A moment later, the door of the emperor's study opened, and the Prime Minister of the Cabinet Bernhard von Bilo retreated with a respectful look. He turned around and saw the two princes and Tirpitz, and he was a little surprised. At this time, the royal servant had already pushed the door open, and the two sides had no time to greet each other, and just nodded to greet each other.

"Come?" William II stood by the window next to the desk. Judging from his tone and expression, he was in a pretty good mood.

"I would like to pay my highest respect to Your Majesty!" Xia Shu took the lead in paying homage to the emperor. On most occasions, he expressed his absolute respect for the rule of the empire in such formal terms, despite their indisputable father-son relationship.

Christian and Tirpitz also paid a gift to the emperor in words that matched their respective identities.

"Oh, Prince Auguste, thank you for your respect. Please convey your sincere greetings to His Majesty the Grand Duke for your chance."

After completing these high-sounding etiquettes, the emperor returned to his desk: "Joheng, I am proud of your outstanding performance in the Naval Academy. I am so sorry that I was not able to personally award you the title of Excellent Craftsman. Your diligence is bringing the royal family and the navy closer together."

"It is my great honor to be able to get your affirmation." Accompanied by this decent response, Natsuki tried hard to show a calm and joyful expression, and the acting skills became more and more profound.

The emperor lit a cigarette: "In the morning, the Earl came to report on the adjustment of the two large cruisers' plans. Hearing that the senior experts of the Royal Navy Technical Committee were stunned by your bold ideas, they finally voted to pass your design plan. If this plan is indeed as worth a risk as the technical committee's evaluation, I will find a way to convince Congress to add the budget you need."

Xia Shu was not in a hurry to speak, but gave the oil painting he had drawn on the train to William II. Seeing this color picture slightly larger than the pages, the German emperor's eyes lit up: "Ha, you actually imitate my use of color!"

This is a piece of cake for Xia Shu, who has been able to enter and exit the emperor's study since childhood.

After careful observation, the emperor praised it: "Beautiful, very beautiful! This is the imperial naval warship I imagined, majestic, domineering, majestic, so beautiful! Yoheng, you are really...unparalleled genius!"

"This should be what people call blood inheritance!" Xia Shu flattered: "I am very lucky that I inherited the talent of a first-class military strategist from you and the inspiration of artists from the queen, so I can paint your glorious ideas on the drawings."

When the flattery was right, the emperor nodded comfortably: "Well, um! Great!"

Xia Shu took the opportunity to unfold the ship design general drawing. The black lines on the pure white drawings obviously do not have the intuitive beauty of oil paintings, but have accurate calculations to be implemented.

The emperor looked at it very seriously and asked: "Does it take the price to weaken armor and firepower to reach a speed of 25 knots?"

William II's preference for warships is well known, and it also left behind a historical joke about "the emperor's design of warships". But Xia Shu carefully studied the "Royal One" made by William II. Although there was a lack of professional processing in some details, it would never become a lead-cast duck. Judging from the technical level at that time, "Royal One" should have been a light cruiser with good performance, but why did it attract historically bad reviews from professional ship designers?

The root of the problem is the role of the emperor.

The people felt that the rulers should govern the country wholeheartedly, and part-time jobs would only cause consequences of misleading the country and misleading the people. For the officials in power, the rulers should sit on the throne to give guidance, and specific matters should be handled by specific people. As a naval leader with excellent coordination and organizational strength, Tirpitz had a strong opinion on the construction and development route of the German navy. He hoped that the high seas fleet would gradually become a powerful force that could challenge Britain's maritime hegemony according to his own ideas.

With the firm support of William II, Tirpitz gained extremely high dominance in naval affairs. Almost no one in the entire empire could challenge his authority, but the emperor himself was qualified to make trouble. After gaining the reputation of "lead duck", William II did not try to design warships anymore. He only put forward broad or clear requirements on some technical indicators of newly built warships. Tirpitz completely grasped the naval power, which is the guess in Xia Shu's heart.

In response to the emperor's questions, Natsuki looked at Tirpitz and introduced slowly: "Our competitors have set strategic goals for traditional cruisers that can be found, caught up and beat, and use this as a guide to continuously build newer and better large cruisers. Based on our current naval strategy, the only requirement for colonial cruisers is to escape unscathed when encountering strong enemies. Therefore, we think that the new cruiser should appropriately lengthen the hull, enhance the airworthiness performance, adopt a boiler with more power and a steam turbine with higher efficiency to ensure a speed of no less than 25 knots, and the armor defense is only enhanced and not weakened. In terms of firepower, all main guns are placed in four double-mounted turrets, and the contoured secondary guns originally located on the lower level of the side of the side have been moved upward to ensure practicality in harsh sea conditions."

When Natsuki made this smooth explanation, the Navy Minister was always expressionless.

"Well... what do our Earl of Tirpitz think?" With his own doubts, William II naturally consulted with the supreme authority of the Navy.

"This is a nearly perfect design, but there are several details that may cause serious defects." Tirpitz said in a low and slow tone. "First, only the British have installed steam turbines on large ships at present. We cannot get a full set of operation data from them. Install new equipment on two large warships without sufficient technical foundation. It is not ruled out that frequent failures occur after the ship is completed, which affects combat deployment. Once a warship suddenly loses power, the warship that is only slaughtered by people. Second, although the turret structure is conducive to concentration of firepower, it is not conducive to dispersing the gun position and reducing the chance of joint damage, and the weight is much higher than the gun profile. Third, the excellent performance of high-speed torpedo boats means that large ships are facing increasingly large threats of lightning strikes. Theoretically, the secondary guns arranged close to the waterline are conducive to repel enemy torpedo boats that are attacking at any time..."

Xia Shu caught a glimpse of the look of surprise and contradiction on the emperor's face. It was obvious that Tirpitz did not say this when he met in the morning to avoid talking behind his back. It was his clever way to maintain his personal integrity in front of the emperor.

Since the Navy Secretary was worried that his dominance over the navy would be threatened by him, Xia Shu quickly changed his strategy and said according to Tirpitz's language logic: "As the teacher said, we are not familiar with the performance of the steam turbine, and the significant adjustment of the power configuration is also a risky attempt. Adjusting the profiled secondary gun on the side of the side is also a risky attempt, so we wrote a letter to the teacher before, and only the teacher in Germany can solve this problem. In addition, Prince August and I are still confident in this design."

After hearing what Prince Joachim said, William II's contradictory expression disappeared almost all of his eyes. He raised his head and looked at Tirpitz: "Tirpitz, who is omnipotent, should find a solution?"

The Navy Minister obviously did not expect that Natsuki would use such a move of retreating to advance. The emperor's words made him silent and stared at the design drawings on the table with his eyes fixed on him.

When the emperor also focused on the design drawings, Xia Shu raised a sly smile on the corner of her mouth. Now Christian looked confused, and his eyes were as if he was saying: I'll just go, where is the performance and where is it?

After about five minutes, this time was not enough to take a nap, but in the emperor's office, the five-minute silence was quite long. Tirpitz said: "The way to increase the speed is not only to replace the steam turbine with a higher theoretical efficiency, it is not mature enough, nor stable enough. Considering that our four-cylinder three-inflation reciprocating steam engine has been successfully verified on the Prince Heinrich, I think this kind of power equipment that is expensive, consumes a lot of coal but can provide a greater power output, and be equipped with 20 to 2 on the ship.

The 2 latest Schultz Sunnycroft naval boilers, combined with fuel pouring technology, should be able to increase the design power by 33,000 to 34,000 horsepower. The proposal to cancel the underwater torpedo launch tube of the bow can be considered and adopted. It is not impossible to adjust the arrangement of the gun on the side, but it should be treated with caution. For safe considerations, I suggest that the overall design of His Highness Joachim and His Highness August will be based on the drawing of the technical drawings by the Royal Navy Technical Committee, and the construction work will still be handed over to the Brom and Weissel Shipyards."

"I fully agree with the teacher's opinion!" Xia Shu quickly made a statement at the first time, which also made the contradictory expression on the emperor's face disappear.

"Since Johen has no objection to the Count's suggestion, the overall plan of the new cruiser will be determined like this! How about handing the drawing design to the Royal Navy Technical Committee?" The emperor turned his eyes to the two parties for comments.

"Agree completely." Natsuki's answer was very refreshing. Those who didn't know it would probably think that they were discussing what had been decided. In fact, Natsuki was just following a simple and practical principle: under no circumstances should you easily touch other people's bread.

The Navy Secretary, who had no way to retreat, decisively put away his previous solemn expression, and his voice became more active: "I will urge the Technical Committee to complete the design and demonstration work in the shortest time to ensure that the two cruisers start construction at the latest early next year. According to the overall plan we just agreed on, their weight will be increased by at least 1,200 tons compared to the original design plan, and the final cost is likely to reach 20 million marks."

"This tonnage and cost are similar to the latest British Duke of Edinburgh armored cruiser, and our cruiser performance is definitely much higher than that of Duke of Edinburgh!" Xia Shu's words were already at the forefront, and she swallowed it. The Duke of Edinburgh in the UK is still on the design drawings, and all the data are in a highly confidential state. The professional spies in Germany have not yet obtained any results, so they have no reason to explain its situation so clearly, not to mention that Tirpitz has always been very sensitive to this information.

"I will solve the funding problem." The emperor's answer was very refreshing, which was enough to show his great confidence in his son's talent for building ships.

As the unshakable Dinghai Sword and Strategy Helmsman of the German Navy at this time, Tirpitz's eyes showed a kind of worry that was not easy to be noticed. This worry obviously came from his "successful disciple", Prince Joachim who had great potential. After such a process that was not intense but full of political wisdom, Xia Shu clearly saw that Tirpitz was definitely not a man who was willing to be merciless. His strong desire to control made him exclude all competitors, and he did not consider that a genuine prince like Joachim should pursue supreme honor in commanding the fleet rather than building the fleet. For Germany, the best result should be that the two of them belong to their own positions and work together.

ps:1. During this period, the Grand Duke of Oldenburg took August as his surname, so Christian was "Prince August of the Principal of Oldenburg."
Chapter completed!