The coast-railway spoken of by the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten was to link up German South-West Africa with Angola, in which country, also, the Germans hoped to obtain extensive mining and agricultural concessions, thus forwarding their established policy of peaceful penetration by means of commerce and railways, and establishing economic interests which might be expected to lead to political developments in due course, and so prepare the way for an eventual seizure of "the prize that awaits us."
The Germans had also sought to finance the completion eastwards of the Lobito Bay or Benguela Railway, to which reference will be made later on in connection with the development of the Katanga district of the Belgian Congo; but the condition they advanced, namely that the control of the line should be left in their hands, coupled with their adoption of suspicious lines of policy in other directions,[63] led to their railway proposals being declined by the Portuguese, with thanks.
German East Africa
Then, in order to understand the full scope of the aspirations Germany was cherishing towards the African Continent, one must take into account her railways on the east coast no less than those on the west coast, since these, also, formed an essential part of the general scheme.
The line which stretches right across German East Africa, from Dar-es-Salaam, the capital of the Protectorate, to Kigoma, on Lake Tanganyika, and north of Ujiji, has a total length of 1,439 miles; and if the economic development of a territory estimated as having a total area of 384,000 square miles had been the sole aim in view, the Tanganyikabahn would have well deserved to rank as a notable enterprise in German colonial expansion, and one calling for commendation rather than criticism. The question arises, however, whether, in addition to the development of German East Africa itself, the railway in question was not intended, also, to facilitate the realisation of Germany's designs against Central Africa as part of her aforesaid scheme for the eventual conquest of the African continent.
The feverish haste with which the second and third sections of the railway were built sufficed, in itself, to give rise to suspicions of ulterior designs. The first section, from Dar-es-Salaam to Morogo (136½ miles), was constructed by a syndicate of German bankers acting under a State guarantee of interest, and the work, begun in February, 1905, was completed in September, 1907. The second section, from Morogo to Tabora (526½ miles), was to have been completed by July 1, 1914; but in 1910, the Reichstag voted a special credit both for the earlier completion of this second section—which was thus finished by February 26, 1912—and for surveys for the third section, from Tabora to Kigoma (776 miles). Such, again, was the celerity with which the work on this third section was pushed forward that, although the date fixed for the completion of the line was April 1, 1915, through rail communication from the Indian Ocean to Lake Tanganyika was established by February 1, 1914—that is to say, one year and two months in advance of time.
We here come to the two-fold question (1) Why was the railway extended at all for the 776 miles from Tabora to Lake Tanganyika, considering that this portion of the German Protectorate offered, in itself, the prospect of no traffic at all for the line[64]; and (2) why was it necessary that such haste should be shown in the completion of the undertaking?
"The Other Side of Tanganyika"
To the first of these questions the reply is (1) that the traffic on which the western section of the Tanganyikabahn was mainly to rely for its receipts was traffic originating in or destined for the Belgian Congo; (2) that the control it was hoped to secure over Belgian trade was, in combination with the strategical advantages offered by the railway, to be the preliminary to an eventual annexation by Germany of the Belgian Congo itself; and (3) that like conditions were to lead, if possible, to the final realisation of von Weber's dream of 1880.