THE STOSCH ERA 33

again. The army model of distribution of effectives is not adaptable to the fleet; for a ship is in itself an instrument of attack. Stosch passed over such things in his dominating manner.

Ill

If the beginnings of the Imperial navy were hampered by the dominating prestige of the army, yet Stosch, as I said, was ahead of his time in the energy with which he pushed forward our sea power that had been neglected for centuries.

He attached great value to the posting of cruisers to foreign stations, and rightly too in his time. For the political conditions in the South American States, for example, or in China and Japan, were not yet so far developed as to allow diplomatic or consular procedure to suffice in every case; the actual power on the spot decided the day.

As far back as the seventies Stosch was convinced that we must acquire colonies, and that we could not continue in existence without some means of expansion. He considered that the prosperity of the young Empire would only be ephemeral if we did not counterbalance the decided disadvantage of our position and history overseas before it was too late.

At that time we could have obtained better colonies more easily than was the case later. Apart too from colonial ambitions, the navy was permeated by a striving after knowledge of world economics, all the more since the news service was only feebly devoloped by