On Thursday Prince Billow, who had an audience of two
hours with the Emperor on the Wednesday—the first since the issue of the Imperial Rescript of November 7th—made a statement of Germany's attitude towards the question of the limitation of armaments by international agreement. He had been asked why Germany had declined to entertain pro- posals for the limitation of naval armaments. In the first place, no snch proposals bad reached Germany. At the same time, she regarded the limitation of armaments as in itself extremely desirable. Her attitude bad been deter- mined, however, by doubts as to the practicability of such proposals, and the opportuneness of fruitless discussions, which in so delicate a question might easily accentuate instead of mitigating differences. The technical difficulties were also very great. Would it not be incalculably difficult to separate aspirations which were justified from aspirations which were not justified, and to assess in advance the growth of economic interests, and of economic ambitions and hopes, and to measure the results ?
