persons as to the imminence of the Millennium? What is the use of all these eternal pæans on the blessings of peace, except to increase the store of smug hypocrisy. If peace could be preserved by speeches, every Power might safely abolish its armaments to-morrow. Every politician talks precisely the same language whenever this topic is discussed, peace being treated as universal and perpetual, but every statesman with a scintilla of sagacity acts as though war might break out at any moment. Germany taught Europe last spring to remain toujours en vedette when in the interests of Peace she brandished her sword in the face of Russia-an action which certain snobs and sycophants actually wish to reward by conferring the Nobel prize upon Wilhelm II. Unfortunately we in this country suffer from an excess of sentimentalists in high places, sufficiently strong to prevent sagacity from getting a hearing. In the wicked world in which we live Peace can only be preserved by the accumulation of greater Sea-power and Land-power in the hands of the nations sincerely wedded to peace, than is at the disposal of nations whose interests might conceivably be promoted by war. We have never suggested that the sixty million Germans are naturally aggressive, though everything has been done to make them so, particularly as regards this country, and there is no disguising the fact that this sinister propaganda has achieved stupendous success. There is no people in the world who could be so easily stampeded into war as the Germans. There is no country against which they could so easily be hurled as Great Britain.

German Government and People

WHAT We have said and shall continue to say, because it is true, is that the destinies of Germany are not in the hands of the German people but in those of the all-powerful oligarchy dominated by the great War Lord, as the Kaiser is never tired of designating himself. Whenever this governing group decides that the hour has sounded for war, war with anybody—especially war with England; a conflict long foreseen and provided for-the feelings of the German masses, even if pacific, would count for next to nothing, and we may be tolerably sure that care will be taken, as it was in 1870, to work them up to concert pitch. But in any event, the masses would be powerless

once their Government gave the word. German people were equally peaceful-perhaps more so-in the sixties, but they acquiesced, and indeed approved, the cowardly attack upon Denmark and her subsequent spoliation, whereby they secured the Kiel Canal, and that war is represented by German professors who write history to order as a righteous and rightful act; nor was there any resentment against Bismarck's unprovoked assault upon the kindred German people of Austria who were pulverised in six weeks, to some extent owing to an ingenious rearrangement of commands, effected through Prussian intrigue on the Austrian Press. Hardly a German voice was raised against the annihilation and dismemberment of France. The policy of blood and iron was no less popular than successful. Its achievements constitute the glory of modern Germany, and any criticism of Bismarckian methods is tantamount to treason. How utterly fatuous and futile of our sentimentalists to pretend that we should fare differently from other unsuspecting victims of Prussian aggression, who, after being insidiously thrown off their guard, were taken one by one, crushed and humbled in the dust. In every case there was a Potsdam party, as there is to-day in England, consciously or unconsciously wire-pulled by the enemy and playing the game of the enemy by morally and materially crippling their own country. With such awful warnings staring us in the face, with the prodigious, frantic, and stealthy preparations extending over many years in German shipyards and German arsenals, financed by loan as well as by taxation, with the Kaiser's recent reconstitution of his Cabinet with a view to giving a more belligerent turn to German policy under the auspices of the redoubtable Kiderlen Waechter, it would be impossible for British Ministers to act as they are acting were anything impossible to them.

THE more the Prime Minister licks the boots of the German Government, as he did throughout his sickening speech of July 14; the more he creeps and crawls before the German Boot Licking Admiralty, beseeching it to abstain from building "Dreadnoughts"; the more he apologises to his own rag, tag and bobtail for expenditure on British Sea-power; the more unready we remain owing to the want of almost all the requisites necessary to keep a fighting fleet at sea; the longer we

refuse to create a strategic department at the Admiralty, the more offensively shall we be flouted by the German Government, the more thoroughly despised by the German people, and the more easily will the nation be persuaded to embark their substance in "the great gamble of the great day." Since

Mr. Asquith's shameless declaration in the House of Commons that by giving England the benefit of every doubt, and denying her the disadvantage of any delay, while doing the reverse as regards our potential naval enemies, we should have a miserable margin of "Dreadnoughts" palpably and perilously inadequate -since this speech, and not improbably owing to this speech, which we predicted at the time would cost Great Britain many millions, the German Government have found means to drive a coach and four through the German Navy Act, which our professional optimists and minimisers insist on regarding, whenever it suits their purposes, as rigid and inviolable. Ex hypothesi the Navy Act prevented the "great and friendly Empire of Germany" (vide Mr. Asquith) from responding to our appeal for disarmament. Ex hypothesi the Navy Act will cause the German shipbuilding programme to automatically drop from four "Dreadnoughts" to two per annum after 1911-1912.

Now German
Move

THIS assertion has been the stock-in-trade of the little Navy Press in this country from the Manchester Guardian downwards. Mr. Asquith repeated these and other fairy-tales in the House of Commons, making them a pretext for restricting British "Dreadnoughts," and yet at the time he was speaking he must have known, if he knows anything, that arrangements were already completed in Germany for a further extension of the current shipbuilding programme. Still more significant is Germany's contemptuous reply to Mr. Asquith's renewed whining for disarmament. As we have said, a way has been found of immediately enlarging the German Navy without legislation, and we are likely to see a great acceleration in the development of "Dreadnoughts" and super-" Dreadnoughts," without any recourse to the Reichstag, not that the Reichstag would be backward in voting supplies now that, with the aid of British folly, the German nation has been successfully indoctrinated with the Imperial idea that "our destiny lies upon the water." Contrary to the predictions of all our quidnuncs,

particularly Mr. Haldane, who has always set up as an authority upon Germany on the strength of his having been annually bamboozled by German professors in his earlier days, the Teutonic taxpayer is cheerfully shouldering the burden of a first-class Navy, as well as a first-class Army, although the safety of the State is secured by the latter. The new device of the German Government, like all great devices, is simplicity itself. They have begun selling old vessels, which under the Navy Act are automatically replaced by new ships; thus, twenty-year-old battleships, out of which Mr. McKenna and Co. make so much capital in the fallacious returns paraded before Parliament, are being disposed of by the German Government to friendly foreign Powers in order that the German Navy may be strengthened by the addition of the newest and most powerful ships. The diplomatic relations between Germany and Turkey are somewhat mysterious. Abdul Hamid's whilom friend and patron, Wilhelm II., who was largely responsible for the maintenance of the rotten old régime at Constantinople, is now endeavouring to persuade the new régime that Germany is, and always has been, the best friend of the young Turks. He hopes to exploit the simplicity of his new friends for the benefit of Germany as successfully as he exploited the suspicions of the late Sultan.

Turkey
Obliges

POLITICALLY, Turkey who is woefully wanting in experienced statesmen, and consequently falls an easy prey to the wiles of the Wilhelmstrasse, is being lured into the Triple Alliance. Still more significant is her purchase of battleships from Germany; not new battleships, as we have already observed, but elderly battleships with the bloom off-too old to affect the balance of power in the North Sea, but not too old to dominate the Ægean. Before the completion of the transaction, the usual démentis were circulated from the usual quarters. "It was absurd to suppose either that Turkey wished to buy or that Germany wished to sell battleships." Next, "It was a malicious invention of interested parties." Then, "There is no foundation for the rumour." When a fait accompli, it became the most natural transaction in the world. Turkey wanted warships that Germany could well sparehence a mutually advantageous deal. Who has any right to complain?" This is admittedly an important episode in the

history of Turkey and her neighbours, as Turkey now becomes a serious sea-Power, and the Turkish Press is already advocating the need of maintaining a two-Power standard in adjoining waters. But it is a still more important transaction for Great Britain because it enables the German Government to replace pre-" Dreadnoughts" by super-" Dreadnoughts." Under the Navy Act each of these discarded units must be replaced by a modern unit: thus we learn that German Naval policy is infinitely less rigid when it suits the German Government than Mr. Asquith was led to believe, or than he tried to lead the House of Commons to believe, on the basis of which assumption British estimates were framed. By this coup the hypothetical majority of British "Dreadnoughts" disappears. Lest we should be considered unduly suspicious of Germany, or prejudiced against his Majesty's Ministers, we quote the impartial authority of the Novoe Vremya,* the leading Russian journal, which observes that "the real significance of the purchase does not lie in comparisons between the Turkish Naval forces and those of Greece or even those of Russia, but in the fact that Germany, under her Naval Bill, is empowered to lay down four extra 'Dreadnoughts,' thereby extinguishing even the narrow margin of British superiority laid down by Mr. Asquith." Not the least curious feature of this disquieting event is that the French money market, which is more cosmopolitan than patriotic, is providing the funds, and French patriots are beginning to ask themselves whether such transactions promote French interests. Brazil, e.g. has borrowed money from France to spend on armaments in Germany. Hungary proposes to follow suit. Is it good policy for France to pay for the razor to cut her own throat? We should not venture to touch on this delicate topic were it not being openly and boldly canvassed in leading French journals.

Now we put it to our readers, whatever their politics, could there be a graver situation than that produced by this transaction between Germany and Turkey? Have we at any Our Position moment during the last two hundred years allowed a single European Power to endanger our Naval supremacy? The two-Power standard which has been the basis of our policy ever since we attained command of the sea is no longer mentioned. * See Times St Petersburg Correspondence, Times, August 22, 1910.