"Mr. Distinguished Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia, I am willing to conclude a new naval order deal with your country. Your country's Duke-class armored cruisers are quite suitable for our coastal protection, I wonder if your country will be able to provide us with at least four such warships in two years' time? Koichiro Yuzawa asked with a smile.

If you pay closer, you can find that Yuzawa Koichiro's requirements for the delivery of battleships, armored cruisers, and even various weapons and equipment are within two years.

While it is true that these weapons and equipment can be built and delivered within two years, all the requirements add up to something unusual.

In addition, the island countries are currently importing a large number of weapons and equipment, large and small warships, as well as important strategic resources and other materials, including coal mines and iron ore.

There are all kinds of indications that two years later, the island country will make a big move, and even the island country's plot is not small.

You know, in East Asia, the only enemy that can make the island countries so vigorous and not worry about opposition and sanctions from other powers is the Tsarist Empire.

Although there is still a large country that can give the island nation all its strength, the interests of this country are currently divided among the major powers, and the great powers will not agree to the island nation to privately annex this rich area.

"That should be fine, Mr. Koichiro Yuzawa. But our shipyard is currently so large that if we want to build these armored cruisers at the same time as the battleship construction program, we will have to expand the shipyard to a certain extent and recruit more people. Australia's deputy foreign minister nodded, and said with a little embarrassment: "This may make the construction cost of the armored cruiser rise, or even return to the original price of this warship." ”

The armoured cruiser was sold for £59,130 and £52,000 for the island nation.

The Australian undersecretary for foreign affairs said that the return to the original price point is actually a 7,000-pound increase per warship to balance the cost of expanding and recruiting manpower in Australia's shipyards.

"How about fifty-five thousand pounds?" Koichiro Yuzawa asked with a smile, "This is a reasonable price that we can accept." If your country agrees to this price, then we will be able to conclude a purchase treaty for four armored cruisers at once. ”

Fifty-five thousand pounds? Australia's undersecretary for foreign affairs pondered silently. Even with a certain expansion of the shipyard, the profit of each armored cruiser was more than twenty thousand pounds.

If the island nation can order more than four armored cruisers at one time, the total profit of this order can exceed 80,000 pounds, which can more than make up for the cost of Australia's naval expansion.

And these savings can also be used in other places to add bricks and tiles to Australia's development and construction.

"No problem, Mr. Koichiro Yuzawa. The handover of these four armored cruisers, as in the same time as the battleships, was within two years. As a commemoration of the first trade in warships between your country and Australia, on behalf of Australia, I would like to present you with a small shore protection frigate. This shore protection frigate will also be handed over with the battleship and the armored cruiser to witness the friendship between your country and Australia. The Australian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs thought for a moment before replying with a smile.

"Thank you so much, Mr. Minister. May the friendship between the island nation and Australia always remain. Koichiro Yuzawa looked overjoyed and responded with a smile.

In fact, a small shore protection frigate will not be taken into account for either Australia or the island nation.

The cost of building a shore protection frigate is only a few thousand pounds, which is far less than a fraction of the cost of this warship deal.

Giving an island country such a warship can not only confirm the theory put forward by the island country that a friend's friend is a friend, so that the island country can rest assured that it will trade warships with Australia, but also look good on face, so that the politicians and people of the island country are also satisfied.

After all, before the official birth of the dreadnought, Arthur did not intend to equip the Australian Navy with such extravagant warships as the dreadnought.

Not only does a former dreadnought cost millions of pounds, but it also takes a lot of manpower and specialists to build for more than a year.

In exchange for what? After the birth of the dreadnought, even the brand-new former dreadnought lost its luster in front of the dreadnought, and there was no room for resistance.

But if Australia wants to quickly master the construction technology of dreadnoughts after the birth of dreadnoughts, then the construction technology of pre-dreadnoughts must be mastered.

This is equivalent to the accumulation of school knowledge, if there is no basic education for the accumulation of students' knowledge, directly let a person who has not studied go to the university to study, then it is tantamount to pulling out the seedlings to help them grow, and do nothing.

And that's not possible. What qualifications does a country that could not even master the technology of building dreadnoughts have to start building dreadnoughts after the birth of dreadnoughts?

Although the dreadnought is a new type of warship born after the all-round technical improvement of the former dreadnought, almost all the technologies have been reformed and replaced, which has created the dreadnought's crushing of the former dreadnought.

But without the former dreadnought, the birth of the dreadnought would also cease to exist.

Now the arrival of the diplomatic mission of the island nation has also allowed Arthur to see that Australia has made the shipyard's technical experts proficient in the construction of battleships without spending money.

By selling battleships to foreign countries, not only could they make a lot of money, but they also allowed these specialists to build battleships and familiarize themselves with the techniques they had learned from German specialists.

Australia naturally earns, and the island nation will not lose, at least until the creation of dreadnoughts.

This kind of arms deal, you can't complain about being cheated just because the arms will be eliminated in the future.

On November 19, 1902, after a long period of deliberations and visits, the diplomatic mission of the island nation finally finalized the final order for the arms trade.

This is a procurement plan for a series of light and heavy weapons and warships, including one battleship, four armored cruisers, one shore protection frigate (as a gift), 20,000 Gew98 rifles, 100 German-made Makqin heavy machine guns, 30 100-5mm Krupp howitzers, tens of millions of rifles, heavy machine gun bullets, and 10,000 shells.

These weapons can even directly equip a world's top 20 navies and an elite army of 20,000 people.

What's more, the army of the island nation was already very strong, and the navy was equipped with five battleships purchased from Britain and one battleship captured in previous naval battles, a total of six, ranking among the top ten in the world.

As for the army, with its sufficient population and militarism, the island countries can arbitrarily arm a huge army of more than one million people, and even arm an army of more than three million people on the premise of shaking the national foundation.

In addition to this arms trade treaty, the island nation has also signed a treaty with Australia on the import and export of resources.

Resource imports are not only simple coal and iron ore, but also a series of metal minerals and resources including oil, nickel, aluminum, etc.

The treaty stipulates that Australia must supply at least 100,000 tonnes of mineral resources annually to island nations and that the mineral resources must be sold at more than twice the market price.

To compensate Australia for its mineral exports, the transportation of these mineral resources will be the responsibility of the island nation, and Australia will only need to transport them to seaports.

The treaty is a win-win for Australia and the island nation, as Australia can exchange its mineral resources for foreign exchange, which can also buy more advanced industrial equipment from Europe and accelerate Australia's industrialization and technology.

At the same time, island countries can also change the current situation of the lack of mineral resources in their own countries to a certain extent, so that their domestic industries can make progress and breakthroughs due to the limitation of mineral resources.

The arms trade treaty together with the treaty on the import and export of mineral resources constitutes the general treaty signed between the diplomatic mission of the island countries and Australia, that is, the preliminary agreement between the island countries and Australia on strengthening economic and military cooperation, also known as the island-Macao agreement.

The treaty did not have any military aspects, and the arms involved were only Arthur's actions to open up Australia's military exports.

This treaty still had a certain impact on the international front, although Australia was able to seize part of the British arms trade market, but because of the good relations between Australia and the British Empire on the surface, as well as Arthur's good reputation in the British Empire, the British Empire did not take any action and voice.

The United States, for its part, is also happy to see the cooperation between Australia and the island countries come to fruition.

The United States and the Russian Empire were also considered neighbors, and even the closest of the two countries was less than four kilometers apart.

Of course, the proximity of these two countries was also contributed to by the Tsarist Empire. The land of Alaska, the territory of the United States, was once a colony of the Russian Empire.

However, due to the poor financial management of the Tsarist Empire, it was sold to the United States and became a new state of the United States.

It was this state, located less than four kilometers from the easternmost island of the Far East of the Russian Empire, that made the Russian Empire and the United States neighbors.

With the rise of American industry and economy, the United States was not content to keep its influence within the confines of North America.

But the world has been largely carved up by the European powers, and no matter how hard the United States tries, it can only snatch a little food from countries like Spain, which is already weakened.

In order to strengthen its influence, the United States must expand its popularity to other regions and countries.

Naturally, it is impossible to have the east, and on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean is now the most prosperous and developed Europe, and judging from the current military strength of the United States, it is simply not enough to confront the European powers.

Therefore, the United States can only look at Asia across the Pacific Ocean, and go to war with Spain, and the seizure of the Philippines is the epitome of the American plan.

But in Asia, the United States also has to face several relatively powerful enemies. The Tsarist Empire, which straddled eastern Europe and the easternmost part of Asia, was one of the old European powers and one of the countries with great influence in Asia and the Far East.

In East Asia, the big countries here have basically been carved up by the great powers, and the United States can only get a piece of the pie and cannot realize its own interests.

Further south are Southeast Asia and Oceania. Most of these two places, both were and are not touched by the United States.

Whether it was a colony of the British Empire, the colonization of Dutch Southeast Asia, which was supported by many foreign powers, and Australia, which had good relations with the British Empire and the German Empire, it was an existence that the United States could not afford to provoke for the time being.

Even though the United States is now very industrially and economically developed, its military science and technology are still relatively backward, and it cannot form a confrontation with the European powers for the time being.

Since the United States cannot directly intervene in the situation in Asia, it is very necessary to support and support a country to become a-stirring stick.

At this point, the British Empire and the United States had almost the same purpose. That is, to support and support a country with a certain military strength to confront the hegemonic countries in Asia when it cannot directly intervene.

It can not only weaken the hegemony of the hegemonic countries in Asia, so that the power of the British Empire and the United States can be better extended in Asia, but also not drag down their own countries and not get involved in the whirlpool of war.

Judging from the current situation, the Tsarist Russian Empire is obviously much stronger than the island countries. This is also the reason why the British Empire, known as the-stirring stick of Europe, is not opposed to this cooperation.

In addition to the British Empire, the German Empire, which had a good relationship with Australia, was not opposed to this.

Although the cooperation between Australia and the island nation strengthened the military power of the island nation, the advantage of the Tsarist Empire in the Far East was even weaker, and even had a considerable disadvantage in the number of land forces.

But isn't this exactly the opportunity for the German Reich? The German Empire had always wanted to take the Russian Empire out of the Franco-Russian Entente, and the current conflict between the island states and the Russian Empire in the Far East was a good opportunity.

France did not support the Russian Empire in focusing more on the Far East, which also gave the German Empire an opportunity to win over the Russian Empire.

As long as Tsarist Russia, the European bulldozer, could be removed from the Franco-Russian Entente, or the Tsarist Empire could remain neutral between the conflict between the German Empire and France, then the German Empire and Austria-Hungary would only have to face one enemy, and that was France.

This was the great news for the German Empire, which had just bloodbathed France decades earlier, and was not afraid of war with France.

If it was just a one-on-one confrontation between Germany and France, it was the Germans who were confident that history would repeat itself and that the French would feel the loss of territory and the payment of large reparations.

Therefore, the expansion of the power of the island nation was something that the German Reich was willing to see. After all, the stronger the island nation, the more Tsarist Russia needs the support of other countries, isn't it?

The two-in-one chapter asks for support

(End of chapter)