The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 1909. WILL GERMANY GO TO WAR?

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2460, 26 March 1909, Page 4

The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 1909. WILL GERMANY GO TO WAR?

Although Germany is undoubtedly engaged in • a gigantic effort to obtain a navy superior to that of Great Britain and her strenuous preparations have naturally caused uneasiness in England, it is ’only right to point out that the chances are all against tins admittedly powerful nation making a straight-out attack upon Britain for many years to Come. So long as Great Britain retains the naval supremacy — and. this is the all important point lor Britishers —Germany (can really have nothing to hope from war. but much to tea?.

Of late years Germany has become more and more dependent on- oversea trade. That trade would be put'to the hazard in a naval war, even if the enemy was only Germany’s equal in -eapower instead of being, as Great Britain is. immeasurably its superior. The annual value of German oversea commerce is £372,000,000. Of this total, £291,000,000 is carried on German merchant-ships, with an aggregate tonnage of 3,000,000 and value of over £40,000,000. With the British Empire alone German trade is more than £109,000,000 a year. Is it likely that Germany would risk losing all this shipping and trade, together with its supplies of foreign foodstuffs and foreign raw material —not to mention its scattered-' colonies in Africa and in the Pacific—merely to slake a .sentimental hatred of the British Empire? Germany has given hostages- to fortune in its colonies, in its magnificent oceanliners, in its great industries which demand for their success food and material from abroad, and in its enormous commitments of capital in Asia Minor, in Persia and in China. Unless it could hold the seas against its enemy, all the fruits of its world-enterprise of recent years would disappear. That world-enterprise has been possible only because the seas have been open to German vessels, German traders, and German cargoes. Friendship with Great Britain, whose war-ships patrol all ocean-routes, has been an essential condition of Germany’s economic progress. Even supposing that Germany could win victory in the end the conflict would be .Titanic, and the economic results would be disastrous,to the victor. His merchant shipping would in any case have been destroyed, his . foreign trade would have been brought to a standstill, and most of his factories would have been closed.

Bat look at the actual position. A war would of necessity mean defeat for Germany unless Germany could accomplish an invasion of Great Britain, and to invade Great Britain it muist have first overpowered the British navy. Germany’s geographical position makes it an easy prey for a power' with -a superior navy, especially if that power be Great Britain. Practically all its sea-borne trade must pass the coasts of Great Britain, either up the Channel and through the Straits of Dover, or down the North Sea into the Baltic, or to one of the North Sea ports—Hamburg, Bremen, Emden, Cuxhaven, or TVilhelmshaven. By holding the North Sea and the Channel with a superior force, as it always can, at present Great Britain is able at once to sever Germany's sea communications with all the world except the countries of the Baltic. As the author of "‘The Admiralty of the “Atlantic” puts it: “Unless the. German fleet is strong enough to drive the British flag from off the seas, nothing whatever can prevent the grip of England tightening round the throttles of her trade and squeezing the life out of them.” The same circumstances which would mean the death of German trade would mean also the utter inability of Germany to play ducks -ail'd drakes with British commerce. So long as British fleets held the North Sea in force, no German cruisers could venture out, and, if one did run the blockade, it could 'not maintain itself at sea, because Germany lias no coaling stations. France has an infinitely better geographical position for naval warfare than Germany, but in the struggle with Great Britain for naval supremacy it always suffered from Its inferiority to its enemy in that respect. The advantage which Great Britain has geographically over Germany -is so much greater than that .which it had over Franco that even with nearly equal fleets the odds would be heavily against Germany in a war. . ■ / i . ' .A'

In other words it would ,be suicidal for Germany to go to war with Great Britain under any circumstances, and to do so before its navy was immeasurably superior to that of ours would be simply to invite disaster. Still that does not , say war may not come. History has provided innumerable instances of. the fact that wars are not the re T suit of national expansion but of individual quarrels and ambitions. The bulk of the people bf Germany and England are undoubtedly strongly desirous of peace, but it is rarely the masses wlio make the* ware though they have to pay for them in lives and money. Although the chances are Strongly against a war between Britain and Germany there is always the possibility of some person or persons in authority setting five to the powder magazine and it is in view of just such a contingency that Britain eanniot afford for a moment to he unprepared.