Great Britain Germany France Russia Italy Austro-Hungary 1904 £13,508,176 £4,275,489 £4,370,102 £4,480,188 £1,121,753 £1,329,590 1908 8,660,202 7,795,499 4,193,544 2,703,721 1,866,158 716,662 1911 17,566,877 11,710,859 5,876,659 3,240,394 2,677,302 3,125,000 1912 17,271,527 11,491,157 6,997,552 7,904,094 2,500,000 3,620,881 1913 13,276,400 11,176,407 7,595,010 10,953,616 2,800,000 3,280,473 GERMANY’S NAVAL PROBLEM Between 1909 and 1914 British leaders became convinced, as France and Russia and other countries had long been certain, that Germany meant war as soon as she was ready; that her policy was to take the two border enemies, or rivals, first with a great war-machine which would give them no chance for preparation or success, to dictate a peace which would give her control of the sea-coasts and channel touching Britain, to make that country the seat of war preparations, naval uncertainty, perhaps financial difficulty and commercial injury, to prepare at leisure for the war which would conquer England and acquire her colonies. In the first-named year British statesmen of both parties told an amazed Parliament and country that German naval construction of big ships was approaching the British standard, that the cherished policy of a British navy equal to those of any two other nations was absolutely gone, that England would be lucky if, in a few years, she held a 60 per cent superiority over that of Germany alone, that the latter country’s naval construction was clearly aimed at Britain and could be for no other than a hostile purpose. British ships had already been recalled from the Seven Seas to hold the North Sea against the growing naval power of a nation which had 5,000,000 soldiers behind its ships as compared with England’s 250,000 men scattered over the world. From that date in 1909 all who shared in the statecraft of the British Empire understood the issue to be a real one—with France and Russia as allies or without them.