Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/27

Rh the yearly average import of wheat was only 400,000 quarters. In 1850 an import of nearly 4,000,000 quarters was required. This was increased tenfold by 1909, while the home production was only 7,000,000. Shortly before the war fully 84 per cent. of the wheat needed in England was imported from other lands.

But this whole import was carried by sea. This meant that in case of war England would be delivered over to starvation so soon as her supremacy at sea was gone. This supremacy, which at the beginning of the nineteenth century was hardly more than a means for the extension and preservation of her colonial empire—imperialistic objects, to speak in modern language—became ever a more and more indispensable condition for the maintenance of her national independence. Supremacy at sea became for the British people not only an imperialistic but a democratic demand; at least pending a general disarmament and abolition of all warfare—pacifist objects which, precisely because of the dangers attaching to war, became very popular with the English populace, not Socialists alone but also Liberals. Since the idea of supremacy at sea made its way not only into imperialistic but also into democratic sections of the people, it took on a very liberal complexion. It was not Protectionist nor Monopolist, but had Free-Trade affinities, according to the principle of the Open Door.

Thus England contrived during the whole of the nineteenth century that no other Power should cast a threatening glance upon her naval supremacy. Germany alone began this threatening policy, at the close of the nineteenth century, when England's supremacy was demanded, as a matter of life and death, far more imperatively than in the time of Napoleon I.