found it. His account of how the Minister of Education and the
University professors helped him, and of how he contrived to enlist the
Press, is as interesting as it is significant. But his great difficulty
was obviously with William the Second. The Emperor had done much for
fleet construction, and was so interested in it that he meddled at every
turn in technical and strategical matters alike. The Ministry of Marine
was not allowed to carry out the Admiral's own plans and conceptions.
And when Bethmann came on the scene the situation became, according to
the former, even worse. He moans over the apparent limitlessness of the
money and authority with which the English Admiralty was provided by
Parliament and the nation. At last he carried with his colleagues and in
the Reichstag the policy of Fleet Laws, under which the Reichstag passed
measures which took construction, in part at least, from off the annual
navy vote, and he got through the succession of Acts that laid down
programs extending over several years. Richter and other distinguished
public men fought Tirpitz over these, but, in part at least, he got his
way, and secured the nearest approach to continuity that his
ever-supervising Sovereign would permit to him.

What Tirpitz says he asked for above everything was a definite policy
for war, and this he could not get the leave of Bethmann to lay down,
nor could he get the volatile Emperor to stick to definite conceptions
of it. For coast defense he had a supreme contempt. The great German
Army would take care of this, so far as invasion was concerned, and an
adequate battle-fleet would do the rest. It is noticeable that
apparently he never even dreamed of trying to invade England with her
fleet protection. It was in quite another way that he intended, if
necessary, to harass this country. He wanted to threaten our commerce
and to be able to break any blockade of Germany. German sea-power was to
be made strong enough to attract allies by its ability to rally all free