As regards command of the sea we had likewise frustrated German ambitions. After a certain amount of vacillation, and a somewhat piteous plea for a general diminution of armaments--backed up by an arrest of our own, which Germany interpreted, perhaps not unnaturally, as a throwing up of the sponge and beginning of the end of our naval supremacy--we had actually had the treachery (for it was nothing less) to upset all her calculations, and turn all her efforts and acceleration to foolishness, by resuming the race for sea-power with redoubled energy. And although to our own eyes, and even possibly to the eyes of impartial observers, none of these doings of ours--in so far as they were truly alleged--could be rightly held to constitute any real grievance, that consideration was irrelevant. For when a man is in search of a grievance he will find it, if he be earnest enough, in the mere fact that his intended adversary stammers, or has a wart upon his nose. German statesmen were happy in having established these grievances to their own satisfaction; but something more was necessary in order that their morality might rest upon a sure foundation. German policy must be absolutely right, and not merely relatively right by contrast with those neighbours whose power she sought to overthrow, and whose territories she wished to annex. And although this {116} effort to establish German policy on the principle of Right involved a recasting of Christian morality, it was not shirked on that account. On the contrary it was undertaken in a most energetic spirit. The first great influence in this readjustment of popular conceptions of right and wrong was the historian Heinrich von Treitschke.[1] He boldly differentiated the moral obligations of the private individual from those of a government charged with the destinies of a nation.[2] The duties of a man to his family, neighbours, and society Treitschke left undisturbed. In this sphere of human life the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount not only remained unchallenged, but was upheld and reinforced. Statecraft, however, fell under a different category. [Sidenote: THE STATE IS POWER] The true principle of private conduct was Love for one's Neighbour, but the true principle of the state was Power. The duty of a virtuous ruler was to seek power, more power, and always more power, on behalf of the nation he was called upon to govern. The internal power of the state over the action of its own subjects was absolute, and it was a duty owed by each generation of rulers to posterity, to see to it that in their own time, the external power of the {117} state was increased at the expense of its neighbours.[3] To secure this end wars were inevitable; and despite the sufferings which wars entailed, they were far from regrettable, for the reason that they preserved the vigour, unity, and devotion of the race, while stimulating the virtues of courage and self-sacrifice among private citizens.[4]