The -Berlin correspondent of the Times in Wednesday's paper reproduces
some remarks of the well-known military critic, Colonel Giidke, on the new German naval programme. After 1912, lie says, the mere necessity of keeping the Government dockyards employed will probably, in con- junction with other causes, result in the establishment of an unwritten • law by which four new battleships will be laid down every year. The present scheme of having a fleet of thirty-eight battleships and twenty large cruisers will be left far behind. Indeed, the " large-navy " school already talk of five, or even six, new battleships every year. Colonel Giidke says of these ambitions :—" The worst of them is that their fulfilment would be equivalent to preparations for war, that it would be interpreted by our neighbours as a direct menace, and that within a measurable period of time it would be bound to lead to a sanguinary collision. All this would be the result of the attitude of those politicians who are inspired by the idea of a world-Power, and who cannot endure that any other State should in any respect whatever consider itself stronger than ourselves. Extravagant armaments of this kind drive a nation into a policy of conquest and estrange it from the pursuit of progress."
