The Germans excel as diligent pupils and patient imitators, and the Great Elector was no exception to this rule. From his fourteenth to his eighteenth year he had been educated under the care of Frederick Henry, the Statthalter of Holland, then the chief Sea-Power of the world, from whom he had imbibed many ideas as to the importance of navies, colonies, and sea-borne trade. His connection with the Netherlands was maintained and strengthened by his marriage with an Orange Princess, the aunt of William III. of England, and many Dutchmen entered his service. Among them was an ex-admiral, Gijsels by name, who assiduously kept alive the dreams of sea-power which the Elector had brought back with him from Holland. It was on his prompting that, in 1659, when Frederick William was embroiled with the Swedes, and found his operations hampered by the lack of a fleet, an enquiry as to the possibility of remedying this deficiency was ordered by the Elector. The investigation resulted, for the time being, only in the compilation of a memorandum as to a "Brandenburg-Imperial admiralty," and some fruitless attempts to obtain ships in the Netherlands. But Gijsels' projects went far beyond a mere fleet. All the world was then discussing the colonizing activity of the western European States, and Frederick William's predecessor on the Electoral throne had conceived abortive plans for founding an East Indian trading company. What the ex-admiral proposed to the Elector in 1660 was, that Brandenburg, Austria, and Spain should combine for the purpose of securing a colonial ascendency, which was to be arrived at by playing off England, France, and Holland against one another. Negotiations to this end seem actually to have been commenced, but they broke down over the jealous suspicions of the diplomatists approached, and the perpetual turning of the European kaleidoscope. During the next fifteen years the idea of a Brandenburg navy appears to have been allowed to sleep. In the meantime a very remarkable book had been published, which should be mentioned here because it contains the essential elements of the programme of the most modern naval agitation in Germany. The author was Johann Becher, by profession a chemist, but in his leisure a political seer of the type of Friedrich List, whose great forerunner he was. His work, "Political Discourse on the Causes of the Rise and Decline of Towns and Countries," was published in 1667. Becher had travelled much, and he wrote: "In Germany there is hardly any longer trade or commerce; all business is going to ruin; no money is to be found with either great or small; on the other hand look at Holland, how rich she is and how she grows richer every day; that could not be if she feared the sea as much as our nation of High Germany." Becher then addressed to his countrymen the following impassioned exhortation: