alliances and we did not do so. Our policy was purely a business policy,
and everything else was consequential on this, including the growing
sense of common interests and of the desire for the maintenance of
peace. I do not think that Admiral Tirpitz wanted actual war. But he did
want power to enforce submission to the expansion of Germany at her
will. And this power was his means to the end which was what less
Prussianized minds in Germany contemplated as attainable in less
objectionable ways. Such a means he could not fashion in the form of
strength in sea power which would have placed us at his mercy, without
arousing our instinct for self-preservation.

All this the late Imperial Chancellor in substance ignores. The fact is
that he can only defend his theory on the hypothesis that no such policy
as that of his colleague was on foot, and that the truth was that
France, Russia, and England had come to a decision to take the
initiative in a policy embracing, for France revenge for the loss of
Alsace and Lorraine, for Russia the acquisition of Constantinople with
domination over the Balkans and the Bosporus, and for England the
destruction of German commerce. If this hypothesis be not true, and the
real explanation of the alarm of the Entente Powers was the policy
exemplified by Tirpitz and the other exponents of German militarism,
then the whole of the reasoning in Herr von Bethmann Hollweg's book
falls to the ground.

It may be asked how it was possible that two members of the Imperial
Government should have been pursuing in the same period two policies
wholly inconsistent with each other. The answer is not difficult. The
direction of affairs in Germany was admirably organized for some
purposes and very badly for others. Her autocratic system lent itself to
efficiency in the preparation of armaments. But it was not really a