Tirpitz has been head of the Admiralty for eighteen years, a ministerial length of life that no Chancellor or Secretary of State has yet reached under William II. In order to remain so long in the Imperial favour, he has had to show an unusual degree of tact and intelligence. The Emperor was intensely eager to possess a most powerful fleet. He had put his own lips to the foghorn; by his speeches and by an incessant personal propaganda, he had made the public interested in the development of the navy, in the idea of acquiring the mastery of the seas. (“Our future lies on the water.”) But the man who had to carry out the Sovereign’s will was doomed to encounter several obstacles. The first difficulty for an Admiralty chief was to put his schemes before the Sovereign in such a way that the latter should regard himself as their author. In this respect, Tirpitz displayed more skill than any of his civilian or military colleagues. In the second place, he had to overcome the opposition that the Reichstag, always anxious to save the public money, had hitherto raised against any increase in the naval estimates. With singular adroitness Admiral von Tirpitz, profiting by various incidents abroad and by the wave of patriotic feeling they produced in the nation, worked upon public opinion, and won over many restive or wavering minds in Parliament. Nor was this all. The bills that he introduced would not have emerged safe and sound, without any mutilations, from the clutches of the Budget Committee, had not their framer been gifted with eloquence, with a power of clear and persuasive speech, which found a responsive audience in the middle-class parties. No minister has ever been so successful in winning the ear of the Reichstag, while managing to retain the confidence of the Emperor. But why did Germany need so large a navy? Prince von Bülow says in his book, _Imperial Germany_: “The sea has become a more important factor in our national life than at any previous period, not excepting the great days of the Hanseatic League; it has become a vital nerve, which we must never lose, if the young German nation, which is still growing vigorously, is to be kept from suddenly lapsing into a decrepit old age. We should have been exposed to this danger as long as our foreign trade and our mercantile marine had no State protection at sea against the stronger fleets of other nations.” True, but it would seem that this end might have been attained by building a few divisions of cruisers, strong enough to protect German shipping and at the same time to threaten the commerce of the enemy.