ly mutters, "May the war come!" To ask whether armaments are for
offence or for defence must always be an idle inquiry. They will be for
either, or both, according to circumstances, according to the personalities
that are in power, according to the mood that politicians and journalists,
and the interests that suborn them, have been able to infuse into a nation.
But what may be said with clear conviction is, that to attempt to account
for the clash of war by the ambition and armaments of a single Power is
to think far too simply of how these catastrophes originate. The truth,
in this case, is that German ambition developed in relation to the whole
European situation, and that, just as on land their policy was conditioned
by their relation to France and Russia, so at sea it was conditioned by
their relation to Great Britain. They knew that their determination to
become a great Power at sea would arouse the suspicion and alarm of the
English. Prince Buelow is perfectly frank about that. He says that the
difficulty was to get on with the shipbuilding programme without giving
Great Britain an opportunity to intervene by force and nip the enterprise
in the bud. He attributes here to the British Government a policy which
is all in the Bismarckian tradition. It was, in fact, a policy urged by
some voices here, voices which, as is always the case, were carried to
Germany and magnified by the mega-phone of the Press.[3] That no British
Government, in fact, contemplated picking a quarrel with Germany in order
to prevent her becoming a naval Power I am myself as much convinced as any
other Englishman, and I count the fact as righteousness to our statesmen.
On the other hand, I think it an unfounded conjecture that Prince Buelow was
deliberately building with a view to attacking the British Empire. I see
no reason to doubt his sincerity when he says that he looked forward to a
peaceful solution of the rivalry between Germany and ourselves, and that
France, in his view, not Great Britain, was the irreconcilable enemy.[4]
In building her navy, no doubt, Germany deliberately took the risk of
incurring a quarrel with England in the pursuit of a policy which she
regarded as essential to her development. It is quite another thing,
and would require much evidence to prove that she was working up to a
war with the object of destroying the British Empire.

What we have to bear in mind, in estimating the meaning of the German
naval policy, is a