In one other very essential respect the new Minister revolutionized the policy of his predecessor. In the Memorandum already referred to, Hollmann defined the needs of the navy only for the three succeeding years, and in the course of the debate on the estimates, he used these words: "Neither the Federated Governments nor the Reichstag will ever agree to be bound to a formal programme for years in advance. That is quite impossible, and even if both factors desired it, impossible, for the very simple reason that the art of war is changeable on sea just as it is on land, and that to-day no Naval Ministry can prophesy what we shall need ten years hence. It can only tell you what are our immediate requirements, and if the circumstances change, then our demands will change too. As to that there is no doubt whatever." Here again, Admiral von Tirpitz not merely modified, but diametrically reversed the policy of his predecessor, and, it may be added, of the Emperor. Starting from the conclusion that the main types of war vessel and their respective functions remain unaltered in principle throughout the ages, he induced the Reichstag to commit itself statutorily to a fixed warship establishment, a building programme of nearly twenty years' duration, and an automatic renewal of the units of the fleet when they had reached a prescribed age. This is the one absolutely new feature of German naval legislation, and it was undoubtedly the idea of the new Minister. Admiral von Tirpitz has, in fact, been the Bismarck of German naval policy, and just as the Iron Chancellor fulfilled the hopes of the men of the Frankfort National Assembly, so the smiling and urbane Minister of Marine has gone far towards realizing the dreams of Friedrich List and Prince Adalbert of Prussia. It may be questioned whether he would not have done this work quite as effectually without the Emperor's loud and tempestuous advocacy of his schemes on the open stage of the world. The trumpet tones in which William II. proclaimed his dreams of world-wide rule and maritime dictatorship, not only exercised a disquieting effect in foreign countries, but conjured up in the minds of many Germans unpleasant visions of provocative and perilous adventure. Other nations were anything but delighted at the prospects of being swallowed up in a universal Teutonic Empire, however peaceful its conquests and however beneficent its rule, and they took steps by which the successive moves of German naval policy were successively counteracted.