When he first advocated the construction of a big navy, the German people viewed his dreams with indifference and distrust. Shackled by a system of conscription in order to provide the Empire with its huge army, they asked what it would profit them if to the burden of a great army they added the vast expense of a fleet capable not merely of defending their coasts, but of operating on the offensive in distant seas. At first the Emperor made little progress in educating public opinion; but he still nursed those dreams of sea-power--very moderate dreams at that date, before Admiral von Tirpitz came on the scene--which had first taken shape in his mind when he wandered about Portsmouth Dockyard, and viewed from the grounds of Osborne House the coming and going of mighty British warships. In the early days of the present century he referred with some pride to the persistency with which he had pursued his aims in spite of popular disfavour. At the launch of the _Kaiser Karl der Grosse_ he said: "If the increase in the navy which I had demanded with urgent prayers had not been consistently refused me during the first eight years of my reign--I did not even escape derision and mocking at the time--in how different a manner should we now be able to promote our prosperous commerce and our interests overseas!" He had to wait for many years before he saw his dreams reaching fruition. As the British Parliament is the mother of all popular representative institutions, so the British Navy is the mother of navies. If the records of most of the great fleets of the world are searched, it will be found that in greater or less degree they owe their birth to the more or less direct assistance of British naval officers, oft times acting with the direct authority of the British Admiralty; while in almost every fleet in the world even to-day may be found ships designed by British brains and constructed of British material by the skilled craftsmen of these islands. It was to England that Peter the Great came to watch the shipbuilding on the Thames, and it was with a large body of British mechanics that he returned to Russia to create a fleet with which to defend his empire and extend its borders at the point of the gun. The prestige of the Russian Navy in the seventeenth century was due entirely to the skill and daring of Scotsmen. The Greigs of four generations, Admiral Elphinstone, Lord Duffus Gordon, and a number of other Scotsmen entered the Navy of the Czar and did splendid service; and some of the descendants of these pioneers of the Russian Navy may still be traced in the fleet of to-day. The American Navy was, of course, of distinctly British origin; so were the fleets of many of the South American Republics; while, as everybody knows, the seeds of sea-power of Japan were sown by British naval officers, including first and foremost Admiral Sir Archibald Douglas, and her ships were mainly built in England. The excellence to which the Chinese Navy once