Read Ebook: Notes and Queries Vol. V Number 130 April 24 1852 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men Artists Antiquaries Genealogists etc. by Various Bell George Editor

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Many German industries depend upon foreign countries for the import of a continual supply of raw material which cannot be produced in Germany; while part of their necessaries are even obtained from abroad. They also depend to a considerable extent upon foreign countries for the sale of manufactures.

Their prosperity depends upon import and export trade; for while the home industries provide work for masses of the population, all the products cannot be consumed at home and markets have to be found elsewhere if employment is to continue.

It can never be said to be an economic interest to encourage the establishment of industries in Colonies--at least not manufactories of articles made at home.

The establishment of such may be of interest to provide work for those who emigrate; but from the point of view of countries like Germany, whose existence depends on keeping their men at home, it is far preferable to develop every possible industry at home, and retain the Colonies only as markets and producers of raw material.

This Germany proceeded to do. Developing Colonial trade, she extended her home industries. During eight years her Colonial trade rose from scarcely ?5,000,000 to ?12,000,000, and the effect of the acquisition of Colonies upon her home industries is marked in the fact that she employed in those industries 11,300,000 men in 1907 as against 6,400,000 in 1882.

Germany, moreover, protects even her agriculture against the competition of her own Colonies--shutting out their meat and their grain.

Germany's conception of the idea of Colonies, therefore, was to build up overseas a new Germany composed of daughter states, which would remain essentially German and be the means of keeping her men at home in remunerative employment by providing raw material for the development of her industries.

A continental nation, surrounded by powerful neighbours, it seemed in her case a suicidal policy to scatter her population abroad; and therefore she exploited her Colonies in such a way as to help her to concentrate her people at home, where she required men in time of peace for economic development and in time of war for defence--and offence.

As a natural sequence to the responsibility of oversea dominions, it becomes a question of life and death to keep open the oversea commerce protected by a powerful navy; and this point was strongly urged by the National Party which, advocating colonisation, arose in Germany in 1892.

But with the growth of Germany's oversea trade and her navy, a new and splendid vista unfolded itself--no less than Germany, from her place in the sun, mistress of the world.

To quote von Bernhardi: "The German nation, from the standpoint of its importance to civilisation, is fully entitled not only to demand a place in the sun, but to aspire to an adequate share in the sovereignty of the world far beyond the limits of its present sphere of influence."

Von Treitschke, the neurotic German historian and poet, again "incessantly points his nation towards the war with England, to the destruction of England's supremacy at sea as the means by which Germany is to burst into that path of glory and of world dominion."

"Treitschke dreamed of a greater Germany to come into being after England had been crushed on the sea."

To obtain their object no other means presented itself than the Prussian militarist method.

Bismarck's object--the goal towards which he strove, to so amply secure the position in Europe that it could never be questioned--seemed to have been attained by the machine of militarism, the huge army created and kept in being by national self-sacrifice. So to obtain what was now aimed at, the instrument was to be an invincible fleet which would in defiance of everyone keep sea communications open.

As early as 1896 the "world Power" idea had evolved, and at the celebration in that year of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the foundation of the German Empire, the Emperor termed it a "world Empire."

On the question of the rights of others the German Emperor was at all events satisfied, for he announced to the German Socialists: "We Hohenzollerns take our crown from God alone, and to God alone we are responsible," which leaves nothing more to be said on that point.

To German minds the domination of the world was a very real ambition and quite in accord with the best Prussian traditions.

In 1905 the German Emperor visited Tangier to impress upon a cynical brother Emperor the right to a place in Moroccan affairs; while in 1911 German diplomacy asserted that Germany was anxious to preserve the independence and integrity of Morocco because of her important interests in the country. As a matter of fact, German trade had steadily lost ground in Morocco and "in 1909 was exactly equal to 1/1500th or one-fifteenth part of one single per cent of her whole foreign trade."

Anent the Agadir crisis in 1911, Von Bernhardi naively admits that it was "only the fear of the intervention of England that deterred us from claiming a sphere of interests of our own in Morocco."

The "sphere of interests" in Morocco consisted in coveting Agadir, the best harbour on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, which would have been of enormous importance to Germany and her Colonies because ordinarily the German fleet would be tied to the North Sea for want of coaling stations.

During Great Britain's time of stress with the South African Republics, in the same way Baron Marshall von Bieberstein declared officially that "the continued independence of the Boer Republics was a German interest."

The interest of Germany, apart from the undoubted hope of making the Republics German Colonies, it might simply be remarked, was that Germany had in contemplation the construction of a railway line from Pretoria to Santa Lucia Bay on the east coast, 800 miles nearer Europe than the port of Cape Town.

German history holds no record of the integrity or independence of her neighbours being either of German interest or concern, and her attitude is in accord with her principle of concealing her real intention by adopting a spirit of deprecation.

This is amply exemplified in the German Emperor's letter to Lord Tweedmouth of 14th February, 1908, stigmatising as "nonsensical and untrue" the idea that the German fleet was being built for any other purpose "than her needs in relation with her rapidly growing trade."

Roughly, the German Colonial Empire is five times as big as Germany, with a population of about 14,000,000 natives; and the question of German Colonial policy is a question of native policy.

It is in Germany's interest that the natives should be as numerous as possible, for it is their labour, intelligence, and industry that makes the Colonial Empire useful and necessary to Germany.

Individual settlers are not encouraged to emigrate, but the plantations, ranches, etc., whence Germany drew her supplies of raw material such as cotton, rubber, wool, etc., are developed by chartered companies and trading firms, and the so-called settlers are the managers of these.

There was, moreover, no room in German Colonial expansion for individualism, which has proved such a strength to England but was suppressed in Germany. The individual German is not given scope but subordinated to a system.

The truth seems to be that Germany had not got the class of men she required for her scheme of Colonial development--or exploitation seems the better word.

Germany's requirements were lands for growing raw material by native labour, and markets from which she could not be excluded--and she thought she had found them in her Colonies.

The Colonies cried out for European enterprise and European capital, but they did not want individual settlers.

Under British rule the German has proved a most desirable Colonist, but he has never thriven under his own Colonial administration.

He is by nature extremely assimilative, and in our Colonies he prospers, not only competing with but outstripping the British trader owing to the employment of undercutting methods which do not so readily occur to the British mind, hampered as it usually is by a sense of fair play.

In the eastern province of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, the members of the German Legion who settled after disbandment about King William's Town, Hanover, Stutterheim, etc., have developed into prosperous farmers and merchants.

A sandy waste in the neighbourhood of Cape Town, once thought to be worthless, was subdivided and taken up almost entirely by Germans, and they have turned the land into one of the most productive portions of the Cape Peninsula.

In America the German immigrants have readily assimilated, though in Brazil they have formed separate centres.

In the German Colonies a set-back to development has been the fact that they have never realised the importance of respecting local manners and customs, but the home machinery has been applied in every particular to conditions wholly dissimilar and unsuitable.

In South West Africa, for instance, Dr B?nn of Munich says they "solved the native problem by smashing tribal life."

Being trained and accustomed to obey, moreover, the German cannot act without orders, and lacks initiative and therefore administrative ability.

Compulsory military service has been instituted, and the German Colonial administration is cordially detested except where perhaps it favours ill-treatment and oppression of natives.

Where the British have evolved a system of government which is a comity of commonwealths within a monarchy, and hold their dependencies by the sense of honour and appreciation, to which the attitude of South Africa bears splendid witness, the German's grip was by the claws of militarism and terrorism.

Under the circumstances it is perhaps not surprising that the Germans should fall into the error that the British dependencies would embrace an opportunity of "throwing off the British yoke"; and the assumed disloyalty of British Colonies, with the further assumption, widely distributed, that various peoples under the British flag were capable of being tampered with easily, may well have been one of the most cogent theories leading the German Emperor and his advisers to their fateful decision.

With the extraordinary aptitude of the Germans for intrigue, perhaps the war Lords were not altogether foolish in their conclusions.

There was a chance of seduction, especially with native races in Africa, but it was a very small chance, and, like many another well-laid scheme, this one failed because its authors did not understand the material which was to be used to work it.

It failed in Africa because the African is more than the beast of burden the German Colonists schooled and deluded themselves into thinking. They did not understand the native; and, in a word, the native hates the German, especially the officials.

Their methods of colonisation have good points in matter of detail, routine work, etc.; but if colonisation be regarded as something more than the exploitation of a subject race and the passive holding of its territory, they must be written down a failure, for the extraordinary efficiency of the administrative machinery falls far short of compensating for the rottenness of the policy behind it.

SOUTH WEST AFRICA

Ever since her acquisition of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, vitally important to her in view of her interests in the East, Great Britain had been unquestionably the supreme Power in the south of the African Continent.

With the passing of the Dutch East India Company, Holland had ceased to be a South African Power; while the Portuguese had lost their status. The latter in reality only held an area along the coast of her possessions, a great proportion of the interior, which undoubtedly had once been beneficially occupied by Portuguese, having reverted to savagedom.

The southern point of Portuguese South East Africa extended to and included Delagoa Bay and Louren?o Marquez, while the southern boundary of their western Colony was about the 22? S.

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