Irish-American linked with German-American keen-sighted hostility did the rest.  The rivalry of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft aided, and the effort (for the time at any rate) has been wrecked, thereby plunging England into a further paroxysm of religious despondency and grave concern for German morals.  This mood eventuated in Lord Haldane’s “week end” trip to Berlin.  The voice was the voice of Jacob, in spite of the hand of Esau.  Mr. Churchill at Glasgow, showed the real hand and the mess of pottage so amiably offered at Berlin bought no German birthright.  The Kreuz Zeitung rightly summed up the situation by pointing out that “Mr. Churchill’s testimony can now be advanced as showing that the will of England alone comes in question as the exponent of peace, and that England for many years past has consciously assumed the role of an absolute and perfectly arbitrary judge of war and peace.  It seems to us all the more significant that Mr. Churchill proposes also in the future to control, with the help of the strong navies of the Dominions, the trade and naval movements of all the Powers on the face of the earth—­that is to say, his aim is to secure a world monopoly for England.”  There has never been any other thought in the English mind.  As I said in Part I. of this paper, “British interests are first the control of all the seas of all the world in full military and commercial control.  If this be not challenged peace is permitted; to dispute it seriously means war.”

Germany is driven by necessity to dispute it seriously and to overcome it.  She cannot get out to play her part in world life, nay, she cannot hope to ultimately maintain herself at home until that battle has been fought and won.

Arrangements with England, detentes, understandings, call them what you will, are merely parleys before the fight.  The assault must be delivered, the fortress carried, or else Germany, and with her Europe, must resign the mission of the white races and hand over the government and future of the world to one chosen people.

Europe reproduces herself yearly at the present time at the rate of about five million souls.  Some three-fifths of the number are to-day absorbed into the life of the Continent, the balance go abroad and principally to North America, to swell the English-speaking world.  Germany controls about one-fifth of Europe’s natural annual increase, and realising that emigration to-day means only to lose her people and build up her antagonist’s strength, she has for years now striven to keep her people within German limits, and hitherto with successful results far in excess of any achieved by other European States.  But the limit must be reached, and that before many years are past.  Where is Germany to find the suitable region, both on a scale and under conditions of climate, health and soil that a people of say 90,000,000 hemmed in a territory little larger than France, will find commensurate to their needs?  No European people is in such plight.