there need have been no war if Germany had not provoked it by building a fleet is not one that can be expected to appeal to any nation so long as the European anarchy endures.  For, of course, every nation regards itself as menaced perpetually by aggression from some other Power.  Defence was certainly a legitimate motive for the building of the fleet, even if there had been no other.  There was, however, in fact, another reason avowed.  Germany, as we have said, desired to have a voice in policy beyond the seas.  Here, too, the reason is good, as reasons go in a world of competing States.  A great manufacturing and trading Power cannot be indifferent to the parcelling out of the world among its rivals.  Wherever, in countries economically undeveloped, there were projects of protectorates or annexations, or of any kind of monopoly to be established in the interest of any Power, there German interests were directly affected.  She had to speak, and to speak with a loud voice, if she was to be attended to.  And a loud voice meant a navy.  So, at least, the matter naturally presented itself to German imperialists, as, indeed, it would to imperialists of any other country.

The reasons given by German statesmen for building their fleet were in this sense valid.  But were they the only reasons?  In the beginning most probably they were.  But the formation and strengthening of the Entente, and Germany’s consequent fear that war might be made upon her jointly by France and Great Britain, gave a new stimulus to her naval ambition.  She could not now be content with a navy only as big as that of France, for she might have to meet those of France and England conjoined.  This defensive reason is good.  But no doubt, as always, there must have lurked behind it ideas of aggression.  Ambition, in the philosophy of States, goes hand in hand with fear.  “The war may come,” says one party.  “Yes,” says the other; and secretly mutters, “May the war come!” To ask whether armaments are for offence or for defence must always be an idle inquiry.  They will be for either, or both, according to circumstances, according to the personalities that are in power, according to the mood that politicians and journalists, and the interests that suborn them, have been able to infuse into a nation.  But what may be said with clear conviction is, that to attempt to account for the clash of war by the ambition and armaments of a single Power is to think far too simply of how these catastrophes originate.  The truth, in this case, is that German ambition developed in relation to the whole European situation, and that, just as on land their policy was conditioned by their relation to France and Russia, so at sea it was conditioned by their relation to Great Britain.  They knew that their determination to become a great Power at sea would arouse the suspicion and alarm of the English.  Prince Buelow is perfectly frank about that.  He says that the difficulty was to get on with the shipbuilding