[W]hat really determines the Foreign Policy of this country is the question of sea power. It is the Naval question which underlies the whole of our European Foreign Policy.

Minutes of the meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence (26 May 1911), quoted in British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914. Vol . VI, Anglo-German Tension: Armaments and Negotiation, 1907-12, eds. G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley (1930), p. 782