Nothing reveals the statesmanship of Admiral von Tirpitz so strikingly as the character of the naval legislation for which he has been responsible, and the manner in which he has bent every influence in Germany and every occurrence abroad to promote his ends. Prior to the introduction of the Navy Act of 1898, the only example of a continuous naval policy was the Naval Defence Act of 1889, under which seventy ships of various types were added to the British Navy during a period of four years. Of these vessels only ten were of the armoured classes. This measure was confined to shipbuilding, and it made no provision for increasing the personnel or for setting up a fixed standard of commissioning. It merely provided a certain number of ships and left it to Parliament to provide or not to provide crews with which to man them, and, as a matter of fact, Parliament did not provide the necessary officers and men until long after the ships were at sea. Admiral von Tirpitz was not satisfied with so unmethodical and unstatesman-like a measure of procedure when he went to the Marineamt in 1897. He presented to the Reichstag a complete scheme of naval expansion, making provision not only for the construction of ships in specified numbers over a period of six years, but providing also for the due expansion of the personnel and for the attainment of a fixed establishment of ships first in full commission, secondly with nucleus crews, and thirdly in reserve. In obtaining the assent of the Reichstag to this measure, which to a great extent removed the naval expansion movement from the control which it had hitherto exercised annually on the presentation of the Estimates, the Minister of Marine achieved his first great triumph.