“The world, at the end of the nineteenth century, stands under the star of commerce; commerce breaks down the barriers which separate the peoples and creates new relations between the nations.”

Then the idea slumbered in his mind for a few years, while he continued to make his own people restless with criticism, perhaps deserved, of their sluggishness, their pessimism, their party strife, and foreign peoples equally restless with phrases like “nemo me impune lacessit”; until the idea came suddenly to utterance in 1897, when, on seeing the figure of Neptune on a monument to the Emperor William, he broke out:  “The trident should be in our grip!” From this time, and for the next few years, the growth of the navy may be said to have never long been far from his thoughts.  In sending Prince Henry to Kiautschau at the close of 1898 he made the remark that “imperial power means sea power, and sea power and imperial power are dependent on each other.”  Nine months afterwards at Stettin he used a phrase alone sufficient to keep his name alive in history:  “Our future lies on the water!”

At Hamburg, in 1899, he laid emphasis on the changes in the world which justify a naval policy one can see now was almost inevitable.

“A strong German fleet,” he said, “is a thing of which we stand in bitter need.”  And he continued: 

“In Hamburg especially one can understand how necessary is a powerful protection for German interests abroad.  If we look around us we see how greatly the aspect of the world has altered in recent years.  Old-world empires pass away and new ones begin to arise.  Nations suddenly appear before the peoples and compete with them, nations of whom a little before the ordinary man had been hardly aware.  Products which bring about radical changes in the domain of international relations, as well as in the political economy of the people, and which in old times took hundreds of years to ripen, come to maturity in a few months.  The result is that the tasks of our German Empire and people have grown to enormous proportions and demand of me and my Government unusual and great efforts, which can then only be crowned with success when, united and decided, without respect to party, Germans stand behind us.  Our people, moreover, must resolve to make some sacrifice.  Above all they must put aside their endeavour to seek the excellent through the ever more-sharply contrasted party factions.  They must cease to put party above the welfare of the whole.  They must put a curb on their ancient and inherited weakness—­to subject everything to the most unlicensed criticism; and they must stop at the point where their most vital interests become concerned.  For it is precisely these political sins which revenge themselves so deeply on our sea interests and our fleet.  Had the strengthening of the fleet not been refused me during the past eight years of my Government, notwithstanding all appeals