embered that the reduced navy
estimates of 1908-9 were followed by national alarm and the publication
of Admiral Lord Charles Beresford's shipbuilding programme and large
increase in estimates of the following year. Here is the letter:

The Kaiser's Letter.

Berlin, 14th-2, 1908.

My Dear Lord Tweedmouth--May I intrude on your precious time and
ask for a few moments' attention to these lines I venture to submit
to you? I see by the daily papers and reviews that a battle royal
is being fought about the needs of the navy. I therefore venture to
furnish you with some information anent the German naval programme,
which it seems is being quoted by all parties to further their ends
by trying to frighten peaceable British taxpayers with it as a
bogy.

During my last pleasant visit to your hospitable shores I tried to
make your authorities understand what the drift of German naval
policy is, but I am afraid that my explanations have been either
misunderstood or not believed, because I see "German danger" and
"German challenge to British naval supremacy" constantly quoted in
different articles. This phrase, if not repudiated or corrected,
sown broadcast over the country and daily dinned into British ears,
might in the end create the most deplorable results.

I therefore deem it advisable, as Admiral of the Fleet, to lay some
facts before you to enable you to see clearly that it is absolutely
nonsensical and untrue that the German naval bill is to provide a
navy meant as a challenge to British naval supremacy. The German
fleet is built against nobody at all; it is solely built for
Germany's needs in relation with that country's rapidly growing
trade. The German naval bill was sanctioned by the Imperial
Parliament and published ten years ago, and may be had at any large
bookseller's. There is nothing surprising, secret, or underhand in
it, and every reader may study the whole course mapped out for the
development of the German Navy with the greatest ease.

Thirty to Forty Battleships in 1920.

The law is being adhered to, and provides for about thirty to forty
ships of the line in 1920. The number of ships fixed by the bill
included the fleet then actually in commission, notwithstanding its
material being already old and far surpassed by contemporary types.
I