During the general elections which followed shortly after the
Conference of 1907, neither Sir Wilfrid Laurier nor Mr Borden said one
word about naval defence. Nothing but a dramatic crisis would rouse
the people to give {302} the support necessary to enable either leader
to take a decided stand.

The Kaiser provided the crisis. During 1908 and 1909 cries of alarm
over the growth of the German navy awoke the United Kingdom and found
echoes in Canada. It appeared that Britain's margin of safety was
being dangerously lessened, that the Mistress of the Seas had been
challenged. The British House of Commons voted eight additional
Dreadnoughts and the Admiralty continued to withdraw ships from the
ends of the earth and to concentrate the fleet in the North Sea.

Since the eighties international affairs had shown increasing tension.
In Europe the struggle for national freedom, which marked the previous
era, had in many cases been perverted into an endeavour to impose one
nation's will upon another. Not only did France cherish the memory of
Alsace-Lorraine; not only did Italy dream of her lost provinces; not
only did the Balkan states plot to complete the half-done task of
driving out the Turk; but the German Austrian sought to dominate the
Magyar and the Magyar the Slav, while Italy swelled with visions of the
Eastern Mediterranean once more a Roman {303} lake, and Pan-German and
Pan-Slav drew and re-drew the map of Europe to their liking.

But it was not in Europe alone that these nations sought expansion.
The belief that empire overseas was necessary to national greatness,
and that sea-power was the means to that end, spread through
Continental Europe. During the thirty years following 1880 France
added three and a half million square miles to her colonial
possessions, Germany a million, and Italy a quarter-million. Even the
United States was carried away by the current, and Great Britain,
already the greatest of colonial powers, picked up nearly four million
square miles more. Europe's aggression stirred sleeping Asia, and
Japan gave promise of beating her teachers at their own game. This
hasty parcelling out of the non-white world brought friction and often
threatened war. For years a conflict with Russia was believed
inevitable in England. Then France became the inevitable foe. Next
Germany took up the role. Though felt at fewer points, her rivalry was
more serious. A state with the ideals of mediaeval fe