because its top speed of 307 mph was higher than that of any Royal Air Force fighter in service. Lord Rothermere presented the aircraft (named "Britain First") to the nation for evaluation as a bomber, and in early 1936 the modified design was taken into production as the Blenheim Mk. I. Rothermere felt there was a possibility of Germany going to war with Britain because of the colonial issue. Rothermere was well aware that Hitler wanted the return of all of Germany's former African colonies, and was equally aware that Britain had no intention of returning any of the former colonies. Rothermere was often privately depressed as he feared that the colonial issue would one day lead to a new Anglo-German war. In October 1934, Rothermere wrote in a letter to J. C. C. Davidson: "I have the belief that this war will start sometime next year when it is least expected." In a letter to the War Secretary, Rothemere wrote "it looks as through the blow may fall next year" while in a letter to the First Lord of the Admiralty he warned of "Hitler war against the West". In May 1935, another ghost-written article under Rothermere's name appeared in the Daily Mail with the title "Wanted: 10,000 Planes". Addison noted that before the First World War, Northcliffe had run articles depicting in vivid terms a German conquest of Britain as a way to pressure the Liberal government to spend more on the Royal Navy and increase the circulation of his newspapers, and Rothermere's dire predications about the power of the Luftwaffe to inflict catastrophic damage on British cities were in the same vein. However, there was a crucial difference in that Northcliffe used his "invasion scare" articles to criticise the government for being too willing to appease Germany while Rothermere used his "bombing scare" articles as a reason for the appeasement of Germany. In 1935, Rothermere founded the National Air League to campaign for more spending on the RAF, especially Bomber Command. Collin Brooks, the Daily Mail journalist whom Rothermere hired to write his biography noted he was often "gloomy" as he noted that successive British governments kept rejecting the German demand for the return of the former African colonies. As one of the richest men in Britain, Rothermere supported fascism as the best way of preserving the social order, but as an old-fashioned imperialist whose formative years