chest¬ nuts out of the fire for her”,—as if an alliance were possible on any basis other than that of reciprocity. On that principle business could very well have been done with Whitehall. British diplomacy was quite clever enough to know that nothing could be hoped for without reciprocity.
Let us imagine that Germany, with a skilful foreign policy, had played the part which Japan played in 1904 —we can hardly estimate the consequences that would have had for Germany.
There would never have been a World War. That method, however, was never adopted at all.
There still remained the possibility : industry and world trade, sea power and colonies.
If a policy of territorial acquisition in Europe could only be pursued in alliance with Great Britain against Russia, a policy of colonies and world trade, on the other hand, was only conceivable in alliance with Russia against Great Britain. In this case they should have drawn their conclusion ruthlessly, and have sent Austria packing.
They adopted a formula of “peaceful economic conquest of the world”, which was destined to destroy for ever the policy of force which they had pursued up to that time. Perhaps they were not quite certain of themselves at times when quite incomprehensible threats came across from Great Britain. Finally they made up their minds to build a fleet, not for the purpose of attacking and destroying, but to defend the “worldpeace” and for the “peaceful conquest of the world”. Thus they were constrained to maintain it on a modest scale, not only as regards numbers, but also as regards the tonnage of individual ships and their armaments, so as to make it evident that their final aim was a peaceful one.