"This new scale of the German Fleet--organized in five battle squadrons, each attended by a battle or armoured cruiser squadron, complete with small cruisers and auxiliaries of all kinds, and accompanied by numerous flotillas of destroyers and submarines, more than three-fourths--nearly four-fifths, maintained in full permanent commission--the aspect and scale of this fleet is, I say, extremely formidable. Such a fleet will be about as numerous to look at as the fleet which was gathered at Spithead for the recent Parliamentary visit, but, of course, when completed it will be far superior in actual strength. This full development will only be realized step by step. But already in 1914 two squadrons will, so far as we can ascertain, be entirely composed of Dreadnoughts, or what are called Dreadnoughts, and the third will be made up of good ships like the Deutschlands and the Braunschweigs,[18] together with five Dreadnought battle-cruisers. It remains to be noted that this new Law is the fifth in fourteen years of the large successive increases made in German naval strength, that it encountered no effective opposition in its passage through the Reichstag, and that, though it has been severely criticized in Germany since its passage, the criticisms have been directed towards its inadequacy." Such is the evolution which German naval ambitions have undergone since the Reichstag in the early years of the Emperor's reign refused to believe that four relatively small battleships in full commission, with the same number of ineffective coast-defence ships of small size, did not represent the maximum naval power which Germany need provide, and that an expenditure of two and three-quarter millions sterling was not sufficient burden to impose annually upon the Teutonic peoples over and above the cost in money and service of the predominant army.