The hostility to Germany is also sufficiently evident in other matters.
It has always been England's object to maintain a certain balance of
power between the continental nations of Europe, and to prevent any one
of them attaining a pronounced supremacy. While these States crippled
and hindered each other from playing any active part on the world's
stage, England acquired an opportunity of following out her own purposes
undisturbed, and of founding that world Empire which she now holds. This
policy she still continues, for so long as the Powers of Europe tie each
other's hands, her own supremacy is uncontested. It follows directly
from this that England's aim must be to repress Germany, but strengthen
France; for Germany at the present moment is the only European State
which threatens to win a commanding position; but France is her born
rival, and cannot keep on level terms with her stronger neighbour on the
East, unless she adds to her forces and is helped by her allies. Thus
the hostility to Germany, from this aspect also, is based on England's
most important interests, and we must treat it as axiomatic and
self-evident.

The argument is often adduced that England by a war with Germany would
chiefly injure herself, since she would lose the German market, which is
the best purchaser of her industrial products, and would be deprived of
the very considerable German import trade. I fear that from the English
point of view these conditions would be an additional incentive to war.
England would hope to acquire, in place of the lost German market, a
large part of those markets which had been supplied by Germany before
the war, and the want of German imports would be a great stimulus, and
to some extent a great benefit, to English industries.

After all, it is from the English aspect of the question quite
comprehensible that the English Government strains every nerve to check