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New Zealand Graphic, 6 April 1907, Page 24

In an interview with Admiral von Tirpitz, the German Naval Minister, which appears in a Home paper, the Admiral expresses his deep solicitude to dissipate the idea that Germany’s naval activity implies any threat to Great Britain. “Do you really suggest,” he asks, ‘that the people of England seriously believe that the German nation and the German Admiralty are preparing an aggressive war against England? . . . All I eifo do is to repeat that, in my judgment, the charge is so essentially foolish that I personally look u[»on it as quite undeserving of refutation. . . . We have always looked up to the British Navy, and when it was decided to strengthen the German Navy, in order that we should have a Navy suitable to our rank as a first-class Power, and in order to enable us to defend, if needed, our commerce and our colonies, neither tV? Kaiser nor the Admiralty had any aggressive purpose in view."

For there is assuredly no single question in any part of the world that could be utilised as the cause for an aggressive action against England. If it had been otherwise, we should have been forced to introduce a bill of far wider dimensions in 1906. That Germany belongs to those Powers that view the idea of disarmament somewhat sceptically, can cause, no sursurprise, for in the nature of things it is considerably more difficult for a Power with a small navy to consent to diminish its armaments than it is for a Power like England, possessing a navy so eminently stronger than the navy of any other Power to do so. Complaints are also made of the immense increase in the expenditure for naval armaments. But it must not be forgotten that England was the first to tread this path, and that in doing so she compelled the navies of othst Powers to follow suit.”