DESPATCHES FROM THE BELGIAN MINISTERS
IN LONDON, PARIS AND BERLIN, AND FROM
THE BELGIAN CHARGE D'AFFAIRES IN BERLIN.
ANGLO-GERMAN RELATIONS.
No. 1.Count de Lalaing, Belgian Minister in London,
to Baron de Favereau, Minister for
Foreign Affairs.
Your Excellency,
The hostility of the English public towards the German nation is not of recent date. It is founded, apparently, in jealousy and in fear: jealousy, in view of Germany's economic and commercial schemes; fear, from the perception that the German Fleet may perhaps one day become a competitor for that naval supremacy which is the only kind to which England can lay claim. This state of mind is fomented by the English Press, heedless of international complications; and a slap at the ambitious Emperor, and the machinations of his Chancellor, never fails to draw the applause of the crowd.
Attack provokes retaliation; and one perceives a corresponding bitterness of tone among German writers and journalists. When it was known the other day that the English Admiralty proposed that the Fleet, which till now has had its base in the Mediterranean, should be concentrated in the North Sea,[1] Dr. Paasche sounded the alarm, and saw in this plan a proof that the Cabinet of London regarded Germany as the only enemy they had to fear in Europe.
Last week, at a banquet, Mr. A. Lee, Civil Lord of the Admiralty, praised the reforms recently introduced by the Government as making it possible to strike the first blow before the enemy were ready, even before war,
- ↑ The decision to concentrate the British Fleet in the North Sea was announced on February 2 in a speech by Mr. Arthur Lee, Civil Lord of the Admiralty at Eastleigh, responding to a toast to the Imperial Forces.
