my comprehension. It would have been not only wrong to expose a friendly
France to the risk of being dismembered by an unjustifiable invasion,
while her friend England merely stood looking on, but it would also have
been prejudicial to our safety. For to have allowed Germany to take
possession of the northern ports of France would have been to imperil
our island security. The Chancellor was entitled to make the request he
did, but I was bound to refuse it. I also, at the same time, told him
that if Germany went on increasing her Navy, any agreement with us meant
to lead to better relations would be little more than "bones without
flesh." Germany might, indeed, as he had said, need a third training
squadron, in addition to the two she had already in the North Sea. This
we could easily meet by moving more of our ships to northern waters,
without having to increase the number we were building independently.
But if she had the idea of adding to her fleet on a considerable scale
we should be bound to lay down two keels to every one of her new ships,
and the inevitable result would be, no proportionate increase in her
strength relatively to ours, but of a certainty a good deal of bad
feeling.

I may observe that at the date of this conversation the new German Fleet
Bill had not been made public, and we knew nothing of its contents in
London, excepting that a third squadron for training was to be added to
the two which were already there. For this purpose it had been said that
a few ships and a moderate increase in personnel would be all that was
required. Before I left Berlin the Emperor, as I mentioned in the
preceding chapter, handed to me, with friendly frankness and with
permission to show it to my colleagues, an advance copy of the new Bill.
It looked to me as if, when scrutinized, its proposals might prove more
formidable than we had anticipated. But I asked his permission to
abstain from trying to form any judgment on this question without the