The lamented Botha died before he could put into operation a plan which held out the promise of still another kind of solution. It lay in the soil. He contended that an area of forty million acres should be set aside for the natives, where many could work out their destinies themselves. While this plan offered the opportunity for the establishment of a compact and perhaps dangerous black entity, his feeling was that by the avoidance of friction with the whites the possibility of trouble would be minimized. This scheme is likely to be carried out by Smuts.
Since the Union of South Africa profited by the whirligig of war to the extent of acquiring German South-West Africa it only remains to speak of the new map of Africa, made possible by the Great Conflict. Despite the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France one fails to see concrete evidence of Germany's defeat in Europe. Her people are still cocky and defiant. There is no mistake about her altered condition in Africa. Her flag there has gone into the discard along with the wreck of militarism. The immense territory that she acquired principally by browbeating is lost, down to the last square mile.
Up to 1884 Germany did not own an inch of African soil. Within two years she was mistress of more than a million square miles. Analyze her whole performance on the continent and a definite cause of the World War is discovered. It is part of an international conspiracy studded with astonishing details.
Africa was a definite means to world conquest. Germany knew of her vast undeveloped wealth. It is now no secret that her plan was to annex the greater part of French, Belgian, Italian and Portuguese Africa in the event that she won. The Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway would have hitched up the late Teutonic Empire with the Near East and made it easy to link the African domain with this intermediary through the Turkish dominions. Here was an imposing program with many advantages. For one thing it would have given Germany an untold store of raw materials and it would also have put her into a position to dictate to Southern Asia and even South America.
The methods that Germany adopted to acquire her African possessions were peculiarly typical. Like the madness that plunged her into a struggle with civilization they were her own undoing. Into a continent whose middle name, so far as colonization goes, is intrigue she fitted perfectly. Practically every German colony in Africa represented the triumph of "butting in" or intimidation. The Kaiser That Was regarded himself as the mentor, and sought to recast continents in the same grand way that he lectured his minions.
The first German colony in Africa was German South-West, as it was called for short, and grew out of a deal made between a Bremen merchant and a native chief. On the strength of this Bismarck pinched out an area almost as big as British East Africa. Before twelve months had passed the German flag flew over what came to be known as German East Africa, and also over Togoland and the The Cameroons on the West Coast.
Germany really had no right to invade any of this country but she was developing into a strong military power and rather than have trouble, the other nations acquiesced. Once intrenched, she started her usual interference. The prize mischief-maker of the universe, she began to stir up trouble in every quarter. She embroiled the French at Agadir and got into a snarl with Portugal over Angola.
The Kaiser's experience with Kruger is typical. When the Jameson Raid petered out William Hohenzollern sent the dictator of the Transvaal a telegram of congratulation. The old Boer immediately regarded him as an ally and counted on his aid when the Boer War started. Instead, he got the double-cross after he had sent his ultimatum to England. At that time the Kaiser warily side-stepped an entanglement with Britain for the reason that she was too useful.
It is now evident that a large part of the Congo atrocity was a German scheme. The head and front of the exposé movement was Sir Roger Casement of London. He sought to foment a German-financed revolution in Ireland and was hanged as a traitor in the Tower.
Behind this atrocity crusade was just another evidence of the German desire to control Africa. By rousing the world against Belgium, Germany expected to bring another Berlin Congress, which would be expected to give her the stewardship of the Belgian Congo. The result would have been a German belt across Africa from the Indian to the Atlantic Oceans. She could thus have had England and France at a disadvantage on the north, and England and Portugal where she wanted them, to the south. Hence the Great War was not so much a matter of German meddling in the Balkans as it was her persistent manipulation of other nations' affairs in Africa. She was playing "freeze-out" on a stupendous scale. You can see why Germany was so much opposed to the Cape-to-Cairo Route. It interfered with her ambitions and provided a constant irritant to her "benevolent" plans.