GERMAN AMBITIONS
The German nation had not up to the passing of Bismarck been the enemy of the British people and until its belated entrance upon the field of world politics and expansion the people had not even been rivals. In the long series of European wars between 1688 and 1815, the German states were allies and friends of England. After that, Prussia, and then the German Empire, became gradually a great national force in the world and its spirit of unity, pride of power, energy in trade, skill and success in industry, vigor of development in tariffs, progress in military power and naval construction were, from the standpoint of its own people, altogether admirable. Following the Franco-Prussian War it had steadily attained a position of European supremacy. Then came the increase of population and trade, the desire for colonies, the restriction of emigration to foreign countries.
It was a natural though difficult ambition. The marriage of Queen Wilhelmina, and later the birth of a heir, averted any immediate probability of acquiring Holland and, with it, the Dutch colonial possessions, except by means of force. The assertion of the United States’ Monroe Doctrine checked German efforts which had been directed to South America and concentrated in Brazil, where 100,000 Germans had settled and where trade relations had become very close. British diplomacy of a trade, as well as political character, in Persia, prevented certain railway schemes from being carried out, which would have given Germany a dominating influence in Asia Minor and on the Persian Gulf. Although the partition of Africa gave the German Empire nearly one million square miles and an obvious opening for colonization and power, the inexperience and ineptitude of German officials in Colonial government, the dislike, also, of Germans for emigration and the fact that the movement of settlers abroad steadily decreased in late years, tended to prevent, on the Continent, an expansion which would have been assured under British colonization and business effort.
At the same time the acquisition of these and other regions such as Samoa was significant. Prior to 1870 Germany was a geographical expression which meant a loose combination of States with sometimes clashing interests, and incoherent expression, and varied patriotism. German trade was then small, the industries too poor to compete with those of Britain, while its people possessed not an acre of soil beyond their European boundaries. Since then it had become a closely-united people with an army of over five million men—admittedly the best-trained troops in the world; with a trade totalling $4,400,000,000 and competing in Britain’s home market, taking away her contracts in India and some of the colonies, beating her in many foreign fields; with an industrial production which included great steel works such as Krupps, ship-building yards said to be of greater productive power than those of Britain, factories of well-kept character operating at high pressure with workmen trained in the best technical system of the world today; with other productive conditions aided by high protective duties and with exports totalling (1910) $2,020,000,000 and imports of $2,380,000,000; with Savings Bank deposits in 1911 totalling $4,500,000.0000 as against a British total of $1,135,000,000.
Couple these conditions with Colonial ambitions dwarfed, or unsuccessful in comparison with British success; continental power as supreme, by virtue of military strength, as Napoleon’s was one hundred years before by the force of genius, but hampered, as was his, by the power of Britain on the seas; a productive force of industry increasing out of all proportion to home requirements, competing with British commerce in every corner of the world and threatened by a possible but finally postponed combination of British countries in a system of inter-Empire tariffs; a population of 64,000,000, increasing at the rate of one million a year and having no suitable opening for emigration or settlement within its own territories; and we have conditions which explained and emphasized German naval construction. Both German ambition and German naval construction were therefore easily comprehensible.
Nor was the ambition for sea-power concealed. The first large naval program was passed by the Reichstag in 1898 and fixed the naval estimate up to 1903, when the total expenditure was to be $45,000,000—in 1906 the naval expenditure was over $60,000,000. The second Naval Bill was passed in 1900 during the Boer War, and the preamble to this Act stated that its object was to give Germany “a fleet of such strength that even for the mightiest Naval Power, a war with her would involve such risks as to endanger its own supremacy.” Other Acts were passed in 1906 and 1908, and for the years 1908 to 1917 arrangements were made for a total expenditure of $1,035,000,000—this including a portion of the “accelerated program” and the Special Dreadnought construction which caused the memorable debate in the British Commons in 1909.
The Law of 1912—passing the Reichstag on May 21st of that year—provided for an addition to the program of three battleships, three large cruisers and three small ones. During the years 1898–1904 Great Britain launched 26 battleships to Germany’s 14, with 27 armored cruisers, 17 protected cruisers and 55 destroyers to Germany’s 5, 16 and 35 respectively, or a total of 125 to 70. In 1905–11 Great Britain launched 20 battleships to Germany’s 15, with 13 armored cruisers, 10 protected cruisers and 80 destroyers to Germany’s 6, 16 and 70 respectively, or a total of 123 to 107. Excluding destroyers Great Britain launched 70 sea-going warships in the first period to Germany’s 25 and in the second period 43 to 37.