found during the brief
Dutch period in the seventeenth century and again, much more acutely,
when the French were the masters of the Low Countries, and when Napoleon
took control of the shipbuilding yards not only from Brest to Dunkirk,
but from Dunkirk to the Bight of Heligoland.

This presence of the French power in Holland, Belgium, and Frisia, in
particular the French control of Antwerp, was the true cause of violent
anxiety, and the no less violent efforts in reply which Britain made
during the Napoleonic wars. For twenty-three years she fought, with but
two short intervals of repose, upon a dozen nominal pleas, but with one
plain piece of statesmanship at the back of her mind--that no one should
control the narrow seas against herself.

And especially that if she could not prevent the existence in normal
times of a very powerful, dangerous French fleet, rendering her anxious
for one-half of those seas, at least the other half should be free from
such anxiety.

In the midst of such a secular determination, successfully maintained,
Germany began to build her new great modern fleet.

The German Empire had a most unquestioned right thus to challenge the
power of Great Britain. It was indeed the most effective challenge which
a nation jealous of Britain's commerce could deliver, but it is none the
less true that the plain policy of self-preservation compelled Britain
to take up that challenge.

For the first time in three hundred years Britain found herself
beginning to support French trades, in the general policy of the world.

The French, for reasons which had nothing to do with England and with
which the mass of the English governing classes in no way sympathized,
had maintained for more than thirty years a determination to restore
their own power at the expense of Prussia. Because modern Germany was
building her fleet, modern Britain, in order to check that movement,
began thus in novel fashion and against all the old English traditions
to support the French.

The thing was done at the bottom with reluctance. All Englishmen felt
the common bond of religion which united their country with that which
governs modern Germany. Many Englishmen believed that there was some
vague bond of race between the two countries. Not a few worthy, ignorant
men, and even one or two men of great ability, attempted to direct
negotiations whereby a fixed ratio should exist between the two fleets;
in other words, whereby the Germ