Speaking of Colonies in his recent bombastic book, General von Bernhardi said: "The great Elector laid the foundation of Prussia's power by successful and deliberately planned wars"; and in justifying the right to make war he says: "It may be that a growing people cannot win Colonies from uncivilised races, and yet the State wishes to retain the surplus population which the mother country can no longer feed. Then the only course left is to acquire the necessary territory by war."
Germany now proposed to tread the same path as England, but she had arrived late in the day and the methods whereby she purposed making up for lost time were not the methods whereby England had established herself.
Behind German colonisation lies no record of great accomplishments inspired by lofty ideals and high aspirations, carried into effect by noble self-sacrifice on the part of her sons; the history conjures up no pageant of romantic emprise nor vista of perilous undertakings in unexplored parts of the globe by the spirits of daring and adventure; it holds no pulse-stirring stories of the blazing of new trails; and scattered over its pages we do not find imprints of the steps of pioneers of true civilisation, nor are its leaves earmarked with splendid memories.
Where England gave of the best of her manhood to establish in daughter states in the four quarters of the globe her ideals of freedom, justice, and fair commerce—that manhood whose inspiration and incentive was their country's honour, but whose guerdon was in many a case a lonely grave or a more imposing monument in the "sun-washed spaces"—the ambassadors of German kultur followed upon a beaten track to seize at the opportune moment the material benefit of the crop where the others had ploughed with the expenditure of their physical energy, sown with the seeds of their intellect, and fertilised with their blood.
Casting about between 1882 and 1884 for territory over which to hoist her flag, Germany found that nearly the whole of the world was occupied; and direct action of conquest not being expedient, Germans were busy seeking to accomplish their aims by secret methods of intrigue, always accompanied by deprecation of the infringement of the vested rights of others.
Active steps for the acquisition of territory began to be taken in 1884.
Under pretext of being interested in the suppression of the slave trade, Germany concerned herself in the affairs of Zanzibar, long subject to the influence of the Portuguese and British; but Germany later abandoned her ambitions in the island on the cession of Heligoland.
Africa was the one continent which had not been partitioned, and Germany's quest of territory brought about the "scramble for Africa."
Germany had annexed portions of the west coast (Togoland and Kamerun), and the vacillating policy of the British Government during 1882-1883 enabled the Germans to annex an enormous tract of territory north of the Orange River, which became known as German South West Africa.
Altogether the German Colonies in Africa acquired in 1884 amounted to over 1,000,000 square miles.