Now the Chancellor was in favor of the bill, but it was honorably proposed with the limitation which it had been decided to impose upon it in case of the conclusion of the agreement. In England, on the other hand, the full naval construction program was carried out.
This "Haldane episode" is characteristic of England's policy. This whole maneuver, conceived on a large scale, was engineered for the sole purpose of hampering the development of the German fleet, while, simultaneously, in America, which had an almost negligible merchant fleet; in France, whose navy was superior in numbers to the German; in Italy, in Russia, which also had ships built abroad—vast construction programs were carried out without eliciting one word of protest from England. And Germany, wedged in between France and Russia, certainly had to be at least prepared to defend herself on the water against those nations.
DEFENDS NAVAL PROGRAM
For this our naval construction program was absolutely necessary; it was never aimed against the English fleet, four or five times as strong as ours, and assuring England's superiority and security, to equal the strength of which no sensible man in Germany ever dreamed. We needed our fleet for coast defense and the protection of our commerce; for this purpose the lesser means of defense, like U-boats, torpedo boats, and mines, were not sufficient. In addition the coast batteries on the Baltic were so antiquated and miserably equipped that they would have been razed within forty-eight hours by the massed fire of the heavy guns of modern battleships. Thus, our Baltic coast was practically defenseless. To protect it the fleet was necessary.
The Skagerrak (Jutland) battle has proved what the fleet meant and what it was worth. That battle would have meant annihilation for England if the Reichstag had not refused up to 1900 all proposals for strengthening the navy. Those twelve lost years were destined never to be retrieved.
Before we take our leave of Haldane I wish to touch upon another episode in his activities. In 1906 he came, with the permission of the German Government, to Berlin, to inform himself concerning the Prussian defense conditions, recruiting, General Staff, etc. He busied himself at the Ministry of War, where the Minister, General von Einem, personally gave him information. After about two or three weeks' work there he returned, well satisfied, to England.
When, after the outbreak of the World War, the "pro-German" Haldane, the friend of Goethe, was boycotted and treated with such hostility that he could no longer show himself in public, he had a defense written of his term of office as Minister of War by the well-known littérateur and journalist, Mr. Begbie, entitled Vindication of Great Britain. Therein his services toward forming a regular General Staff and preparing the British army for the World War are placed in a bright light and emphasis is laid on the skill with which he utilized the permission obtained from the Prussian War Ministry in order to learn in Germany about military matters and to reorganize the British army and General Staff, to the minutest detail and on the German model, for the coming war against the erstwhile German hosts.
Here we see the sly, adroit lawyer, who, sheltered under the hospitality of a foreign country, studies its military arrangements in order to forge weapons against it out of the material and knowledge thus acquired. Quite characteristically the book is dedicated to King Edward VII, whose intimate, emissary, and tool Haldane was. In those days Berlin saw in Haldane's mission a "rapprochement" with England, toward which Germans were always bending their efforts; in reality, however, it was a "reconnoitering expedition" under the very roof of the German cousin. England showed her gratitude by the World War, which Haldane helped to prepare; in this case Haldane "cheated" the Germans!
That is the history of the Haldane mission. Later it was summarily maintained by all sorts of ignorant dabblers in politics, belonging to the press and the general public, that the promising "rapprochement" with England through Haldane had been wrecked by the obstinacy of the Emperor and Admiral von Tirpitz and by their clinging to the Naval bill against the wishes of all "sensible counselors!"