4o MY MEMOIRS

In spite of his grasp of tactics, Caprivi had no definite shipbuilding programme. It is true he saw that the Navy could not live from hand to mouth. On the one hand, however, he had been too far removed from naval matters all his life, and on the other, the views that prevailed in the naval officers' corps itself were far too vague to allow a definite shipbuilding policy to crystallize. Caprivi was amazed at the chaos of shipbuilding schemes. I explained to him, in reply to his frequent questions, that a decision on the composition of the fleet could only proceeti from clarity in tactical ideas, which had not yet been obtained. Finally the political ideas of the chiefs crippled shipbuilding. On the occasion of the introduction of the two years* service period in the Army Bill of 1893, Caprivi, who. was the Imperial Chancellor, said to me: " We must not think of the creation of a strong German navy until the international and psychological necessity of a war with Russia, whom France will join, has been concluded." Our continental orientation, which had been one-sided for centuries, made us overlook far too easily before 1896—what Bethmann overlooked in July, 1914—that England's European policy of the Balance of Power would have intervened if we had beaten the Dual Alliance.

His activity as Chancellor must likewise be interpreted pre-eminently by his idea of the "two-front" war, for politics as politics were not in his line. His friendliness towards the Poles had its root in his endeavour to establish an element there which would