Thus the hostility to Germany, from this aspect also, is based on England's most important interests, and we must treat it as axiomatic and self-evident.
The argument is often adduced that England by a war with Germany would chiefly injure herself, since she would lose the German market, which is the best purchaser of her industrial products, and would be deprived of the very considerable German import trade.

I fear that from the English point of view these conditions would be an additional incentive to war.
England would hope to acquire, in place of the lost German market, a large part of those markets which had been supplied by Germany before the war, and the want of German imports would be a great stimulus, and to some extent a great benefit, to English industries.
After all, it is from the English aspect of the question quite comprehensible that the English Government strains every nerve to check the growing power of Germany, and that a passionate desire prevails in large circles of the English nation to destroy the German fleet which is building, and attack the objectionable neighbour.
English policy might, however, strike out a different line, and attempt to come to terms with Germany instead of fighting.

This would be the most desirable course for us.

A Triple Alliance--Germany, England, and America--has been suggested.[B] But for such a union with Germany to be possible, England must have resolved to give a free course to German development side by side with her own, to allow the enlargement of our colonial power, and to offer no political hindrances to our commercial and industrial competition.

She must, therefore, have renounced her traditional policy, and contemplate an entirely new grouping of the Great Powers in the world.
[Footnote B: "The United States and the War Cloud in Europe," by Th.
Schiemann, _McClure's Magazine_, June, 1910.] It cannot be assumed that English pride and self-interest will consent to that.