The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 7, Issue 1, Winter 2018 | Page 36

legacy” and seeks dominion of no less than half of the Eastern Hemisphere—
including Crimea—to form an all-tolerant neo-Ottoman utopia. 32 This movement
presently does not condone violence to achieve these ends, but like the German
Realm model before the Third Reich, TIU has potential to mutate into a genocidal
holocaust if helmed by different leadership of a later generation.
German Naval Expansion
The tangible expression of 1909 German ambition, an important variable
to a Positivist such as Harrison, was “the massive publicity surrounding the
launching of each new battleship.” 33 In addition to German ambition and a
“domineering attitude of the German Government,” he pontificated, “The sole
ground for serious anxiety as to our national defences arises from what we see as
we watch the feverish expansion of the German navy.” 34
Moreover, for two decades Britain had been exercising a “two-power
standard”—a doctrine to maintain an equal number of warships to that of the
world’s next two largest naval powers combined, which by 1909 were the German
and US navies. 35 Meanwhile, Germany had adopted a “two-thirds” standard
mandating that the German fleet keep an equal number of warships to no fewer
than two-thirds of Britain’s fleet. 36 As Parliament reconsidered the sustainability of
this naval arms race, Harrison concluded the outcome in the negative:
The continuous strain of maintaining a two-Power standard against
nations far more populous and increasing more rapidly must in the
long run break down. It seems that it has already broken down.
Even if we could go on building more ships than Germany and
America put together, could we be certain of manning them? . . .
Can we rest at ease if a few years hence we were to find our home
fleet no longer the strongest, even in the seas which wash our own
shores? 37
Anglo-German Power Conflict
Finally, Harrison described the mounting tensions between the British
and German empires as “an antagonism like that between Athens and Sparta,
Rome and Carthage, Spain and Britain.” 38 Even though his contemporaries insisted
that “Germany had just as much right to say that her preparations were in the
nature of self-defence as [Britain] had,” he argued, “To talk of friendly relations
with Germany and the domestic virtues of the Fatherland is childish.” 39 He,
36