Year 9 are weighing up whether the Anglo-German naval race made war more likely. Before the lesson the teacher took the commissioning date of every British and German dreadnought battleship and battlecruiser, from HMS Dreadnought in December 1906 to August 1914, from published ship lists and typed them into a short Sonic Pi program that plays one bar per month: a high bell for each British ship and a low bell for each German one. The class listens once with eyes closed: nearly three years of British bells alone, the first low bell in October 1909 when SMS Nassau entered service, then both voices quickening, with the high voice always ahead. On the second playing the teacher shows the years on the board and stops at spring 1909, when the naval scare and the cry of 'We want eight and we won't wait' swept Britain, and asks what the class has heard from Germany by that point. Students finish by writing a paragraph on whether British fear in 1909 rested on ships Germany had or ships it was expected to build, and what that says about the naval race as a cause of war.
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