control them to its own advantage by preponderant force, the ultimate expression of which is possession.... From this flow two results: the attempt to possess and the organization of force by which to maintain possession already achieved.... This statement is simply a specific formulation of the general necessity stated; it is an inevitable link in the chain of logical sequences--industrial markets, control, navy bases....[3]But in order to show that this is no special view, and that this philosophy does indeed represent the[Pg 17] general public opinion of Europe, the opinion of the great mass which prompts the actions of Governments and explains their respective policies, I take the following from the current newspapers and reviews ready to my hand:
It is the prowess of our navy ... our dominant position at sea ... which has built up the British Empire and its commerce.--London
Times leading article.
Because her commerce is infinitely vulnerable, and because her people are dependent upon that commerce for food and the wages with which to buy it.... Britain wants a powerful fleet, a perfect organization behind the fleet, and an army of defence. Until they are provided this country will exist under perpetual menace from the growing fleet of German Dreadnoughts, which have made the North Sea their parade-ground. All security will disappear, and British commerce and industry, when no man knows what the morrow will bring forth, must rapidly decline, thus accentuating British national degeneracy and decadence.--H.W. Wilson in the National Review, May, 1909.
Sea-power is the last fact which stands between Germany and the supreme position in international commerce. At present Germany sends only some fifty million pounds worth, or about a seventh, of her total domestic produce to the markets of the world outside Europe and the United States.... Does any man who understands the subject think there is any power in Germany, or, indeed, any power in the world, which can prevent Germany, she having thus accomplished the first stage of her work, from now closing with Great Britain for her ultimate share of this 240 millions of[Pg 18] overseas trade? Here it is that we unmask the shadow which looms like a real presence behind all the moves of present-day diplomacy, and behind all the colossal armaments that indicate the present preparations for a new struggle for sea-power.--Mr. Benjamin Kidd in the Fortnightly Review, April 1, 1910.
It is idle to talk of "limitation of armaments" unless the nations of the earth will unanimously consent to lay aside all selfish ambi-tions.... Nations, like individuals, concern themselves chiefly with their own interests, and when these clash with those of others, quarrels are apt to follow. If the aggrieved party is the weaker he usually goes to the wall, though "right" be never so much on his side; and the stronger, whether he be the aggressor or not, usually has his own way. In international politics charity begins at home, and quite properly; the duty of a statesman is to think first of the interests of his own country.--United Service Magazine, May,
1909.
Why should Germany attack Britain? Because Germany and Britain are commercial and political rivals; because Germany covets the trade, the colonies, and the Empire which Britain now possesses.--Robert Blatchford, "Germany and England," p. 4.
Great Britain, with her present population, exists by virtue of her foreign trade and her control of the carrying trade of the world; defeat in war would mean the transference of both to other hands and consequent starvation for a large percentage of the wage-earners.--T.G. Martin in the London World.
We offer an enormously rich prize if we are not able to defend out shores; we may be perfectly certain that the prize which we offer will go into the mouth of somebody powerful enough to overcome our resistance and to[Pg 19] swallow a considerable portion of us up.--The Speaker of the House of Commons in a speech at Greystoke, reported by the London Times.
What is good for the beehive is good for the bee. Whatever brings rich lands, new ports, or wealthy industrial areas to a State en-
11
riches its treasury, and therefore the nation at large, and therefore the individual.--Mr. Douglas Owen in a letter to the Economist, May 28, 1910.
Do not forget that in war there is no such thing as international law, and that undefended wealth will be seized wherever it is exposed, whether through the broken pane of a jeweller's window or owing to the obsession of a humanitarian Celt.--London Referee, November 14, 1909.
We appear to have forgotten the fundamental truth--confirmed by all history--that the warlike races inherit the earth, and that Na-ture decrees the survival of the fittest in the never-ending struggle for existence.... Our yearning for disarmament, our respect for the tender plant of Non-conformist conscience, and the parrot-like repetition of the misleading formula that the "greatest of all British interests is peace" ... must inevitably give to any people who covet our wealth and our possessions ... the ambition to strike a swift
and deadly blow at the heart of the Empire--undefended London.--Blackwood's Magazine, May, 1909.
These are taken from English sources, but there is not a straw to choose between them and other European opinion on the subject. Admiral Mahan and the other Anglo-Saxons of his school have their counterpart in every European country, but more especially in
Germany. Even so[Pg 20] "Liberal" a statesman as Baron Karl von Stengel, the German delegate to the First Hague Peace Conference, lays it down in his book that--
Every great Power must employ its efforts towards exercising the largest influence possible, not only in European but in world politics, and this mainly because economic power depends in the last resort on political power, and because the largest participation possible in the trade of the world is a vital question for every nation.
The writings of such classic authorities as Clausewitz give full confirmation of this view, while it is the resounding note of most
popular German political literature that deals with "Weltpolitik." Grand Admiral von Koster, President of the Navy League, writes:
The steady increase of our population compels us to devote special attention to the growth of our overseas interests. Nothing but the strong fulfilment of our naval programme can create for us that importance upon the free-world-sea which it is incumbent upon us to demand. The steady increase of our population compels us to set ourselves new goals and to grow from a Continental into a world power. Our mighty industry must aspire to new overseas conquests. Our world trade--which has more than doubled in twenty years, which has increased from 2500 million dollars to 4000 million dollars during the ten years in which our naval programme was fixed, and 3000 million dollars of which is sea-borne commerce--only can flourish if we continue honorably to bear the[Pg 21] burdens of our armaments on land and sea alike. Unless our children are to accuse us of short-sightedness, it is now our duty to se-cure our world power and position among other nations. We can do that only under the protection of a strong German fleet, a fleet which shall guarantee us peace with honor for the distant future.
One popular German writer sees the possibility of "overthrowing the British Empire" and "wiping it from the map of the world in less than twenty-four hours." (I quote his actual words, and I have heard a parallel utterance from the mouth of a serious English public man.) The author in question, in order to show how the thing could come about, deals with the matter prophetically. Writing from the standpoint of 1911,[4] he admits that--
At the beginning of the twentieth century Great Britain was a free, a rich, and a happy country, in which every citizen, from the Prime Minister to the dock-laborer, was proud to be a member of the world-ruling nation. At the head of the State were men possessing a general mandate to carry out their programme of government, whose actions were subject to the criticism of public opinion, represented by an independent Press. Educated for centuries in self-government, a race had grown up which seemed born
to rule. The highest triumphs
