Chauvinistic German. The necessity for Germany's possessing a fleet
strong enough to make her rights respected is as self-evident.
Moreover, if Germany's fleet is a luxury, as Mr. Winston Churchill
says it is, she deserves and can afford it. As a nation she has
prospered and grown great, not by a policy of war and conquest, but by
hard work, thrift, self-denial, fidelity to international engagements,
well-planned instruction, and first-rate organization. Why should she
not, if she thinks it advisable and is willing to spend the money on
it, supply herself with an arm of defence in proportion to her size,
her prosperity, and her desert? It may be that, as Mr. Norman Angell
holds, the entire policy of great armaments is based on economic
error; but unless and until it is clear that the German navy is
intended for aggression, its growth may be viewed by the rest of the
world with equanimity, and by the Englishman, as a connoisseur in such
matters, with admiration as well. A man may buy a motor-car which his
friends and neighbours think must be costly and pretentious beyond his
means; but that is his business; and if the man finds that, owing to
good management and industry and skill, his business is growing and
that a motor-car is, though in some not absolutely clear and definite
way, of advantage to him in business and satisfying to his legitimate
pride--why on earth should he not buy or build it?

The truth is that if our ordinary Englishman and German were to sit
down together, and with the help of books, maps, and newspapers,
carefully and without prejudice, consider the annals of their
respective countries for the last sixteen years with a view to
establishing the causes of their delusion, they could hardly fail to
confess that it was due to neither believing a word the other said; to
each crediting the other with motives which, as individuals and men of
honesty and integrity in the private relations of life, each would