The hostility to Germany is also sufficiently evident in other matters.  It has always been England’s object to maintain a certain balance of power between the continental nations of Europe, and to prevent any one of them attaining a pronounced supremacy.  While these States crippled and hindered each other from playing any active part on the world’s stage, England acquired an opportunity of following out her own purposes undisturbed, and of founding that world Empire which she now holds.  This policy she still continues, for so long as the Powers of Europe tie each other’s hands, her own supremacy is uncontested.  It follows directly from this that England’s aim must be to repress Germany, but strengthen France; for Germany at the present moment is the only European State which threatens to win a commanding position; but France is her born rival, and cannot keep on level terms with her stronger neighbour on the East, unless she adds to her forces and is helped by her allies.  Thus the hostility to Germany, from this aspect also, is based on England’s most important interests, and we must treat it as axiomatic and self-evident.

The argument is often adduced that England by a war with Germany would chiefly injure herself, since she would lose the German market, which is the best purchaser of her industrial products, and would be deprived of the very considerable German import trade.  I fear that from the English point of view these conditions would be an additional incentive to war.  England would hope to acquire, in place of the lost German market, a large part of those markets which had been supplied by Germany before the war, and the want of German imports would be a great stimulus, and to some extent a great benefit, to English industries.

After all, it is from the English aspect of the question quite comprehensible that the English Government strains every nerve to check the growing power of Germany, and that a passionate desire prevails in large circles of the English nation to destroy the German fleet which is building, and attack the objectionable neighbour.

English policy might, however, strike out a different line, and attempt to come to terms with Germany instead of fighting.  This would be the most desirable course for us.  A Triple Alliance—­Germany, England, and America—­has been suggested.[B] But for such a union with Germany to be possible, England must have resolved to give a free course to German development side by side with her own, to allow the enlargement of our colonial power, and to offer no political hindrances to our commercial and industrial competition.  She must, therefore, have renounced her traditional policy, and contemplate an entirely new grouping of the Great Powers in the world.

[Footnote B:  “The United States and the War Cloud in Europe,” by Th.  Schiemann, McClure’s Magazine, June, 1910.]