the two branches of the Narrow Seas, the North Sea and the Channel.  It had been for generations a cardinal piece of English policy that the French Fleet should be watched, the English Fleet maintained overwhelmingly superior to it, and all opportunities for keeping France engaged with other rivals used to the advantage of this country.  On this account English policy leant, on the whole, towards the German side, during all the generation of rivalry between France and Germany which followed the war of 1870.

But when the Germans began to build their fleet, things changed.  The Germans had openly given Europe to understand that they regarded Holland and Belgium, and particularly the port of Antwerp, as ultimately destined to fall under their rule or into their system.  Their fleet was specifically designed for meeting the British Fleet; it corresponded to no existing considerable colonial empire, and though the development of German maritime commerce was an excuse for it, it was only an excuse.  Indeed, the object of obtaining supremacy at sea was put forward fairly clearly by the promoters of the whole scheme.  Great Britain was therefore constrained to transfer the weight of her support to Russia and to France, and to count on the whole as a force opposed, for the first time in hundreds of years, to North Germany in the international politics of Europe.  Similarity of religion (which is a great bond) and a supposed identity (and partly real similarity) of race were of no effect compared with this sentiment of necessity.

Here it is important to note that the transference of British support from one continental group to another neither produced aggression by Great Britain nor pointed to any intention of aggression.  It is a plain matter of fact, which all future history will note, that the very necessity in English eyes of English supremacy at sea, and the knowledge that such a supremacy was inevitably a provocation to others, led to the greatest discretion in the use of British naval strength, and, in general, to a purely defensive and peaceful policy upon the part of the chief maritime power.  It would, indeed, have been folly to have acted otherwise, for there was nothing to prevent the great nations, our rivals, if they had been directly menaced by the British superiority at sea, from beginning to build great fleets, equal or superior to our own.  Germany alone pursued this policy, with no excuse save an obvious determination to undo the claim of the British Fleet.

I have called this a blunder, and, from the point of view of the German policy, it was a blunder.  For if the Prussian dynasty set out, as it did, to make itself the chief power in the world, its obvious policy was to deal with its enemies in detail.  It ought not, at any cost, to have quarrelled with Russia until it had finally disposed of France.  If it was incapable, through lack of subtlety, to prevent the Franco-Russian group from forming, it should at