On the 16th of March 1909 came a new declaration from another Prime
Minister. Mr. Asquith, on the introduction of the Navy Estimates,
explained to the House of Commons that the Government had been surprised
at the rate at which the new German navy was being constructed, and at
the rapid growth of Germany's power to build battleships. But it is the
first duty of a Government to provide for national security and to
provide means to foresee. A Government that is surprised in a matter
relating to war is already half defeated.

The creation of the German navy is the creation of means that could be
used to challenge Great Britain's sea power and all that depends upon
it. There has been no such challenge these hundred years, no challenge
so formidable as that represented by the new German fleet these three
hundred years. It brings with it a crisis in the national life of
England as great as has ever been known; yet this crisis finds the
British nation divided, unready and uncertain what leadership it is to
expect.

The dominant fact, the fact that controls all others, is that from now
onwards Great Britain has to face the stern reality of war, immediately
by way of preparation and possibly at any moment by way of actual
collision. England is drifting into a quarrel with Germany which, if it
cannot be settled, involves a struggle for the mastery with the
strongest nation that the world has yet seen--a nation that, under the
pressure of necessity, has learnt to organise itself for war as for
peace; that sets its best minds to direct its preparations for war;
that has an army of four million citizens, and that is of one mind in
the determination to make a navy that shall fear no antagonist. A
conflict of this kind is the test of nations, not only of their strength