This prevailing monopolistic character of colonial exploitation led prior to the War of 1914 to great dissatisfaction among those powers, which were least favoured colonially. In Germany liberal imperialists like Paul Arndt and Friedrich Naumann bewailed the fact that Germany was industrially handicapped because of the meagreness of her colonial possessions. "Germans," complained Prof. Arndt, "receive no railway, harbour, shipping, telegraph or similar concessions in English, Russian, French, American and Portuguese colonies. Everywhere citizens are preferred to foreigners, which is easily explicable and in fact natural...."[[14]] As colony after colony is formed, the field for the free competition of Germany with the world is narrowed, so that at last only countries like Abyssinia, Siam, China and above all the southern half of America remain independent and open. The French success in gaining and closing colonies arouses German envy. Why is France's colonial empire more than two and a half times as large as that of Germany? asks Dr. Naumann. How is France ahead of us? "We have beaten her in the field of battle, but she has recovered diplomatically. She is weaker in a military sense but in a political sense stronger."[[15]] Between envying France her colonial empire and determining at some favourable opportunity to redress the inequality is but a short step.
To discontent with the present is added fear for the future. Those nations, which are least blessed with colonies and which lack at home a broad agricultural base for the support of their industries, look anxiously towards a possible development, which will rob them not only of their markets and investment opportunities but also of their necessary raw materials. To the country ruling the colony belongs in last instance the right to decide what shall be done with its food and raw materials. Suppose that Australia, by a special arrangement with the mother country, lays a heavy duty upon all wool exported to other countries than Great Britain, and thus makes German competition in the woollen industry impossible. Suppose the cotton supply of the United States is rendered dearer by some scheme of valorisation, like that which Brazil applied to coffee exports, or by action of financial groups in America, or, given a change in the Federal Constitution, by an export duty on raw cotton. How then will Germany compete? What could Germany do if foreign nations shut her off from access to ores, foods and textiles? How could she solve the problem of a dwindling supply of iron ore? As population outstrips home production of raw materials, the dependence of industrial nations upon the countries producing such materials increases, and the fear arises that such foreign resources will be monopolised, and the excluded industrial nations forced to stop their advance and to descend in the scale of power. As this fear grows, the backward countries cease to be regarded as a common agricultural base and become merely separate national preserves. Each nation strives by means of an exclusive possession of colonies to become self-sufficing. The competition for colonies becomes a struggle for national existence.
In such a struggle for national existence, all vested rights go by the board. A nation needing outlets will pay small heed to maxims concerning peace, internationalism and the status quo; it will ask for the title deeds of the nations that own what it wants. So long as Germany, for example, felt that colonies were absolutely essential to her future prosperity, it mattered little to her that England and France had been first in the field, that they had planted and sowed in foreign fields while she was still struggling to secure national unity. "Where were you when the world was divided?" the Germans asked themselves, and they came to the belief that their own economic needs justified their colonial ambitions, wherever those ambitions might lead them. Rather than have the world shut to them they were willing to make sacrifices and incur dangers. War, they held, was better than stagnation, poverty and famine.
But for a country like Germany colonial ambitions conflicting with those of other European powers are especially dangerous, because a struggle for Africa or Asia means battles in Champagne, Westphalia or Posen. "The future of Germany's world policy," said an author who wrote under the pseudonym "Ruedorffer," "will be decided on the continent. German public opinion has not yet fully comprehended the interdependence of Germany's military peace in Europe and her freedom of action in her foreign enterprises."[[16]]
Though Bismarck understood this interrelation, he was primarily interested in the European and not in the colonial situation. "Bismarck," wrote Ruedorffer, "looked upon the consolidation of Germany's newly acquired unity as the first and principal task after the fortunate war with France. To divert the attention of France from the Rhine border, he favoured, as much as he could, French expansion in Africa and Asia. When, toward the end of his career, he attempted to secure, for a future colonial activity of Germany, a few African tracts which had not yet been claimed by any other power, he was extremely careful not to encroach upon England's interests. He avoided pushing Germany's claims beyond Southwest Africa and annexing the hinterland of the Cape Colony, a territory to-day known as Rhodesia.... Bismarck kept Germany's world policies within the limits which, according to his opinion, were prescribed by her continental policies."
As German colonial ambition grew, however, partly as a result of her fear of exclusion from colonial markets and sources of supply, she began to fear that she might raise up enemies in Europe itself. "In every enterprise," wrote Ruedorffer, "whether on African, Turkish, Persian, or Chinese soil, Germany's policy will necessarily have to take account of the presumable reaction on the European political constellation. If Germany encounters Russian interests in Turkey, in Persia, or in China, she will thereby bind Russia still more closely to immutable France; if she infringes upon England's interests in Mesopotamia, she will see England on the side of her opponents." "This reciprocal dependence of world policies and continental policies constitutes, if you please, a circulus vitiosus, the vicious circle of Germany's foreign policy. German enterprises abroad react on the continental policy, and it is under pressure from the continental policy that Germany's world policies find their limitations."
As a result Germany, with potential enemies on all sides, was constantly oppressed by the cauchemar des coalitions, the nightmare of jealous hostile alliances.
It is this dependence of colonial upon continental politics that intensifies the dangers of imperialism, increases its ruthlessness and recklessness, and causes it to become a deadly conflict, with diplomacy à la manière forte in the foreground, and in the background, war.
The danger of war as a result of imperialism is immensely increased by the disunion and disequilibrium of Europe. The continental nations are always embattled and ready to strike. It is not an accidental or transient condition but is rooted deep in geographical, historical and economic causes. Europe, since history began, has been overfilled with clashing peoples and races with variant beliefs, traditions and languages, and with opposed economic interests. To grow, to prevent others from growing, these crowded groups went to war.
It was no fault or vice of the Europeans, but merely the tragic fact that there was no firm basis for European union. After the downfall of the Western Roman Empire, no power was strong enough to dominate Europe. The dreams of universal dominion of a Charlemagne and of a Rudolf of Hapsburg remained dreams; the great, loose federations like the Holy Roman Empire were no match for the smaller but more compact nations, which grew up after the Middle Ages. These new nations, moreover, inevitably meant increased antagonism, a perpetual struggle for more territory, more trade, more gold; a despotic, militaristic, fighting society. The age of the rise of nations was also that of professional armies under the direction of a despot, and of wars for the spoliation of still unorganised peoples, like the Germans and the Italians.