Archibald Hurd

“ And he thus believes Germany to be strong, wise, and wealthy, and in every way fitted to stand at the head of mankind. But in one respect he has felt, to his bitter mortification, that she is powerless. Wherever he goes on the world's oceans, he is confronted by those iron walls of Great Britain, which mean that he is there only by the sufferance of one who is immeasurably stronger than himself. ”

“ But he sees, too, that the Germany of Luther and Goethe, of Ranke, Liebig, Helmholz, and Mommsen, of Bismarck and Moltke, has become also the Germany of Krupp, Siemens, Rathenau, Ballin, and Gwinner; that the products of German industry, the fruits of an unexampled application of the discoveries of science to the processes of manufacture, have been carried by German ships to the remotest ends of the earth; that the material prosperity of his country has been advancing in every direction by leaps and bounds. ”

“ When he first advocated the construction of a big navy, the German people viewed his dreams with indifference and distrust. Shackled by a system of conscription in order to provide the Empire with its huge army, they asked what it would profit them if to the burden of a great army they added the vast expense of a fleet capable not merely of defending their coasts, but of operating on the offensive in distant seas. ”

“ It is, moreover, not without significance that the Hansa itself was, in a sense, democratic, and that, at a time when Germany, as a national unit, was rendered impotent in the world by her superabundance of Princes, her citizens were able, on their own initiative, and by their own energies, to assert their power and capacity as a maritime people. ”

“ Preparation for war was never thought of. Why should it be? The French Navy had no aggressive designs, and was much below our own, both in material strength and in personnel, while the Russian Navy was partly confined in the Black Sea, the other part being in the Baltic. And so we, both officers and men, set out to have a good time. Our ships were kept up to yacht-like perfection as regards their paintwork, while their bright work shone like gold, and the road to promotion lay not through professional efficiency, but the state of cleanliness and splendour of one's ship. ”

“ The present realities of sea-power had been early revealed to him when, as he told the officers on board a British flag-ship in the Mediterranean, he "was running about Portsmouth Dockyard as a boy"; and, as he said in a speech made during the visit of King Edward to Kiel in 1904, "the stupendous activity on the sea at the headquarters of the greatest navy in the world impressed itself indelibly on his youthful mind," and made him, "as Regent, endeavour to realize on a scale corresponding to the conditions of his country what he had seen as a young man in England." ”

“ In studying, therefore, the history of the naval development of Germany, and contrasting the high hopes which inspired the naval movement with the events which occurred on the outbreak of war, and in subsequent months, one is led to wonder whether, after all, the romance of the German Navy will not be regarded in the future, by the German people at least, rather as a great and costly tragedy. ”

“ A naval war for economic interests, particularly for commercial interests, will probably be of long duration, for the aim of a superior opponent will be all the more completely reached the longer the war lasts. To this must be added that a naval war which, after the destruction or shutting-up of the German sea fighting force, was confined to the blockade of the coasts and the capture of merchant ships, would cost the opponent little; indeed he would, on the contrary, amply cover the expenses of the war by the simultaneous improvement of his own trade. ”

“ The German people, as the memorandum which accompanied the Navy Act of 1900 reveals, were led to anticipate that the Fleet, created by the sacrifice of so much treasure, would not only guarantee their shores against aggression, but would give absolute protection to their maritime and colonial interests, and would, eventually, pay for itself. The time will come when they will recognise that from the first they have been hoodwinked and deceived by those in authority over them. ”

“ German Ships, Officers, and Men
In material, in the art of constructing and equipping ships of war, Germany at the beginning of the war ranked far above most of the Great Powers, and she was little, if anything, behind even Great Britain in workmanship, rapidity and cheapness. Her personnel also stood high, for she had succeeded in translating into naval terms the professional and disciplinary codes which have raised the German Army to a position of pre-eminence. Above all she had succeeded, in a degree never before attempted by any country, in keeping ships and men in constant association. ”

“ Experience has shown that German Fleet Laws are regarded as immutable and fixed when proposals in the direction of a limitation of armaments are made, but as flexible as though no Fleet Law existed when political circumstances are favourable for making a further effort towards a higher standard of naval power. ”

“ As he himself put it in the Reichstag: "If we have a strong battle fleet, the enemy will have to defeat it before he can blockade our coasts. But in such circumstances he will, before he declares war on Germany, consider very carefully whether the business will cover its expenses and justify the risk." It was this principle of risk which he took as his standard of the Empire's naval requirements. From the literature which he inspired it is evident that he was one of those who believe that Germany was destined to occupy the position on the seas which now belongs to Great Britain. ”

“ In spite of what many people think, there is nothing improbable in such a war, owing to the animosity which exists in our country towards England, and, on the other side, to the sentiments of the British nation towards all Continental Powers, and in particular against Germany. These are not Chauvinistic exaggerations, but the opinion of the whole of the people of Great Britain, who are jealous of our commercial development. ”

“ When Frederick William was called to the Brandenburg throne in 1641 at the age of twenty, Germany was still in the throes of the Thirty Years' War, and no part of the Empire had suffered more than his Electorate from the consequences of that unspeakable calamity. Of all the causes which have contributed to impede the normal development of the painstaking and industrious German race, none had so malign an influence as that stupendous conflict. ”

“ It is the fashion to calculate the relative strength of fleets in tons and guns, but the probability is that on the day of trial in a great battle at sea these nice paper computations will be entirely upset by the course of events. Morale, as Napoleon observed, dominates war. This dictum is no less true to-day than it was in the past. Man is still greater than the instruments of his creation, and the experience of war on a grand scale will certainly confirm the teaching of history—that the important element in naval power is men rather than ships. ”

“ It is very well conceivable that, if that monarch had been less fully persuaded of the divine rights of kings and of the incompetence of popular representatives to bestow crowns, the work which Bismarck did in the next twenty years, with so grievous an expenditure of blood and iron, might have been accomplished by peaceable means, and that the world might to-day have been confronted with the problem of a much larger, much richer, and much more united Germany. ”

“ If the Thirty Years' War had produced any form of national consolidation, if it had increased the authority of the Empire or resulted in the absorption of the smaller States by the larger, that would at least have been some compensation to Germany for its long and terrible ordeal. ”

“ An ordinary statesman, ignorant of naval matters, might have so framed the successive Naval Laws as seriously to tie the hands of the naval authorities in the development of the fleet, whereas Admiral von Tirpitz, with great skill, restricted the powers of interference on the part of the Reichstag, while leaving the Marine Office with almost complete freedom in shaping the naval machine in the process of expansion. ”

“ But even if it should succeed in meeting us with considerable superiority of strength, the defeat of a strong German Fleet would so substantially weaken the enemy that, in spite of the victory he might have obtained, his own position in the world would no longer be secured by an adequate fleet. ”

“ As the British Parliament is the mother of all popular representative institutions, so the British Navy is the mother of navies. If the records of most [Pg 83] of the great fleets of the world are searched, it will be found that in greater or less degree they owe their birth to the more or less direct assistance of British naval officers, oft times acting with the direct authority of the British Admiralty; while in almost every fleet in the world even to-day may be found ships designed by British brains and constructed of British material by the skilled craftsmen of these islands. ”

“ As the mechanical arts improve each nation endeavours to improve its war material. When a nation adopts new rifles, it is not a wilful premature antiquating of several million excellent ones, it is a case of force majeure—it must adopt them or suffer a relative loss of military efficiency, and it must make no mistake as to the relative efficiency of its weapons. In 1870 the French suffered a humiliating defeat as a direct result of the colossal conceit which rendered them incapable of accepting conclusive evidence that the German field artillery was greatly superior to theirs. ”

“ In North Germany to-day an apparently purposeless pond, or a detached clump of venerable trees, still shows where once a village stood, and bears mute witness to the ruthless barbarity with which the religious partition of Central Europe was brought about. ”

“ The peace with Denmark in 1850 ushered in a period of assiduous and systematic labour at the task of building up a Prussian fleet. Throughout this important period, the moving spirit was the man who has already been described as the father of the German Navy, Prince Adalbert of Prussia. This enthusiastic and indefatigable sailor was a first cousin of King Frederick William IV., who refused the imperial crown as a democratic gift, and of the Emperor William I., who finally won it on the battlefields of France. ”

“ The German patriot has never realized that no efforts on the part of Germany could materially alter [Pg 157] the balance of sea-power to her advantage as against Great Britain, and that she would be compelled to fight for her pretensions long before she was in a position to give battle on anything like equal terms. He has believed that the British nation is unnerved and effete, that it has lost both its martial and industrial vigour, that its energies have been sapped by too much wealth and prosperity, and that it is rapidly following the downward path. ”