United States or Chad ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He said that he had no criticism to make on this, except that if we had told him so early there would have been no misunderstanding. Things were better now, but we had not always been pleasant to him and ready to meet him. His army was for defense, not for offense. As to Russia, he had no Himalayas between him and Russia, more was the pity. Now what about our Two-Power standard.
He believed that in view of the threatening attitude of Spain the right course was to husband the navy so as to bring it up to a two-Power standard for the coming struggle, and to keep it concentrated for decisive naval action the moment Spain showed her hand.
Whereupon Cappy Ricks flew into a rage and immediately dictated a long letter to his congressman and his senator, urging them to battle to the last trench in the campaign for a two-power navy. Time passed. Then suddenly the world rocked with the news of the annihilation of the German Pacific fleet off the Falkland Islands.
They could be made useful for carrying despatches and imperial persons or troops, or they might be used against a seaside town if necessary. Beyond this they hardly correspond to our modern navies. There was no foreign competition to build against, and no "two-power standard" to be maintained. The Roman troops, it has already been said, were almost wholly on the frontier.
I insisted that fundamental modification was essential if better relations were to ensue. The tone was friendly, but I felt that I was up against the crucial part of my task. The admiral wanted us to enter into some understanding about our own shipbuilding. He thought the Two-Power standard a hard one for Germany, and, indeed, Germany could not make any admission about it.
By Jove! we want a man like this Kaiser, who doesn't wait to be kicked, but works like a nigger for his country, and sees ahead. 'We're improving, aren't we? 'Oh, of course, we are! But it's a constant uphill fight; and we aren't ready. They talk of a two-power standard He plunged away into regions where space forbids me to follow him.
It was of the Wesen of the nation, and the Two-Power standard, while it might be rigid and so awkward, was a way of maintaining a deep-seated national tradition, and a Liberal Government must hold to it as firmly as a Conservative. Both countries were increasing in wealth ours, like Germany, very rapidly and if Germany built we must build.
Napoleon, therefore, enforced upon us by the most convincing of all arguments the necessity of maintaining the British Navy at the 'two-power standard' at least.
British reliance on sea-power was likewise somewhat impressed by the determination of the United States, if the League of Nations failed, to build a navy at least equal to our own, and by the recognition of the fact that the maintenance of even a two-Power standard would consequently involve us in a race for naval armaments more severe than that before the war and pregnant with an even greater disaster to the cause of civilization.
Even the two-power standard, if it be a necessity, is in a sense a degrading necessity. Nothing has more alienated many magnanimous minds from Imperial enterprises than the fact that they are always exhibited as stealthy or sudden defenses against a world of cold rapacity and fear. Mr. Chamberlain, I think, said that the war was a feather in his cap and so it was: a white feather.
Word Of The Day