Their reasoning, if reason exists in what is after all a matter of
primal instinct, might find expression somewhat as follows:

"German influence cannot but be hostile to British interests. The
two peoples are too much alike. The qualities that have made England
great they possess in a still greater degree. Given a fair field and
no favour they are bound to beat us. They will beat us out of every
market in the world, and we shall be reduced ultimately to a position
like that of France to-day. Better fight while we are still die
stronger. Better hinder now ere it be too late. We have bottled up
before and destroyed our adversaries by delay, by money, by alliances.
To tolerate a German rivalry is to found a German empire and to
destroy our own."

Some such obscure argument as this controls the Englishman's reasoning
when he faces the growing magnitude of the Teutonic people. A bitter
resentment, with fear at the bottom, a hurried clanging of bolt and
rivet in the belt of a new warship and a muffled but most diligent
hammering at the rivets of an ever building American Alliance--the
real Dreadnought this, whose keel was laid sixteen years ago and whose
slow, secret construction has cost the silent swallowing of many a
cherished British boast.

English Liberalism might desire a different sort of reckoning with
Germany, but English Liberalism is itself a product of the English
temperament, and however it may sigh, by individuals, for a better
understanding between the two peoples, in the mass, it is a part of
the national purpose and a phase of the national mind and is driven
relentlessly to the rivets and the hammering, the "Dreadnoughts"