So far as the evidence at present goes, I do not think a case can be made out for the view that German policy was aiming during these years at securing the hegemony of Europe by annexing European territory.  The expansion Germany was seeking was that of trade and markets.  And her statesmen and people, like those of other countries, were under the belief that, to secure this, it was necessary to acquire colonies.  This ambition, up to a point, she was able, in fact, to fulfil, not by force but by agreement with the other Powers.  The Berlin Act of 1885 was one of the wisest and most far-seeing achievements of European policy.  By it the partition of a great part of the African continent between the Powers was peaceably accomplished, and Germany emerged with possessions to the extent of 377,000 square miles and an estimated population of 1,700,000.  By 1906 her colonial domain had been increased to over two and a half million square miles, and its population to over twelve millions; and all of this had been acquired without war with any civilized nation.  In spite of her late arrival on the scene as a colonial Power, Germany had thus secured without war an empire overseas, not comparable, indeed, to that of Great Britain or of France, but still considerable in extent and (as Germans believed) in economic promise, and sufficient to give them the opportunity they desired to show their capacity as pioneers of civilization.  How they have succeeded or failed in this we need not here consider.  But when Germans demand a “place in the sun,” the considerable place they have in fact acquired, with the acquiescence of the other colonial Powers, should, in fairness to those Powers, be remembered.  But, notoriously, they were not satisfied, and the extent of their dissatisfaction was shown by their determination to create a navy.  This new departure, dating from the close of the decade 1890-1900, marks the beginning of that friction between Great Britain and Germany which was a main cause of the war.  It is therefore important to form some just idea of the motives that inspired German policy to take this momentous step.  The reasons given by Prince Buelow, the founder of the policy, and often repeated by German statesmen and publicists,[2] are, first, the need of a strong navy, to protect German commerce; secondly, the need, as well as the ambition, of Germany to play a part proportional to her real strength in the determination of policy beyond the seas.  These reasons, according to the ideas that govern European statesmanship, are valid and sufficient.  They are the same that have influenced all great Powers; and if Germany was influenced by them we need not infer any specially sinister intentions on her part.  The fact that during the present war German trade has been swept from the seas, and that she is in the position of a blockaded Power, will certainly convince any German patriot, not that she did not need a navy, but that she needed a much stronger one; and the retort that