THE COMING ANGLO-GERMAN WAR.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1438, 13 May 1912, Page 4

THE COMING ANGLO-GERMAN WAR.

Wkek by week for ninny months Lin*. newspapers from abroad have; added to the feeling of hopelessness which exists in many quarters of any ponceful end to the antagonism between Britain and Germany. At intervals during the past few years there have been moments when it appeared as if there was some prospect of success for the efforts at reconciliation constantly being made, but almost every lifting of the clouds has been followed bv a greater darkening. It is not surprising that the effect is already being produced of a Germany bitterly sceptical at last of any possibility but war. It is impossible any longer for pacifist speeches by British Ministers to secure a'sympathetic hearing in Germany; a writer in the current Fortnightly Review makes it very plain that Anglophilism is nowextinct in the German press—a remarkable thing when it is remembered that the Kadical and Socialist publics are opposed to war and to great armaments and have until quite lately nursed with great care every reasonable hope, however small, of "a better understanding this time." The evidence, gathered from practically all quarters, is so strongly against au easing of the strain that it is the business of all sensible men to face the position squarely, and it is especially the duty of the oversea dominions to insist that Germany shall be remembered in our legislation and administration—that wo must make ready to keep our feet as a community in the waves of commercial and financial disturbance that must break upon our coasts from the struggle in the North Sea. The tono of the German press has become hopelessly bad. A writer in the Spectator discusses the flood of war literature pouring from German pens, of which he gives a portentous and disquieting list. Equally emphatic is the Berlin correspondent of the Now York I'ost as to the wave of Chauvinism sweeping over Germany. As he presents the case the Germans have lashed themselves into a foolish blindness to facts—to the fact that Britain will build always bigger, to the fact that the warships of France will have to be reckoned with. This gives a different view of the Germans from that obtained from the Fortnightly article, which represents the German press and public as being able to laugh uproariously at the sentimentalism of British pacifist eloquence and able coolly to disbelieve a word that any British Minister may say. The two pictures can bo reconciled by the hypothesis that Germany believes that her life is threatened, that war is inevitable, and that she- must therefore perform the last duty of a nation by equipping herself to fight at her full strength oven if it is to be a hopeless fight. Believing that Britain is irremediably bent upon the ruin of Germany, Germans must believe also that Britain will build to her utmost limit; they hope, however, that that limit will be forced upon Britain by the fact that even if she could find the money she could not find themen. And by the time war comes, it is hoped, Germany will have balanced things on European soil through the fact that while Britain can build ships against Germany on the basis of two keels to one, "Germans," as thefosf correspondent puts it, "can produce babies on the two-to-one basis, as compared with France/' A curious feature of the press controversy in Germany over the Navy Bill of March was the revelation of a difference of opinion between the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Marine. To quote the correspondent mentioned: While the Chancellor and the Secretary for Foreign Affairs are doing their best to arrive at a friendly understanding with England—in itself sufficiently uphill' work —the Admiralty has eet all the pens at its command at work to stir up feeling against Kugland. The press teems with articles insisting on the necessity of tho additional battleship a year. The booksellers' counters are inundated with pamphlets and brochures denouncing the English as a race of cowards and pirates who intrigue against Germany and hinder her progress by every foul means in every quarter of tho globe. It is deplorable that the German people should have settled down into a firm belief in the sleepless wickedness of Britain. But it would he still more lamentable for the English people to be led by the "pacifists ' and "anti-militarists" into neglecting the maintenance of an unchallengeable naval strength.