Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from How We Kept the Sea
A generation had grown up in the German Empire fed on the traditions of Bismarck, who looked back and remembered how in 1864 Denmark had been vanquished, in 1866 Austria had been stricken to the ground in a whirlwind campaign, and in 1870 - 71 France had been humbled to the dust and two of her fairest provinces reft from her. All this was eminently satis factory, but there was yet a ?y in the apothecary's ointment, for England re mained mistress of the seas and the owner of the proudest Empire in the world. There fore the last and greatest settlement of all, as Treitschke, the German historian, put it, must be with England. For this pur pose, and for this purpose alone, was built up that mighty armada owned by the German Empire. Let us recollect that at the time of the F ranco-prussian War there was - it is hardly too much to say - no German Navy at all; that even twenty years after this date it was a force that hardly counted; and then we are confronted with the position that this new peril to European peace occu pied In August 1914. Even so short a time ago as the beginning of the present century, the German Navy was vastly inferior to that of France, the biggest ships of which she could then boast being only tons, and her biggest guns then a?oat being the 94-inch 40-calibre weapons, throwing a projectile of 474 pounds weight; and the 11-inch, which threw a projectile of 562 pounds. At this date England's heaviest ships were tons, and her most powerful guns the inch, 1800-pound projectile; -inch, 1250 pound projectile, and 12-inch, 850-pound projectile. There was then no sort of com parison possible between the two Navies.
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