If the French fleet--as we may expect--combines with the English and
takes part in the war, it will be much more difficult for us to wage
than a war with England alone. France's blue-water fleet would hold our
allies in the Mediterranean in check, and England could bring all her
forces to bear upon us. It would be possible that combined fleets of the
two Powers might appear both in the Mediterranean and in the North Sea,
since England could hardly leave the protection of her Mediterranean
interests to France alone. The prospect of any ultimately successful
issue would thus shrink into the background. But we need not even then
despair. On the contrary, we must fight the French fleet, so to speak,
on land--i.e., we must defeat France so decisively that she would be
compelled to renounce her alliance with England and withdraw her fleet
to save herself from total destruction. Just as in 1870-71 we marched to
the shores of the Atlantic, so this time again we must resolve on an
absolute conquest, in order to capture the French naval ports and
destroy the French naval depots. It would be a war to the knife with
France, one which would, if victorious, annihilate once for all the
French position as a Great Power. If France, with her falling
birth-rate, determines on such a war, it is at the risk of losing her
place in the first rank of European nations, and sinking into permanent
political subservience. Those are the stakes.

The participation of Russia in the naval war must also be contemplated.
That is the less dangerous, since the Russian Baltic fleet is at present
still weak, and cannot combine so easily as the English with the French.
We could operate against it on the inner line--i.e., we could use the
opportunity of uniting rapidly our vessels in the Baltic by means of the
Kaiser-Wilhelm Canal; we could attack the Russian ships in vastly
superior force, and, having struck our blow, we could return to the
North Sea. For these operations it is of the first importance that the