The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 1911. GERMAN AMBITION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 33, 2 August 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 1911. GERMAN AMBITION.

We are perhaps inclined, imagining that Germany has created a great navy with the ultimate design of smashing Britain (and thereby spoiling the very best customer Germany ever had) to look upon the people of the Fatherland as aggressive ogres whose desire is to 'bathe in the blood of Britishers. The present' situation in regard to Germany's action in Morocco (the exact counterpart of Britain's actions in innumerable cases) is very naturally regarded as a villainous attempt to do what Britain generally does with impunity. We have already mentioned that the chief ideal of Germany is to obtain territory for her rapidly increasing people. She is hemmed in in Europe, and her surplus simply drifts away from her and becomes subject to other flag 9. If the same method sapped Britain year after year, and innumerable citizens found shelter under foreign flags, Britain would assuredly desire to know the reason. We, in short, conceive that a course which is perfectly fair for British people is entirely nefarious for German citizens. We even allow ourselves to become emotional about the ultimate fate of the Moors, and fear that in the tumult some barbarions, cruel beyond the power of words to convey, may be hurt. We interfere as a matter of cold, hard fact, not so much because we object to Germany smashing the Moors if she is inclined to, but because our excellent friends of France, who have mismanaged things Moroccan, are in something of a mess with our blood relatives. It is necessary that between the five signatory Powers to the Treaty of Algeciras theTe shall be no "funny business" (to use a vulgarism), and that if the commercial interests of either are threatened, all or each shall take a hand in wrangling over the Moroccan bone, much to the worry, ill-use and sorrow of the people of the Sultanate, whose extraordinary prominence is probably the greatest misfortune they ever, collided with. Germany, then, has done a thing the like of which Britain never hesitated to do in the whole history of her maritime supremacy, and because the action menaces this supremacy, Britain becomes the old Britain. There is now no talk of universal peace or olive branches, or disarmament or limitation of warship building. The moment that menace comes the Empire stands to arms, Tory shoulder to shoulder with Libera], all with their squabbles sunk and forgotten for the moment. German necessarily sees that she has made a mistake in assuming that she may do those things that Britain may do. Relying. perhaps on Home disturbances and the more or less petty political bickerings, Germany played her hand of bluff, hoping, perhaps, to score a bloodless triumph. Instead, Britain literally leaps to arms, France is nerved —and Germany quietly says it is sorry it spoke. The incident is extremely valuable to both Britain and "her colonies, and to her ally, France. It has shown to all that the possibilitity of armed conflict is not remote, that Germany is alert, active, insistent, desiring above everything to expand and to find new territory. Germany must have new territory, new business and new markets, and she will get them, if she can, exactly as Britain has always done. Germany is not spoiling for a. fight in which she may lose her new navy, an incalculable number of lives, and an absolutely unprecedented waste of capital, for her great and perfectly legitimate aim is to expand her enterprise and find German soil for a people who have proved their right to be regarded as amongst the most progressive and ambitious people on earth.