Sec.3. Britain and Germany.—­In the forefront of the discussion stands our quarrel with Germany.  What are to be our future relations with Germany after the war?  If there is anything in the assertion that we are fighting for the cause of liberty and progress, it can only mean that we are fighting a system rather than a nation—­Prussian militarism and bureaucracy, but not German civilisation.  We have to go still further and consider the motive powers behind that iron system.  Sitting in our little island, we are apt to forget what it means to possess a purely artificial frontier of 400 miles, and to see just beyond it a neighbour numbering 171,000,000 inhabitants, in an earlier stage of civilisation and capable of being set in motion by causes which no longer operate in the western world.

If the final settlement is to be just and lasting, the demands of the victors must be adjusted to the minimum, not the maximum, of their own vital interests.  For Britain the central problem must inevitably be:  What is to be the position of the German Navy if we are successful in this war?  Is anything even remotely resembling disarmament to be attained unless that Navy is rendered innocuous?  Is it conceivable that even if Britain accepted the status quo, a victorious Russia could ever tolerate a situation which secured to Germany the naval supremacy of the Baltic, and the possibility of bottling Russian sea-trade?  Even the opening months of the war have shown what ought always to have been obvious, that sea-power differs from land-power in one vital respect:  military supremacy can be shared between several powerful States, but naval supremacy is one and indivisible.  In this war we shall either maintain and reassert our command of the sea, or we shall lose it:  share it with Germany we shall not, because we cannot.

Again, what is to be the fate of German shipping and German colonies?  Can we not curtail Germany’s war navy, while respecting her mercantile marine?  Is it either expedient or necessary to exact the uttermost farthing in the colonial sphere in the event of victory?  It is obvious that just as Germany offered to respect French territory in Europe at the expense of the French colonial empire, so the Allies, if victorious, might divide the German colonies between them.  By so doing, however, we shall provide, in the eyes of the German nation, a complete justification of William II.’s naval policy.  One of the most widespread arguments among educated Germans (including those friendly to this country) has always been that German colonies and shipping are at the mercy of a stronger sea-power, and that therefore Germany only holds her sea-trade on sufferance.  If, as a result of the war, we take from her all that we can, we shall ingrain this point of view in every German.  We should thus tend to perpetuate the old situation, with its intolerable competition of armaments, unless indeed we could reduce Germany to complete bankruptcy—­a thing which is almost inconceivable to those who know her resources and which would deprive us of one of our most valuable customers.