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East Africa: Germany

Now, the Germans are not in search of colonies after the English model, and those that they have in East and West Africa had no white population to speak of before the war. Quite apart from the fact that tropical Africa would be no suitable territory for white settlement, they have no colonists to spare, since for the sake of their industrial and military future in Germany they desire the largest concentration of population possible in the fatherland. As Baron von Rechenberg, formerly governor of German East Africa, has expressed it: "Just as we lack suitable land for settling, so we lack suitable German settlers. . . . For a number of years immigration into Germany has been much greater than emigration from Germany. . . . Even in times of peace German agriculture had not a surplus, but a shortage, of labor, and it cannot possibly accord with our interests to increase the shortage by encouraging emigration. . . . Regrettable though it is, there can be no question at the conclusion of peace of acquiring territory for settlement. There is no appropriate country, and there are no farmers to settle on it." Germany desires not colonies but strategic positions. Central Africa needed to supply raw materials.

Germany could use natives in war.

German colonial aims are really not colonial, but are entirely dominated by far-reaching conceptions of world politics. Not colonies, but military power and strategic positions for exercising world power in future, are her real aims. Her ultimate objective in Africa is the establishment of a great Central African Empire, comprising not only her colonies before the war, but also all the English, French, Belgian, and Portuguese possessions south of the Sahara and Lake Chad and north of the Zambezi River in South Africa. Toward this objective she was steadily marching even before the war broke out, and she claims the return of her lost African colonies at the end of the war as a starting-point from which to resume the interrupted march. Or, rather, as appears from Count Hertling's recent pronouncement, she claims a reallocation of the world's colonies, so that she may have a share commensurate with her world position. This Central African block, the maps of which are now in course of preparation and printing at the Colonial Office in Berlin, is intended in the first place to supply the economic requirements and raw materials of German industry; in the second and far more important place, to become the recruiting-ground for vast native armies, the great value of which has been demonstrated in the tropical campaigns of this war, and especially in East Africa; while the natural harbors on the Atlantic and Indian oceans will supply the naval and submarine bases from which both ocean routes will be dominated, and British and American sea-power will be brought to naught. The native armies will be useful in the next great war, to which the German General Staff is already devoting serious attention, as appears from the book of General von Freytag, the deputy chief of the German General Staff, recently published here under the title "Deductions of the World War." A great army on the flank of Asia.

The untrained levies of the Union of South Africa would go down before these German-trained hordes of Africans, who would also be able to deal with North Africa and Egypt without the deflection of any white troops from Germany; and they would in addition mean a great army planted on the flank of Asia whose force could be felt throughout the middle East as far as Persia, and who knows how much farther?

African natives a part of Germany's plan of conquest. This is the grandiose scheme. It is no mere fanciful picture, but based on the writings of great German publicists, professors, and high colonial authorities, and chapter and verse could be quoted in full detail for every feature of the scheme. The civilization of the African natives and the economic development of the dark continent must be subordinate to the most far-reaching schemes of German world power and world conquest; the world must be brought into subjection to German militarism. As in former centuries again the African native must play his part in the new slavery. Dr. Solf, the present German Colonial Secretary, in the "Colonial Calendar" for 1917, made the following pronouncement as to the organic connection of German colonial aims with her other aims of world power:

Directions of German aims. "The history of our colonies in this world war has shown what was hitherto wanting in the German colonial empire. It has shown that it was not a proper `empire' at all, but merely a number of possessions without geographical and political connection, and without established communications. . . . How greatly would the power of resistance of our colonies have been increased if they had not been isolated! . . . These experiences show what direction our aims must take. We shall achieve the fulfillment of our desires if we remain conscious that the colonial-political aim is not something which stands alone by itself, but must be regarded in organic connection with all other aims which we are determined to attain by the world war." Prof. Delbruck, in a recent number of the "Preussische Jahrbucher," thus sketches the new African Empire: Plan for a new African Empire. "If our victory is great enough, we can hope to unite under our hand the whole of Central Africa with our old colony South-west Africa; Senegambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Dahomey, well-populated Nigeria with the port of Lagos, Kamerun, the rich islands of San Thome and Principe with their splendid ports, the Katanga ore district, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Mozambique, and Delagoa Bay, Madagascar, German East Africa, Zanzibar, and Uganda; and in addition the great port of Ponta Delgado in the Azores--one of the most important and most frequented coaling stations--and Horta, one of the most important centers of the transatlantic cable system. At present the Azores belong to Portugal, which is at war with Germany. Portugal also owns the Cape Verde Islands, with the port of Porto Grande, one of the most frequented coaling stations in the Eastern Atlantic.