Page:Chesterton - Barbarism of Berlin (Cassell, 1914).djvu/90

 opposite from the roots of their history, nay of their geography. It is an understatement to call Britain insular. Britain is not only an island, but an island slashed by the sea till it nearly splits into three islands; and even the Midlands can almost smell the salt. Germany is a powerful, beautiful and fertile inland country, which can only find the sea by one or two twisted and narrow paths, as people find a subterranean lake. Thus the British Navy is really national because it is natural; it has cohered out of hundreds of accidental adventures of ships and shipmen before Chaucer’s time and after it. But the German Navy is an artificial thing; as artificial as a constructed Alp would be in England. William II. has simply copied the British Navy as Frederick II. copied