The debate on the Navy Bill, which has been going
on this week in the German Budget Committee, seems to reveal three points. First, that the friends of the Bill use danger from an English attaok as their main argument, that danger being, they say, rendered probable by the number of "points of friction" which will arise as the English and German Colonial Empires expand ; a second is that the Catholic Centre has not made up its mind to support the Bill unless the Government will fix with some definiteness the limits of its general demand upon the taxpayers ; and the third is that the Agrarians insist, if they are to vote for the Bill, upon re- ceiving a pledge that too many of their peasants shall not be taken away by the naval conscription, and that as the treaties with different countries expire, heavier Protective duties shall be imposed on food. It is probable that the Government will give way on all these points, the Emperor being so possessed with the idea of a great fleet as to justify a suspicion that he has some project in his mind which the great maritime Powers—that is, England and America—are nearly certain to oppose.
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