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British manhood is not trained to arms like foreign manhood, is actually spending £500,000 less on new construction and armaments during the year 1909-10 than one Power, Germany, who, being "a nation in arms," is invulnerable to aggression, especially aggression by a non-military nation, so her fleet can only be regarded as a deliberate bid for naval supremacy, which can only be gained by the defeat and downfall of the British Empire. Here are the official figures for the expenditure on new ships and guns in the challenged and challenging countries:

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These figures speak for themselves. They more than justify the strongest strictures. They compel the country to regard the Demagogues with profound suspicion. Mr. Asquith has made eloquent speeches in favour of a big Navy, but he has allowed the Triumvirate to endanger the safety of the State and to precipitate that flight of British capital abroad which causes him such unholy glee. We are already paying a War Indemnity. Surely there is a case for impeachment. Somebody should be hanged for this capital offence.

The Potsdam
Slump

THE one stipulation made by the Little Party of the Big Navy in the Cabinet on their surrender to the Big Party of the Little Navy last winter was that the public should be afforded, at any rate, a glimpse of the truth. Hence the warning speeches of Mr. McKenna, Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey in March. Unfortunately the Moderates are so accustomed to scuttling from the "wild men," that they have become physically incapable of standing to their guns. Therefore it is no surprise that these three "alarmists" should have expended no small part of their electioneering energy in eating their former warnings, Sir Edward Grey affects to believe that Anglo-German relations leave nothing to be desired, Mr. Asquith scoffs at his previous apprehensions, while Sir John Fisher's poll-parrot, Mr. McKenna, has repeated the summons that we should "sleep comfortably in our beds"-criminal advice to offer to a preternaturally selfcomplacent and somnolent community. Happily Ministerial

assurances are at a discount. Mr. Blatchford's epoch-making pamphlet has produced a profound and widespread impression; the Demagogues and their subservient colleagues are simply stunned by their terrible losses at the elections; while Mr. Balfour has replaced the naval issue in the forefront of politics. It will be impossible for any Government, however composed, to continue obeying the traitorous counsels of the Potsdam Party, who we may hope will shortly be hounded out of public life, and will in any case receive vastly different treatment in the new Parliament to what they did in the Poisonous Parliament of infamous memory, where they were supported by a vast posse comitatus of German jackals, most of whom have been sent about their business by discriminating constituencies. In opening his electoral campaign at Hanley (Jan. 4), Mr. Balfour left no shadow of doubt as to his view of German policy. Such an utterance naturally fluttered the dovecots in Berlin and Potsdam, as hitherto the German Emperor and his agents have been amazingly successful in bamboozling British politicians of both parties into accepting deceptive assurances at their face value, and any Englishman questioning German good faith was regarded as a "crank." We can never understand German policy until we have grasped the elementary fact that every German is prepared to Ure in the interests of his country just as every Radical is prepared to Ure in the interests of his Party.

Mr. Balfour's
Indictment

IN defending the Opposition against the charge of using the Navy for party purposes, Mr. Balfour was able to point out that the Unionist Party had not raised the question until absolutely driven to do so, while Ministerial declarations afforded conclusive justification of Unionist action. This is, indeed, an under-statement, as the Opposition are more open to the charge of too tamely acquiescing in the abandonment of the Cawdor programme, which was a minimum programme, in the early days of the last Parliament, especially as each dropping of a British "Dreadnought" was followed by the laying down of a fresh German keel. The speaker affirmed that when he left office the present Government were provided with an ample supply of battleships

and naval stores. How did they stand now? We existed as an Empire on sufferance, without a supreme Navy, and he was not content to exist on sufferance. They were told by those who sneered at the alarm expressed concerning our relative naval position towards Germany "that all such talk as this gives needless irritation to a great and friendly Power." Mr. Balfour admired Germany, to whom the world owed a great debt for her contributions to science and her marvellous organisation, and we might profitably learn from her in many departments. "But there is one department, among others, from which I wish every citizen in this country would learn, and that is to face facts." He was no pessimist as to the future "if the country rises to a sense of its obligations and its necessities; but unless the country will face the facts how can you expect it to rise to that height?" If they consulted the statesmen and the diplomatists of the lesser Powers, "I am perfectly confident you will find among them an absolute unanimity of opinion that a struggle sooner or later between this country and Germany is inevitable." It is not necessary to confine one's researches to the representatives of minor Powers, for there is not a single foreign diplomat of any Power, great or small, except those who are too terrified of Germany to express an opinion, who does not believe that nothing can save this country from attack except preparations by land and sea on a scale not yet contemplated by any British Government.

Foreign
Opinion

THIS is the plain truth, and the more bluntly stated the better. All friendly foreigners are appalled at the apparent blindness of British politicians to what is patent to the rest of the world. Mr. Balfour diplomatically declared that he did not agree with the persons he quoted: They have watched with the closest interest, but not I think always with perfect comprehension, that to foreigners most mysterious thing, English public opinion, and they have come to the conclusion, I believe utterly wrongly, that we are not alive to the sense of our responsibilities, and that nothing can stir us to a recognition of our position, and that, therefore, we are predestined to succumb in some great contest, the occasion for which nobody can foresee, to a country which does face facts, which is alive to its responsibilities, which talks little and does much.

We must also remember that in Germany every citizen recognises that he does not discharge his obligation to the State by mere cash contributions, and is cheerfully prepared to sacrifice in person as well as in purse by training himself for the defence of Germany, which nowadays means an attack upon England. But, as Mr. Blatchford has pointed out, the need for the introduction of universal military service is not realised by "responsible statesmen" in this country. This failure on our part makes the German naval menace infinitely more serious. The combined attack of a great military and naval Power can only be successfully met by an equal combination of military and naval strength. What politician will dare to proclaim this to our people? In the same speech Mr. Balfour declared "and so far has this depreciatory view of the virility of the manhood of Great Britain gone, that I have known of Germans not connected with the Government, but men of position and character, men engaged in great affairs, who, if you talk to them about the adoption of Tariff Reform by this country actually say, ‘Do you suppose we should ever allow Great Britain to adopt Tariff Reform?"" and "the idea that any man of education and character outside this country should have the audacity to say that Great Britain is not to settle its own taxation according to its own ideas, makes my blood boil." These prophets would find themselves mistaken. No Continental country had ever been able to understand the temper of the British nation.

But while I give them a note of warning of our foreign critics, let me say, what is more to the point, to my own friends, that unless they bestir themselves Great Britain will be in a position of peril which she has not known in the memory of their fathers, their grandfathers, their great-grandfathers, and if that position of peril should issue in some great catastrophe, which heaven forbid, it will be a catastrophe, once it has occurred, from which this country will not again easily arise.

Mr. Balfour somewhat optimistically added, "I do not believe there is going to be war between this country and any great foreign Power. Heaven knows I do not desire it, but I do not believe it. Please remember that the absolutely only way in which you can secure the peace which you all desire is that you shall be sure of victory if war takes place."

mier's Self

We have long laboured to persuade our countrymen-not that it is an easy task, because Englishmen have an invincible repugnance to facing disagreeable facts-that this country The Pre- is scheduled for attack by the powers-that-be in Germany, who covet our "place in the sun." Complacency During the decade 1860 to 1870 which saw the unification of Germany by the blood and iron methods of Bismarck, Denmark, Austria and France were each in turn successfully fooled into a false sense of security, which prevented their making serious counter-preparations or combining their forces against the common aggressor. And then when the victims were most unsuspecting and fully unprepared, they were suddenly and ruthlessly fallen upon, defeated, humbled in the dust, and despoiled, in each case with the complicity of a party in the State which vehemently insisted like our Potsdam party that it was wicked to distrust the amiable intentions of a great and good people like the Germans, who were obviously wedded to peace, progress and commerce. The speeches of prominent Radicals and the articles in the Radical Press, all have their precise parallel in France in the years and months preceding the overwhelming catastrophe of 1870, from which France has not yet recovered. It seems extraordinary that with recent history staring British politicians in the face, they should continue courting disaster which in the opinion of the entire civilised world is approaching day by day unless we make adequate counterpreparations, of which so far there are no serious symptoms, and be it remembered, the principal member of the present cabal is publicly pledged against such preparations. It is, however, something that the Unionist Party realise half the truth, viz., the need for maintaining British Sea-power. Ministers lag far behind the Opposition, as they are busily explaining away their own solemn warnings nine months ago, while the military problem is rigorously boycotted by a Government whose policy has mainly consisted in the reduction of our diminutive Regular Army by from thirty thousand to forty thousand men on the pretext that a new Territorial Force was about to spring into being. Mr. Asquith's only reply to Mr. Balfour's cautious and guarded reference to a self-evident danger was in the first place some cheap swagger about British Sea-power-a line in which he has since been completely

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