Early in the year 1895 the Kaiser began to turn his thoughts to the Navy. Already he had the finest and best-organized army in the world; now he desired to win the sovereignty of the seas as well. "Germany's future," he said, "is upon the waters." The navy which he proposed to build was out of all proportion to the number of merchant ships which Germany possessed, and from the first many people in this country rightly guessed that it was meant to be the means of overcoming Great Britain. The Kaiser also caused a canal to be dug through Schleswig-Holstein, so as to unite the North Sea with the Baltic Sea, in order that his warships might rapidly pass from one to the other. The work of enlarging and deepening this canal was only finished in June 1914, within six weeks of the outbreak of war. * * * * * All this time envy and hatred of Britain was growing in Germany. Thanks to hard work, great perseverance, and much thought, Germany had become a great manufacturing nation, the rival of Great Britain. She felt that she was marked out to be the head of a world-empire, yet there were many drawbacks in her way. If you look at a map of Europe you will see that Germany has a very poor sea coast, and but few good harbours. The bulk of the Baltic Sea, which fronts the greater part of her coast, is frozen up for months every year. Every day Germany feels the necessity of possessing ports on the open ocean; yet she can only secure them by conquest. She is surrounded by old-established nations: by France on the west, Russia on the east, Austria-Hungary on the south. Two small states, one of them neutralized by a treaty to which she was a party, lie between her and the North Sea, and both of them possess ports which rank amongst the world's finest havens. The bulk of her sea-borne trade must pass through Belgium, the more southerly of these states, and she has never concealed her eager desire to possess it. Holland has long been regarded by her as a "brave bit of the Fatherland."