them, so that she always viewed the threat as lying in a development which must one day cut across her dominion over the seas and colonies.
There is no conflict of England in Europe in which the former did not have to protect her trade and overseas interests. The struggles against Spain, Holland and later France had their ground not in the threatening military might of these States as such, but only in the way this power was founded as well as in the effects of the same.
If Spain had not been an overseas power and thereby a power in competition with England, the latter would presumably have taken little notice of Spain. The same applies to Holland. And even England’s later gigantic struggle against France was never waged against Napoleon’s continental France, but rather against Napoleonic France which viewed her continental policy only as a springboard and as a basis for greater, altogether non continental aims. In general, France, given her geographical position, will be the power most threatening to England. It was perhaps the only State in which even a limited continental development could contain dangers for England’s future. It is all the more noteworthy and instructive for us Germans that despite this, England decided to enter the World War together with France. It is instructive because it proves that, despite all the steadfast adherence to the great fundamental ideas of English foreign policy, momentary existing possibilities are always taken into account there and never renounced merely because a threat to England could likewise rise from one of them in the near or distant future. Our German God Punish England politicians are always of the opinion, to wit, that a good relationship with England in the future must always founder on the fact that England would never seriously give a thought to promoting Germany’s interests by an alliance with her in order to see Germany counterposed to her again one day as a dangerous and threatening power. Obviously England will not conclude an alliance to promote Germany’s interests, but only in order to foster British interests. But up to now England has provided many examples that she could, very often, couple the representation of her interests with the representation of the interests of other nations. And that then she had recourse to alliances, although according to human prediction, even these were bound to change into later enmity. For divorces sooner or later underlie political marriages, since, indeed, they do not serve the representation of the common interests of both sides, but instead aim only with common means at promoting or defending the interests of two States which, as such, are different, but which for the time being are not opposed.
England’s relations vis-a-vis Prussia prove that she does not fundamentally oppose resistance to a European great power of superior military importance, as long as the foreign policy aims of this power are manifestly of a purely continental character. Or will one dispute that under Frederick The Great, Prussian military power was beyond all doubt by far the strongest in Europe? Let no one believe that England did not fight against the Prussia of that time only for the reason that, despite its military hegemony, she had to be numbered among the smaller States in terms of territorial size in Europe. Not at all. For when England herself had previously fought out her wars against the Dutch, Dutch territory in Europe was still considerably smaller than the Prussia of late Frederickian time. And one could really not talk of a threatening hegemony or dominant power position on the part of Holland. If nevertheless England pressed Holland hard in decades long struggles, the reason lay exclusively only in the thwarting of England’s dominion of the sea and trade by Holland, as well as in the general colonial activity of the Dutch. Thus one should not deceive oneself: if the Prussian State had not so exclusively dedicated itself to purely continental aims, it would at all times have had England as its sharpest enemy regardless of the size of Prussia’s purely military means in Europe, or the danger of a hegemonisation of Europe by Prussia. Our national patriotic politicians, who do little thinking, have not seldom bitterly reproached the successors of the great Elector for neglecting the overseas possessions brought into being by the Elector, indeed for surrendering them and thereby having no interest in the maintenance and further construction of a Brandenburg Prussian fleet. It was Prussia’s good fortune, and later Germany’s, that this was the case.
Nothing speaks so well for the outstanding statesmanship, especially of Frederick William I, than the fact that, with all the scanty and surely infinitely limited means of the small Prussian State, he concentrated exclusively on the promotion of the Land Army. Not only for the reason that through it this small State could maintain a superior position in one weapon, but was thereby also spared England’s enmity. A Prussia following in Holland’s footsteps would not have been able to fight the three Silesian Wars, with England as an added enemy at her back. Aside from the fact that any achievement of a real naval standing by the small Prussian State would necessarily miscarry in the long run in consequence of the territorial base of the motherland which was exceedingly limited and unfavourably situated in a military sense. Even at that time it would have been child’s play for the English to rid themselves of a dangerous competitor in Europe through a general coalition war. In general the fact that the later Prussia could develop out of little Brandenburg and in turn a new German Reich out of the later Prussia was due only to that sagacious insight into the real power relations as well as into the possibilities of the Prussia of that time, so that the Hohenzollerns, up to the time of Bismarck, limited themselves almost exclusively to a strengthening of land power. It was the only clear, consequential policy. If German Prussia and then later Germany in general wanted to go toward a future, it could only be guaranteed by a supremacy on land which matched the English supremacy on the seas. It was Germany’s misfortune that we slowly moved away from this insight and built up our land power insufficiently and instead went over to a naval policy whose end result had been inadequate anyway. Even the Germany of the post Bismarckian period could not afford the luxury of creating and maintaining a superior armament on land and sea simultaneously. It has been one of the most important principles of all times that a nation recognise which weapon is most necessary and indispensable for the preservation of its existence, and then promote it to the extreme by staking all its means on it. England recognised and followed this principle. For England, dominion of the seas was really the substance of her existence. Even the most brilliant military periods on the mainland, the most glorious wars, the most matchless military decisions, could not move the English to see in land power for England anything but something ultimately subordinate, and to concentrate the whole strength of the nation on the maintenance of a superior dominion of the seas. In Germany, to be sure, we let ourselves be swept along by the great colonial waves of the nineteenth century, strengthened perhaps by romantic memories of the old Hansa as well as driven by the peaceful economic policy, to shelve the exclusive promotion of the Land Army and to take up the construction of a Fleet. This policy acquired its final expression in the proposition, as preposterous as it was calamitous: Our future lies on the water. No, exactly to the contrary, it lay and lies for us in Europe on land, just as exactly as the causes of our decline will always be of a purely continental character: our unfortunate territorial and terrible military geographical position.
As long as Prussia limited herself to purely European aims in her foreign policy aspirations, she had no serious danger to fear from England. The objection that nevertheless a pro French mood already prevailed in England in the year 1870-71 is not relevant, and in any case signifies nothing at all. For at that time a pro German attitude prevailed just as much in England; indeed France’s action was branded as a sacrilege from the pulpit in English churches. Moreover, it was the official attitude adopted which is decisive. For it is entirely obvious that France will indeed have continual sympathies in a State of England’s importance, all the more so as the influence of a country’s press is not seldom exerted through foreign capital. France has always known how to mobilise sympathy for herself adroitly. Thus she has always played Paris as her most remarkable auxiliary weapon. But this did not take place only in England, for instance, but even in Germany. In the very middle of the war, in the year 70/71, a not small clique was to be found in Berlin society, indeed at the Berlin court, who made no bones about their pro French sympathies. At any rate they knew how to postpone the bombardment of Paris for a long time. And it is humanly understandable that English circles should have viewed German military success with mixed joy. But in any case they could not move the official attitude of the British government toward an intervention. Even the opinion that this is to be ascribed only to the fact that the rear was covered by Russia, which Bismarck had assured, changes nothing. For this covering of the rear was thought of primarily against Austria. If, however, England had given up her neutral attitude at that time, even Russia’s covering of the rear would not have been able to avert an immense conflagration. For then Austria would naturally have been involved and, one way or the other, the success of the year 1871 would hardly have come to pass. As a matter of fact Bismarck had a continual quiet fear of meddling by other States not only in the war, but even in the peace negotiations. For what took place several years later vis-a-vis Russia, the intervention of other powers, [note 10] could have been staged against Germany by England just as well.
The course of the anti German attitude of the English can be exactly followed. It parallels our development on the seas, rises with our colonial activity to an overt antipathy, and finally ends up with our naval policy in a frank hatred. One cannot take it amiss that in England a really solicitous State leadership scented a threatening danger for the future in this development of a Folk as efficient as the Germans. We must never apply our German sins of
