This regime came to an end soon after Grand Admiral von Tirpitz became German Naval Secretary towards the end of the nineteenth century. He set the navies of the world a new model. He determined to take advantage of the easy-going spirit which animated the pleasant relations then existing between the great fleets. There was to be nothing pleasant about the German Fleet. It was to be a strenuous agent of Germany's aggressive aims. In the organisation of German sea-power new principles found expression. In home waters and abroad the German Navy was always ready instantly for war. The screw was applied gradually stage by stage. Under the German Navy Act of 1912 this aggressive sea policy found its ultimate expression: it was proposed to keep always on a war footing nearly four-fifths of the ships in northern waters, while at the same time the squadrons abroad were to be greatly increased in strength. Happily, owing to Lord Fisher's foresight and strategical ability, the British Navy was enabled step by step to respond to each and every measure taken by Germany. He created for us a Grand Fleet and when hostilities broke out that fleet took up its war stations and denied to the main forces of Germany the use of any and every sea. German policy operated as a tonic, though not to the same extent, on the other great fleets of the world. In the summer of 1914 Germany discovered that every anticipation upon which her foreign, naval and military policies had been based had been falsified by events. In particular, in adding to her strength at sea and on land, she had rendered herself weak by creating enemies east and west. Her navy, which was to have engaged in a victorious campaign against the greatest naval power of the world in isolation--the rest of the world watching the inevitable downfall of the Mistress of the Seas with approval--found arrayed against it not the British fleet only, but the fleets of France and Russia in Europe and the Navy of Japan in the Far East. In studying, therefore, the history of the naval development of Germany, and contrasting the high hopes which inspired the naval movement with the events which occurred on the outbreak of war, and in subsequent months, one is led to wonder whether, after all, the romance of the German Navy will not be regarded in the future, by the German people at least, rather as a great and costly tragedy. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: "German Sea-Power, Its Rise, Progress and Economic Basis," by Archibald Hurd and Henry Castle (1913, London, John Murray, 10s. 6d.).] [Footnote 2: "Modern Germany" (Smith Elder, 1912).] [Footnote 3: Germans always assumed that they could attack the United States without intervention on our part, just as they assumed that they could engage in war with us without becoming involved with the United States. They believed that Germany would fight both countries in turn--and victoriously.] [Footnote 4: "The British Navy from Within" by "Ex-Royal Navy" (Hodder & Stoughton).]