The British Navy was living on its past achievements. Though it possessed a mass of material and a large personnel, neither was well organized for war. The available resources exceeded anything belonging to any other nation, but the fleet still basked, content, in the glow of the triumphs achieved in the early years of the nineteenth century. The Navy was unreformed. Steam had taken the place of sails, wood had been superseded, first by iron and then by steel, but the routine of the squadrons, the training of officers and men had undergone little change. The conditions of naval warfare had altered, but the British Fleet remained faithful to the old regime, holding fast to the belief that when war occurred there would be a sufficient interval to allow it to complete its arrangements, elaborate its plans, and place all its resources on a war footing. As the British Navy in its influence on world policy inspired German ambitions, so German thoroughness in organization, when applied to the growing German Fleet, reacted upon the British Navy and gave it a new and vigorous life.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] This ship was, of course, the predecessor of the present Dreadnought.
The German Navy Acts
Among the political developments of the last quarter of a century there is none more remarkable than the evolution of German naval ambitions as revealed in the legislation passed since 1898.
One of the first acts after the Emperor ascended the throne was the reorganization of the central Navy administration, which had hitherto been presided over by a general officer of the army. This fact in itself indicates the subordinate position which the navy had hitherto occupied in the defensive machinery of the German Empire. The fleet itself was of extremely modest proportions. It consisted only of a few small battleships of heavy gun-power, but limited radius of action, whose rôle was the defence of the coasts of Germany, and more particularly the Baltic littoral, for at this period few men-of-war under any flag cruised in the North Sea. The spearhead of the British Navy was exposed in the Mediterranean, where the latest and most powerful ships were stationed, and the small Channel Fleet spent most of its time not in the Channel, but ringing the changes on Vigo and other Spanish ports—Lisbon, Lagos, Gibraltar, Madeira, and Port Mahon. This squadron consisted of five obsolescent ships, and the only British vessels permanently in home waters—so complete was the domination of the situation in southern waters—were a number of port and coast-guard ships, half manned and distributed round the coast, and the unmanned vessels in reserve in the dockyards. The distribution of the French Fleet was on much the same lines, the majority of the modern ships being concentrated in the Mediterranean, while a small force was based upon Brest. Russia alone was represented in northern waters, and it was consequently in the Baltic that the German Fleet, such as it was, was trained and drilled. Except for a few gunboats, the German naval ensign was entirely unrepresented in distant seas, and public opinion showed no desire to increase the naval votes in order to enable German influence to be exercised beyond home waters.
After the Emperor's accession to the throne in June, 1888, and after the reorganization of naval administration, an effort was made to obtain an increased grant from the Reichstag, but only with partial success. From 1874 to 1889-90 the naval expenditure had increased gradually from £1,950,000 to about £2,750,000. In 1890-91 the Estimates had advanced to nearly £3,600,000, and in the following year they rose still further to £4,750,000, and then they began to fall once more under the pressure of the Reichstag, which viewed with no sympathy the new naval ambitions which were finding expression in the Press. During these years the Reichstag repeatedly reduced the votes put forward by Admiral von Hollmann, the Minister of Marine. Throughout his period of office, from 1890 to 1897, he failed signally to inoculate the Parliamentary majority with the new ideas and the new enthusiasm which dominated the Marineamt; and at last in 1897, after being repulsed, first by the Budget Committee and then by the Reichstag itself, the Marine Minister, whose ambitions were really extremely modest, retired from the scene, compelled to admit defeat. He was a sailor and neither a statesman nor an administrator, and his blunt methods were not to the liking of the politicians. No surprise consequently was felt when three months after this final humiliation the Admiral resigned his office. One of the pioneers of German sea-power, Admiral von Hollmann began, under the inspiration of the Emperor, the naval movement which, a few years later, under the impulse that the Boer War imparted to public opinion, and with the help of an elaborate Press Bureau, was carried to such lengths by his successor.