, every one very
heavily armed, the principal antagonists, France and Germany, armed
to their utmost, but the European States, as a whole, unwilling to
allow any one of them to break the peace.

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 getti