, have been able to infuse into a nation.
But what may be said with clear conviction is, that to attempt to account
for the clash of war by the ambition and armaments of a single Power is
to think far too simply of how these catastrophes originate. The truth,
in this case, is that German ambition developed in relation to the whole
European situation, and that, just as on land their policy was conditioned
by their relation to France and Russia, so at sea it was conditioned by
their relation to Great Britain. They knew that their determination to
become a great Power at sea would arouse the suspicion and alarm of the
English. Prince Bülow is perfectly frank about that. He says that the
difficulty was to get on with the shipbuilding programme without giving
Great Britain an opportunity to intervene by force and nip the enterprise
in the bud. He attributes here to the British Government a policy which
is all in the Bismarckian tradition. It was, in fact, a policy urged by
some voices here, voices which, as is always the case, were carried to
Germany and magnified by the mega-phone of the Press.[3] That no British
Government, in fact, contemplated picking a quarrel with Germany in order
to prevent her becoming a naval Power I am myself as much convinced as any
other Englishman, and I count the fact as righteousness to our statesmen.