Yet he would be a rash man who, on now looking back, would assert that
in either case a British Government would have been justified in armed
opposition to Germany's policy.
The bearing of Germany and Austria-Hungary in these negotiations, ending
as they did at the time when the debate on the Navy Estimates disclosed
to the British public the serious nature of the competition in naval
shipbuilding between Germany and Great Britain, was to a large class in
this country a startling revelation of the too easily forgotten fact
that a nation does not get its way by asking for it, but by being able
and ready to assert its will by force of arms in case of need. There is
no reason to believe that the German Government has any intention to
enter into a war except for the maintenance of rights or interests held
to be vital for Germany, but it is always possible that Germany may hold
vital some right or interest which another nation may be not quite ready
to admit. In that case it behoves the other nation very carefully to
scrutinise the German claims and its own way of regarding them, and to
be quite sure, before entering into a dispute, that its own views are
right and Germany's views wrong, as well as that it has the means, in
case of conflict, of carrying on with success a war against the German
Empire.
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