go to the country
asking increased appropriations for the navy, must give some reason
for their request. There is only one reason, and that is that there is
a growing navy across the North Sea, which, whether now it is or is
not a menace, may be a menace to their ship-fed island, and they must
have ships and men and guns enough to guard the sea-lanes which their
food-laden ships must sail through.

They may be awkward sometimes in their expression of this self-evident
fact, they may call their own fleet a necessity and the other fleet a
luxury, but that is a negligible question of verbal manners; the fact
remains that their fleet is, and all the world knows it is, and it is
laughable to discuss it, the prime necessity of their existence.

As long as we Christians have given up any shred of belief in
Christian ethics, as applicable to international disputes, we must
live by the law of the strongest. We do not bless the poor in spirit,
but the self-confident; we do not bless the meek, but the proud; we do
not bless the peace-makers, but those who urge us to prepare for war;
we do not bless the reviled and the persecuted and the slandered, but
those who revolt against injustice and tyranny; we do not approve the
cutting off of the right hand, but admire the mailed fist; and it is
only adding to the confusion to raise millions for war ourselves, and
then to present a handsomely bound copy of the Beatitudes to our
rivals.

I shall be wantonly misunderstood if these reflections be taken as a
criticism of Germany. This situation involves Germany in censure no
more than other nations. It is only that Germany shows herself to be
somewhat childish and peevishly provincial, in girding at an
unchangeable situation, either in South America or in the North Sea.

This is not altogether Germany's fault. She is suffering from growing
pains, and from grave internal unrest. She is only just of age as a
nation, and her constitution is so inflexible that it is a constant
source of irritation. She is governed by an autocracy, and the two
strongest parties numerically in her Reichstag are the party of the
Catholics and the party of the Socialists. She has built up a
tremendous trade on borrowed capital, and every gust of wind in the
money market makes her fidgety. Her population increases at the rate
of some 800,000 a year, but her educational system produces such a
surplus of laborers who wish to work in uniforms, or in black coats
and