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It was in that year that the first rival to England as mistress of the world's seas, since the days of the Spanish Armada, peeped over the horizon. Two years before the beginning of the present century, Von Tirpitz organized a campaign, the object of which was to make Germany's navy as strong as her military arm.
Whatever they might have hoped to accomplish with their diplomacy to keep Italy neutral had been irretrievably ruined by the diplomacy of Grand Admiral von Tirpitz. The smallest match, the scratch of a boot-heel on stone, can set off a powder magazine. The Lusitania was a goodly sized match.
Richter and other distinguished public men fought Tirpitz over these, but, in part at least, he got his way, and secured the nearest approach to continuity that his ever-supervising Sovereign would permit to him.
My impression was that the really decisive influence was that of the Minister who had managed to secure the strongest following throughout Germany; and it was obvious to me that Admiral von Tirpitz had a powerful and growing following from many directions, due to the backing of the naval party.
"The shipping route around the north of The Shetlands in the east of the North Sea and over a distance of thirty miles along the coast of The Netherlands will not be dangerous." Although the announcement was signed by Admiral von Pohl, Chief of the Admiralty Staff, the real author of the blockade was Grand Admiral von Tirpitz.
"He thought it was safe to let St. Alban go ahead. And he would have been right if St. Alban had been the great egotist that he was. "The commander of that submarine was Plutonburg of Prussia. He was the right-hand man of old Von Tirpitz. He was the one man in the German navy who never ceased to urge its Admiralty to sink everything. He loathed every fiber of the English people.
He knew, too, that von Tirpitz was very close to the Kaiser and could count upon the Kaiser's support in whatever he did. The Navy believed the torpedoing of the Lusitania would so frighten and terrorise the world that neutral shipping would become timid and enemy peoples would be impressed by Germany's might on the seas.
Bismarck was critical, and turned his criticism to other matters also. Bismarck declared that, in case of an Anglo-Russian war, our policy was contained in the simple words: neutrality as regards Russia. The modest Tirpitz ventured to suggest that only a fleet strong enough to be respected could make Germany worthy of an alliance in the eyes of Russia and other powers.
But the great man suddenly broke it by raising his formidable eyebrows, and directing a grim look at Tirpitz, whom he appears next to have asked whether he himself was a tomcat that needed only to be stroked in order to procure sparks to be emitted. Tirpitz then timidly unfolded his plans and his policy of building big battleships.
The seizure of Kiao-chau in 1897-98 coincided with the appointment of Admiral von Tirpitz as Imperial Minister of Marine.
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