An "understanding" between Germany and the United States to act together on the Asiatic side of the Pacific littoral would have its strategic importance in the fact that German power in the Atlantic would help to lessen certain risks consequent upon the United States concentrating her naval forces in the Pacific.
Another reasonably possible combination should be noted. As one of three partners in the Triple Entente, Great Britain has an understanding with Russia, which might possibly affect one day the position in the Pacific. It is a fact rumoured among European diplomats that France, with the idea of maintaining the Triple Entente as a basis of future world-action, has urged Russia to build a Pacific Fleet, abandoning naval expansion in the Baltic and the Black Sea. With a strong Pacific Fleet Russia would certainly be a much more valuable friend to France and to Great Britain than at present. But that is "in the air." The actual position is that Great Britain and Russia are on such excellent terms that they can fish amicably together to-day in the very disturbed waters of Persia, and are possible future partners in the Pacific.
Those who consider a British-Russian alliance as impossible, forget the history of centuries and remember only that of a generation. Anciently the Russian and the Englishman were the best of friends, and Russian aid was often of very material use to Great Britain. It was in the eleventh century that King Canute established English naval power in the Baltic, and thus opened up a great trade with the Russian town of Novgorod. He helped the young Russian nation much in so doing. After Canute's death this trade with Russia languished for five centuries. But in the sixteenth century it was revived, and some centuries later it was said of this revival: "The discovery of a maritime intercourse with the Great Empire of Russia, and the consequent extension of commerce and navigation, is justly regarded by historians as the first dawn of the wealth and naval preponderance of England." Some indeed hold that the great exploits of the Elizabethan era of British seamanship would not have been possible without the maritime supplies—cordage, canvas, tallow, spars and salt beef—obtained from Russia.
The benefits of the friendship were not all on one side. In the seventeenth century England helped Russia with arms, supplies and troops against the Poles. In 1747 England paid Russia to obtain an army of 37,000 troops which was employed in Holland. Later it was agreed that Russia was to keep ready, on the frontiers of Livonia, an army of 47,000 troops beside forty galleys to be used in the defence of Hanover, for England, if needed. At a later date Catherine the Great of Russia was appealed to for 20,000 troops for service against the revolted American colonies, an appeal which she very wisely rejected. In the wars against Napoleon, Great Britain and Russia were joint chiefs of the European coalition, and a Russian Fleet was stationed in British waters doing good service at the time of the Mutiny of the Nore. A British-Russian understanding, in short, has been the rule rather than the exception in European politics since the fifteenth century.
An instinct of friendliness between Great Britain and the United States, though expressed in no formal bonds, is yet a great force in the Pacific. There has been at least one occasion on which an American force in the Pacific has gone to the help of a British naval force engaging an Asiatic enemy. There are various more or less authentic stories showing the instinct of the armed forces of both nations to fraternise. Sometimes it is the American, sometimes the British sailor who is accused of breaking international law in his bias for the men of his own speech and race. It would not be wise to record incidents, which were irregular if they ever happened, and which, therefore, had best be forgotten. But the fact of the American man-of-war's-men in Apia Harbour, Samoa, finding time during their own rush to destruction at the hands of a hurricane to cheer a British warship steaming out to safety, is authentic, and can be cited without any harm as one instance of the instinctive friendship of the two peoples in the Pacific of common blood and common language.