It was about this moment that Prussia committed what the future historian will regard, very probably, as the capital blunder in her long career of success.  She began to build a great fleet.  Here the reader should note two very important consequences of the great Prussian victories which had taken place a generation before.  The first was the immense expansion of German industrialism.  Germany, from an agricultural State, became a State largely occupied in mining, smelting, spinning, and shipbuilding; and there went with this revolution, as there always goes with modern industrialism, a large and unhealthy increase of population.  The German Empire, after its war with France, was roughly equal to the population of the French; but the German Empire, after this successful industrial experiment, the result of its victories, was much more than half as large again in population as the French (68 to 39).

Secondly, the German Empire developed a new and very large maritime commerce.  This second thing did not follow, as some have imagined it does, from the first.  Germany might have exported largely without exporting in her own ships.  The creation of Germany’s new mercantile marine was a deliberate part of the general Prussian policy of expansion.  It was heavily subsidized, especially directed into the form of great international passenger lines, and carefully co-ordinated with the rest of the Prussian scheme throughout the world.

At a date determined by the same general policy, and somewhat subsequent to the first creation of this mercantile marine, came the decision to build a great fleet.  Now, it so happens that Great Britain alone among the Powers of Europe depends for her existence upon supremacy at sea, and particularly upon naval superiority in the Narrow Seas to the east and the south of the British islands.

Such a necessity is, of course, a challenge to the rest of the world, and it would be ridiculous to expect the rest of the world to accept that challenge without protest.  But a necessity this naval policy of Great Britain remains none the less.  The moment some rival or group of rivals can overcome her fleet, her mere physical livelihood is in peril.  She cannot be certain of getting her food.  She cannot be certain of getting those foreign materials the making up of which enables her to purchase her food.  Further, her dominions are scattered oversea, and supremacy at sea is her only guarantee of retaining the various provinces of her dominion.

It is a case which has happened more than once before in the history of the world.  Great commercial seafaring States have arisen; they have always had the same method of government by a small, wealthy class, the same ardent patriotism, the same scattered empire, and the same inexorable necessity of maintaining supremacy at sea.  Only one Power had hitherto rendered this country anxious for the Narrow Seas:  that Power was France, and it only controlled one-half of