Then, also, on October 24, 1915, the New York American published a long interview with Professor Hans Delbrück on the terms of peace which Germany hoped to secure if "President Wilson and the Pope" would consent to act as mediators. The interview (which had been approved by the German censor) included the following passage:—
It is quite possible that peace could be secured by ceding to Germany such colonies as Uganda by England and the French and Belgian Congos as a ransom for the evacuation by Germany of Northern France and Belgium.
Such concessions, if one can conceive the possibility of their being made—would still leave Germany far from the attainment of her full African programme; but the fact of these proposals being put forward at all as "terms of peace" is quite in keeping with the whole course of Germany's policy in Africa, and points clearly to what may, in fact, have been her chief objective in the war itself.
Any moral reflections either on the said policy or on the "programme" by means of which it was to have been carried out would be beyond the scope of the present work.
What we are here concerned in is the fact that Germany's dreams of an African Empire, given expression to by von Weber in 1880, and the subject of such continuous effort ever since, were, in the possibilities of their realisation, based primarily on the extension and utilisation of such facilities for rail-transport as she might be able either to create or to acquire.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] See Vol. III. of "The Story of Africa," by Robert Brown. London, 1894.
[56] "The Germans and Africa," by Evans Lewin, Librarian of the Royal Colonial Institute. London, 1915.
[57] Under the terms of the treaty of July 1, 1900, Germany was to have "free access" from her South-West Africa Protectorate to the Zambezi River "by a strip which shall at no point be less than twenty English miles in width."
[58] The Hereros (Damaras) are not a warlike people, and although, at the time of the rising, many of them were armed with Mausers and Lee-Enfields, it has been said of them that they were not of much account with the rifle, their "natural weapon" being the assegai. A German White Book on the rebellion stated that the cause of the outbreak was the spirit of independence which characterised the Hereros, "to whom the increasing domination of the Germans had become insupportable, and who believed themselves stronger than the whites." According to Mr. H. A. Bryden ("The Conquest of German South-West Africa," Fortnightly Review, July, 1915) the real causes were the abuses of the white trader, the brutal methods of certain officials, and the seizure and occupation of tribal lands. The war developed into one of practical extermination for the natives concerned. Of the Hereros between 20,000 and 30,000 were either killed outright or driven into the Kalahari desert to die of starvation. The Hottentots also lost heavily.