Accordingly, the Government policy had free play. No other policy could have been more effective, more humane, or more truly direct and economical. In effect, the outworking of it meant a strictly defensive attitude in Africa, and in the north a naval siege of Germany. Germany had no Navy to attack, and, because they believed England would never risk landing an army in Germany, the purblind camarilla who stood between the Emperor's arrogance and the realities of life assumed that England would be powerless to carry hostilities further. Or if the Imperial Court did not actually believe this, it was ostensibly the Government theory, the poor sop they flung to a disaffected people while filling their official organs with news of wonderful successes achieved by the German forces in South Africa. But within three months our Navy had taught the German people that the truth lay in quite another direction. The whole strength of the British Navy which could be spared from southern and eastern bases was concentrated now upon the task of blocking Germany's oversea trade. Practically no loss of life was involved, but day by day the ocean-going vessels of Germany's mercantile marine were being transferred to the British flag. The great oversea carrying trade, whose growth had been the pride of Germany, was absolutely and wholly destroyed during that half-year. The destruction of her export trade spelt ruin for Germany's most important industries; but it was the cutting off of her imports which finally robbed even the German Emperor of the power to shut his eyes any longer to the fact that his Empire had in reality ceased to exist. The actual overthrow of monarchical government in Prussia was not accomplished without scenes of excess and violence in the capital. But, in justice to the German people as a whole, it should be remembered that the revolution was carried out at remarkably small cost; that the people displayed wonderful patience and self-control, in circumstances of maddening difficulty, which were aggravated at every turn by the Emperor's arbitrary edicts and arrogant obtrusion of his personal will, and by the insolence of the official class. One must remember that for several decades Germany had been essentially an industrial country, and that a very large proportion of her population were at once strongly imbued with Socialistic theories, and wholly dependent upon industrial activity. Bearing these things in mind, one is moved to wonder that the German people could have endured so long as they did the practically despotic sway of a Ruler who, in the gratification of his own insensate pride, allowed their country to be laid waste by the stoppage of trade, and their homes to be devastated by the famine of an unemployed people whose communications with the rest of the world were completely severed.