Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/290

 282] FOEEIGN HISTORY. [1899.

for fresh demands for the Navy. Russia has doubled the esti- mates for her fleets. America and Japan are making enormous exertions in the same direction. England endeavours without ceasing to make her gigantic fleet still greater. Without a great Navy we cannot maintain our position in the world alongside of these States.

" In the coming century the German nation will be either the hammer or the anvil. Our general policy is peaceful and honest. It is exclusively a German policy. The question whether and when we might be compelled, in defence of our interests through- out the world, to abandon our reserve, depends upon the general course of events. It depends upon circumstances which no one can foresee or determine. ,,

This speech, with its divagations into ancient history and suggestions of imaginary dangers, did not produce a favourable impression, and it was sharply criticised in a brilliant reply by Herr Richter, the Nestor of the Radical party. He said that Count Biilow was advocating " a policy based on imperial after-dinner speeches," that while ministers objected to a criticism of such speeches, they were really the mouthpieces of the sovereign, who had no responsible counsellors ; " they could not, like the people in Andersen's fairy tale, pretend that they saw garments winch had no existence."

After discussing at great length the financial aspects of the proposed increase in the Navy, and mentioning the growing ex- penditure on the colonies and the miserable returns of German colonial trade, Herr Richter referred to the suggestion that 60,000,000 marks additional revenue could be raised by increasing the duties on foreign grain. He could only say that to raise the corn duties would gravely imperil the conclusion of new com- mercial treaties. It was most desirable to find new markets for German products. But they could not by means of ironclads prevent other countries from raising their tariffs. That could only be done by a wise tariff policy on the part of Germany.

" It is not true," he continued, " that England is hostile to us in our colonial aims. England could have taken all our colonies long ago if she had thought it worth her while, for they all lay at her door. It has been possible for all our Imperial Chancellors, from Prince Bismarck downwards, to delimit our colonial spheres of interest by treaties with England in a business-like manner. Who would ever have imagined that England would have ceded Heligoland to us ? All these agreements were successfully concluded without any regard to our Navy, but as a result of the general attitude of Germany to England. We cannot have an alliance with England, because England has many interests which we do not share. But very many of our interests are quite identical with those of England."

Herr Richter went on to condemn the false perspective in which the importance of Navies for the different States of the world had been placed by Count Biilow. England in her