This feeling was the dominant factor in English
foreign policy, just as greed for revenge was in France. It was the
propelling power for the agreements which England has made and for
others which she endeavored but did not succeed in bringing about.

England claims the dominion over the seas as her native right, and, what
is more, she holds it. Her title is no better and no worse than that of
the Romans when they conquered the world, or of the Turkish Sultans in
the days of their power. Like them, she has succeeded in making good her
claim. For three centuries the nations of Continental Europe have been
hating, fighting, and devastating each other for the sake of strips of
frontier land and a shadowy balance of power. These centuries were
England's opportunity, and she has made the most of it. That she should
mean to keep what she has and hold to her maritime supremacy as to the
apple of her eye is natural. Whether it is for the benefit of mankind
that it should be so, and whether the world in general would not be
better off if there existed a balance of power on sea as well as on
land, does not enter into the present discussion. What is more to the
purpose is that in reality England's sea power stood in no danger at
all. To any thinking and fair-minded observer it must be clear that
Germany, hemmed in by hostile neighbors in the east and west, and
obliged, therefore, to keep up her armaments on land, would not have
been able to threaten England's maritime superiority for generations to
come. If the issue has been thrown into the balance, it has been done so
by England's own doing.

But it is not only the nascent German Navy that excited the distrust
and envy of England. German colonies and every trading German vessel
seem equally to have become thorns in English eyes. The wish to sweep
those vessels from off the seas, to destroy all German ports, in one
word, to down Germany, has long been nourished and lately openly avowed
in England. Norman Angell's theories about the great illusion of the
profitability of modern warfare seem to have made mighty small
impression on his countrymen.

Russian lust of conquest, French greed of revenge, and English envy were
the forces at work in the European powder magazine. The Servian spark
ignited it, but the explosion was bound to come sooner or later. What
alone could have stopped it would have been England's stepping out of
the conspiracy. That she did not do so, in fact became i