Tropical Africa a great problem in world politics.
Three routes are possible, one wholly Belgian, one partly British and partly Belgian, and one wholly British. That is on the assumption that German East Africa remains British after this war. The Belgian project is to construct the railway from the Congo bend at Stanleyville over the gold-fields at Kilo to Mahagi on Lake Albert. The British project would be to construct a line from the south of Elizabethville to Bismarckburg, at the south of Lake Tanganyika, to proceed thence by steamer to Ujiji, thence by the existing railway to Tabora, to construct a line from Tabora to Mwanza on Lake Victoria Nyanza, and a line from Entebbe on that lake to Butiabwa, on Lake Albert. The third or mixed Belgian-British line would proceed by way of Butiabwa, Entebbe, Mwanza, Tabora, and Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, but from there would make use of the existing line to Kabalo on the Congo. It is probable that by one or other of these three routes through communication from South Africa to the Mediterranean may be established within the next ten years. With this vital industrial aspect of tropical Africa there is wrapped up the equally important political aspect, and these two problems are certain to make of tropical Africa one of the great problems of future world politics.
Germans have no colonists to spare.
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.