peaceful rivalry of human progress--that is to become the equals of
Germany in untiring industry, in scientific thoroughness, in sense of
duty, in patient persistence, in intelligent, voluntary submission
to organization." (History of German Civilization, by Ernst Richard,
Columbia University, New York.)

Once she had reduced Great Britain to an opposition based on _peaceful
rivalry_ in human progress, Germany would find the path of success
hers to tread on more than equal terms, and many fields of expansion
now closed would readily open to German enterprise without that
people incurring and inflicting the loss and injury that an attempted
invasion of the great self-governing dominions would so needlessly
involve. Most of the British self-governing colonies are to-day great
States, well able to defend themselves from overseas attack. The
defeat of the British navy would make scarcely at all easier the
landing of German troops in, say, Australia, South Africa or New
Zealand. A war of conquest of those far-distant regions would be,
for Germany, an impossible and a stupidly impossible task.

A defeated England could not cede any of these British possessions as
a price of peace, for they are inhabited by free men who, however
they might deplore a German occupation of London, could in no wise be
transferred by any pact or treaty made by others, to other rule than
that of themselves. Therefore, to obtain those British dominions,
Germany would have to defeat not only England, but after that to begin
a fresh war, or a series of fresh wars, at the ends of the earth, with
exhausted resources and probably a crippled fleet.

The thing does not bear inspection and may be dismissed from our
calculation.