In informing the British public that Germany does not dream of any aggression against England, Count Bülow [the German Chancellor] said no more than what is recognized by every one who considers the matter dispassionately. Germany would have nothing to gain from a contest. … The German fleet has been created with a purely defensive object: The small capacity of the coal-bunkers in her High Seas Fleet, and the small number of her cruisers, prove besides that her fleet is not intended for use at any distance from the coast.
On the other hand, he remarks in the same report:
It was obvious that the new disposition of the English navy was aimed at Germany ... it certainly is not because of Russia, whose material stock is to a great extent destroyed and whose navy has just given striking proof of incompetence [in the Russo-Japanese war].
Such is the tone uniformly adopted by these neutral observers throughout their reports from 1905 to 1914. On 24 October, 1905, the Belgian Minister in Paris wrote:
England, in her efforts to maintain her supremacy and to hinder the development of her great German rival, is evidently inspired by the wish to avoid a conflict, but are not her selfish aims in themselves bringing it upon us? … She thought, when she concluded the Japanese alliance and gradually drew France into similar ties, that she had found the means to her end, by sufficiently
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