For the last twenty-five years individual thinkers have proclaimed the importance of organizing German colonies to carry off this surplus population regularly, of preventing its absorption into foreign peoples, and of utilizing it for the common weal. For years their exhortations remained like the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The country was engaged in consolidating its national existence; a superficial glance revealed the fact that the more desirable spaces of the earth’s surface were filled up, and the official classes looked upon the proposal askance. Proud of the great work its industry and intelligence had already achieved, the Beamtenstand was confident of its ability to solve the newer problems by re-adjusting the relations of labor and capital, and by modifying the social organization.
The task has proved more formidable than was anticipated, and the attitude of the Socialists has disabused the bureaucracy of its confidence. In opposition even to the enticing schemes of the Iron Chancellor they show themselves determined to insist on their own inadmissible scheme of social re-construction. Nor do they manifest more favor towards the colonial panacea; some of their leaders, indeed, have denounced it in the bitterest terms, both as impracticable and as an ignis fatuus likely to lead the nation astray from the true path of salvation. On the other hand, the commercial classes are warm in its support, and German conservatism generally hopes for the effect which a Greater Germany may possibly exercise in diverting the imagination of the working classes from internal Utopias.
But the difficulties in the way of establishing transmarine agricultural colonies, and this is the central aim of German aspirations, are very great. Germany has to make up the lee-way of two centuries, to recover the start which England obtained while she was torn and exhausted by recurring war. The suitable zones of the world are apparently already occupied, and neither the acquisition of islands in the Pacific, nor placing barren coasts or fever-swamps in Africa under the Imperial ægis, will serve her purpose. Popular aspirations, indeed, point to a South African Empire, incorporating the Transvaal and Cape Colony at our expense, and influential papers do not hesitate to air these aspirations. But neither these suggestions nor the more practicable demand for a Germany in South America have yet received the imprimatur of responsible politicians.
IV.
A like necessity for making up lost lee-way dominates the simultaneous movement towards commercial extension. Germany entered the commercial arena long after England had covered the globe with the network of her shipping routes and her credit system. To reduce the advantage gained, and to bring up their own lines to a level, a subvention is to be paid out of the national revenues. An examination of the four subsidized lines originally proposed, to China, Australia, Bombay, and South Africa, shows that they were meant to compete directly with existing English routes. In the same way the projected Transmarine Bank is to contend with the ubiquitous English banking and credit organization, of which the Germans are forced to avail themselves. Indeed, the Cologne Gazette has lately computed that by the use of English carrying ships, and by the payment of bank commissions, &c., Germany contributes a tax of £25,000 a day to the wealth of this country.
Handicapped, however, as German commerce has been, it has lately made great strides over-seas, thanks to its distinguishing qualities of thrift and industry. German competition is felt severely in the Far East, and has cut down profits at Hongkong to a minimum. And though the bulk of the foreign trade of China remains with the English, the coasting trade is rapidly passing into German hands. In South America they have secured a still larger share of her trade; their agents are active in the Pacific; and, besides the new territory of Lüderitzland, more than sixty factories have recently been established along the African coast, from Sierra Leone to Ambriz, while German influence had apparently gained a temporary advantage in Zanzibar. The demand for new markets is the more urgent now in Germany because the largest of her previous markets, Russia, is being closed against her. Not content with having sheltered themselves already behind an almost prohibitive tariff, the Moscow manufacturers, alarmed at the success with which their German rivals have transferred their plant into Russian Poland, in spite of the difficulties and expense, now clamor for a Customs line to be drawn between the Polish provinces and inner Russia.
The loud demand for new markets is not, however, really so urgent, or sustained by such pressing causes, as the cry for colonial settlements. It may be doubted whether Germany’s penurious soil possesses in itself sufficient mineral and other resources ever to allow her to contend with this country as the great manufacturer of the raw products of the world.
It is rather England who must seek new outlets for her commerce, as her old markets are exhausted or shared among new competitors, while the amount of human energy she supplies, and its more than proportionate productiveness, steadily increase, owing to acquired skill and improved machinery. Germany’s first need, on the other hand, is for habitable and agricultural colonies, where her surplus population may be planted, and may not be lost to her. There is, therefore, no immediate cause of hostile rivalry; and German expansion, with its orderly and commercial instinct, may be regarded as a valuable influence in the spread of civilization.
V.
In discussing German movements, however, it is impossible, at the present time, to omit reckoning with the views of the great statesman who controls her destinies. Prince Bismarck has been variously represented as reluctantly putting himself at the head of a colonial agitation which he really deprecates, and as using it merely in order to discomfit domestic opponents, or to make foreign Governments feel his weight abroad. No doubt these last two reasons have had some effect in shaping the Chancellor’s actual policy. But Prince Bismarck appears to have needed no prompting for appreciating the necessity of colonial expansion, and to have given it his serious reflection long before the present Colonization Society met at Eisenach. In the days of the North German Confederacy, the rising Minister lent all his influence to the proposals of the firm of Godeffroys Bros. for the annexation of the Samoa group. A scheme was drawn up, dividing the land among military settlers, grants of arms were made from the Royal Arsenals, and the Hertha the first continental iron-clad which steamed through the Suez Canal, was despatched to give a vigorous support. Before the last arrangements, however, were completed, the Franco-German war intervened, with the internal consolidation and the diplomatic struggles which succeeded it.