1913
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13,276,400/11,176,407/7,595,010/10,953,616/2,800,000/3,280,473
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GERMANY'S NAVAL PROBLEM

Between 1909 and 1914 British leaders became convinced, as France
and Russia and other countries had long been certain, that
Germany meant war as soon as she was ready; that her policy was
to take the two border enemies, or rivals, first with a great
war-machine which would give them no chance for preparation or
success, to dictate a peace which would give her control of the
sea-coasts and channel touching Britain, to make that country the
seat of war preparations, naval uncertainty, perhaps financial
difficulty and commercial injury, to prepare at leisure for the
war which would conquer England and acquire her colonies. In the
first-named year British statesmen of both parties told an amazed
Parliament and country that German naval construction of big
ships was approaching the British standard, that the cherished
policy of a British navy equal to those of any two other nations
was absolutely gone, that England would be lucky if, in a few
years, she held a 60 per cent superiority over that of Germany
alone, that the latter country's naval construction was clearly
aimed at Britain and could be for no other than a hostile
purpose. British ships had already been recalled from the Seven
Seas to hold the North Sea against the growing naval power of a
nation which had 5,000,000 soldiers behind its ships as compared
with England's 250,000 men scattered over the world. From that
date in 1909 all who shared in the statecraft of the British