The Seed of Empire by Fred M. White

They had come from the north and south, from the east and west in their thousands at the first sign of danger. Not that any one of them admitted that the Empire was in peril, for such a thing was incredible. Was not Britain the mistress of the sea, and had she not been so for centuries? And did she not possess the finest navy that the world had ever seen? It was a hard thing to make the typical Englishman believe that within thirty years Germany could build up a fleet to compare with ours. To begin with, her people had not the right blood in their veins; they had no traditions, and practically no seaboard. Where were the men coming from, to cope with sailors who were the sons and grandsons of the men descended from the followers of Hawkins and Frobisher and Drake?

And again, at the very outbreak of hostilities, the German fleet had been carefully shepherded in the North Sea, and driven behind the shelter of Heligoland. If anything happened now, it would be from the fact that England was too confident.