The Germans have, of course, a perfect right to enlarge
their Fleet, and we have none to prevent them doing so. What we have a right to do, and what we shall do unless we are "drowned in security," is to watch the naval developments of Germany with the utmost vigilance, and to note carefully the growth of her aspirations for world-power and sea-power,- aspirations which cannot be fully realised without involving the weakening, or in the last resort the destruction, of the British Empire. It is madness for us to be deluded into thinking that Germany's aspirations need not matter to us because they are dished up with talk about friendly rivalry and so forth. They do matter to us; but we must face the fact in a manly and businesslike manner, and refrain from screaming on the one hand, or going into a condition of cataleptic optimism on the other. We must see German policy and see it whole, and regulate our action accordingly.
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