Books are the greatest and the most satisfactory of recreations. I mean the use of books for pleasure. Without books, without having acquired the pow… - Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon

[T]here is no comparison between the importance of the German Navy to Germany, and the importance of our Navy to us. Our Navy to us is what their Army is to them. To have a strong Navy would increase their prestige, their diplomatic influence, their power of protecting their commerce; but as regards us—it is not a matter of life and death to them that it is to us.

The great countries of Europe are raising enormous revenues, and something like half of them is being spent on naval and military preparations. You may call it national insurance, that is perfectly true, but it is equally true that half the national revenue of the great countries in Europe is being spent on what is, after all, preparations to kill each other. Surely the extent to which this expenditure has grown really becomes a satire, and a reflection on civilisation. Not in our generation, perhaps, but if it goes on at the rate at which it has recently increased, sooner or later I believe it will submerge that civilisation. The burden already has shown itself in national credit—less in our national credit than in the national credit of other nations—but sooner or later, if it goes on at this rate, it must lead to national bankruptcy.

The French fleet is now in the Mediterranean, and the northern and western coasts of France are absolutely undefended. The French fleet is being concentrated in the Mediterranean, the situation is very different from what it used to be, because the friendship which has grown up between the two countries has given them a sense of security that there was nothing to be feared from us. My own feeling is that if a foreign fleet, engaged in a war which France had not sought, and in which she had not been the aggressor, came down the English Channel and bombarded and battered the undefended coasts of France, we could not stand aside and see this going on practically within sight of our eyes, with our arms folded, looking on dispassionately, doing nothing. I believe that would be the feeling of this country.