The Morgenland, be it understood, is only one of the rotten stones in the arch of civilization. Mexico is another. India, China, Africa are of similar character. But the Morgenland may serve as type for our study, and we may profitably confine our analysis to the German yearnings for the Morgenland, not because they are in any way unique, but because they are typical.
There are political scientists who tell us that Germany is forced by her teeming population to seek this outlet to the East. This would imply that the impulse toward expansion is similar to that which carried the Anglo-Saxons to England and the Lombards to Italy. Let us consider whether this is really the case.
It is admitted, of course, that never before was the population within the present borders of the German Empire so great as it is today. Mere physical density of population is, however, a fact of no direct political significance. The important question is, whether the population is too dense to be comfortably maintained. Now, there is undoubtedly much privation in Germany, but it appears to be almost the unanimous verdict of economists and statisticians that the standard of welfare in Germany is constantly rising. Of this fact we have indirect evidence in our own immigration statistics. In the early eighties Germany sent us 200,000 immigrants a year; now she sends less than 40,000. Why have the numbers dwindled? Not because our free land is gone: for the Germans never were distinctively pioneers. In so far as they turned to agriculture, they settled in the older communities, and by superior thrift and industry, took the land away from the native born. This was never easier to do than today. Such of the Germans as remained in our cities occupied themselves with small business, the mechanical trades and the professions. The demand for such services is greater today than ever. The costs and hardships of oversea migration are less now than formerly. If the Germans stay at home, it must be because Germany, in spite of its great population, offers better opportunities for life and work than formerly.
It is not the land area of a nation that determines the magnitude of the population that can be supported in comfort. Rather, it is the organized intelligence of the people; and this, as every one knows, has been steadily advancing in Germany. There are, of course, ultimate limits beyond which organized intelligence can not provide for an increasing population under the handicap of restricted natural resources. Was it perhaps a recognition of this fact that led the statesmen to seek new territories for the Germans of the future?
The birth rate in Germany is declining, as in every other modern state. Conservative statisticians have estimated that, unless the tendency to decline is checked, the German population will come to a standstill within a generation. Germany has now no excess of population wherewith to plant colonies, and will probably never have such excess. Accordingly, it can have been no part of the Morgenland dream that the mongrel population of Turks and Armenians, Syrians and Arabs, was to be supplanted by German Biedermänner. It can not have been imagined that Antioch and Bagdad were to become German cities, the seats of German universities; that Gothic spires were to rise among the ruins of Palmyra, and over the redeemed wastes of Bassorah. The life of the Morgenland will pursue its dark and furtive ways, whether under German rule or the rule of any other Power of the light or of the darkness.
IV
It will be said that the standard of wellbeing of the German Empire has advanced pari passu with her foreign trade, and that trade needs a secure market. Hence the requirement of a rich colonial domain, from which the German trader can not be excluded by hostile customs laws. Perhaps we have here an adequate justification for Germany’s Morning Land aspirations. Germany is an industrial nation; so also are England and the United States and France, and Russia will soon become one. Now, is it not inevitable that the trade of the industrial nations shall be directed toward the non-industrial? That is, towards the tropics and the subtropical belts? The argument is trite, but it looks reasonable enough to deserve consideration.
Germany is indeed an industrial nation, and so are we. But the German industries are not the same as ours, nor can they ever be the same, so long as the German genius and natural environment continue to differ from ours. So long as difference exists, some German goods will command our markets, whether we pursue protectionist policies or not. Germany need not write our laws for us in order to control our markets; she has an indefeasible title to those markets so long as she maintains superiority in supplying our needs. And the same thing is true of the markets of England and France and Russia. They take German goods eagerly, in vast quantities. Wipe out Germany’s trade with industrial states, and her commerce is practically at an end.
The trade between nations of rich and varied industries is alone capable of indefinite expansion. Yet the delusion persists that a nation’s closed trade with a subject state is somehow of superior importance. Such trade is admittedly incapable of great development. Only semi-barbarous peoples will submit to foreign control of their trade; and such peoples produce little beyond the requirements of home consumption, and therefore, having hardly anything to sell, can buy but little. But colonial trade, meagre as it is, may be monopolized and made to yield large profits. The trade between industrial nations, since it is essentially competitive, diffuses its benefits throughout the trading nations. Hence these benefits are easily overlooked. The rapid enrichment of a few houses engaged in the colonial trade gives visible evidence of national gain.