Part 16

1891-1899

A great English poet sings of the "spacious days" of Queen Elizabeth. From the German standpoint the decade from the fall of Bismarck to the end of the century may not inaptly be described as the spacious days of William II and the modern German Empire. To the Englishman the actual territorial acquisitions of Germany during the period must seem comparatively insignificant, but, taken in connection with the Emperor's speeches, the building of the German navy, the Caprivi commercial treaties, the growth of friendly relations and of trade and intercourse with America, North and South, they mean the opening of a new era in the history of the Empire--the era of Weltpolitik.

Heligoland was obtained in exchange for Zanzibar in 1890, and is now regarded by Germans much as Gibraltar or Malta is regarded by Englishmen. The first Kiel regatta, due solely to the initiative of the Emperor, and starting the development of sport in all fields which is a feature of modern German progress, ethical and physical, was held in 1894. The Caprivi commercial treaties were concluded within the period. The Kiel Canal, connecting the Baltic and North Sea, and giving the German fleet access to all the open waters of the earth, was opened in 1895. In 1896 the Kruger telegram testified to imperial interest in South African developments. The Hamburg-Amerika Line now sent a specially fast mail and passenger steamer across the Atlantic. The district of Kiautschau was leased from China in 1898, securing Germany a foothold and naval base in the Far East. In the same year the modern Oriental policy of the Empire was inaugurated by the Emperor's visit to Palestine and his declaration in the course of it that he would be the friend of Turkey and of the three hundred millions of Mohammedans who recognized the Sultan as their spiritual head. To this year also belongs the measure, the most important in its consequences and significance of the reign hitherto, the passing of the First Navy Law. Finally, in 1899 Germany acquired the Caroline Islands by purchase from Spain, and certain Samoan Islands by agreement with England and America.

Nothing was more natural as a result of the new world-policy than a change in the mental outlook of the people. It inaugurated in Germany an era somewhat analogous to the era inaugurated in England by the widening and brightening of the Englishman's horizon under Elizabeth. The analogy may not be closely maintainable throughout, but, generally speaking, just as the eyes of Englishmen suddenly saw the possibilities of expansion disclosed to them by Drake, Raleigh, and Frobisher, so the Emperor's appeals, with the pursuance of German colonial policy and the attempt to develop Germany's African possessions, led to an awakening in Germany of a similar, if weaker, kind. To this awakening the building of the German navy contributed; and though it did not appeal to the German imagination as did the deeds of the old navigators to that of Elizabethan Englishmen, it widened the national outlook and fired the people with new imperial ambitions. Hitherto, moreover, Germany's attention had been confined almost solely to trade within continental boundaries: henceforth she was to do business actively and enterprisingly with all parts of the world.

The Emperor's thoughts on the subject were expressed in January, 1896, at a banquet in the Berlin palace given to a miscellaneous company of leading personalities of the time. The occasion was the celebration of the twenty-fifth year of the modern Empire's foundation. He said:

"The German Empire becomes a world-empire. Everywhere in the farthest parts of the earth live thousands of our fellow-countrymen. German subjects, German knowledge, German industry cross the ocean. The value of German goods on the seas amounts to thousands of millions of marks. On you, gentlemen, devolves the serious duty of helping me to knit firmly this greater German Empire to the Empire at home."

The expression "greater German Empire" immediately reminded the Englishman of his own "Greater Britain," and he concluded that the Emperor was secretly thinking of rivalling him in the extent and value of his colonial possessions. Possibly he was, and doubtless he ardently desired to see Germany owning large and fertile colonies; but it is quite as probable he was thinking of his economic Weltpolitik, and knew as well then as he does now that it must be left to time and the hour to show whether they fall to her or not.

In the same order of ideas may be placed, though it is anticipating somewhat, the Emperor's utterances at Aix in 1902 and three years later at Bremen. At Aix, after describing the failure of Charlemagne's successors to reconcile the duties of a Holy Roman Emperor with those of a German King, he continued:

"Now another Empire has arisen. The German people has once more an Emperor of its own choice, with the sword on the field of battle has the crown been won, and the imperial flag flutters high in the breeze. But the tasks of the new Empire are different: confined within its borders it has to steel itself anew for the work it has to do, and which it could not achieve in the Middle Ages. We have to live so that the Empire, still young, becomes from year to year stronger in itself, while confidence in it strengthens on all sides. The powerful German army guarantees the peace of Europe. In accord with the German character we confine ourselves externally in order to be unconfined internally. Far stretches our speech over the ocean, far the flight of our science and exploration; no work in the domain of new discovery, no scientific idea but is first tested by us and then adopted by other nations. This is the world-rule the German spirit strives for."

At Bremen he said:

"The world-empire I dream of is a new German Empire which shall enjoy on all hands the most absolute confidence as a quiet, peaceable, honest neighbour--not founded by conquest with the sword, but on the mutual confidence of nations aiming at the same end."

The Emperor's world-policy was referred to more than once about this time by Chancellor Prince Bülow in the Reichstag. "It is," he said on one occasion, "Germany's intention and duty to protect the great and ever-growing oversea interests which she has acquired through the development of conditions." "We recognize," he continued,

"that we have no longer interests only round our own fireside or in the neighbourhood of the church clock, but everywhere where German industry and Germany's commercial spirit have penetrated; and we must foster these interests within the bounds of possibility and good sense."

"Our world-policy," he said on another occasion in the same place,

"is not a policy of interference, much less a policy of intervention: had it interfered in South Africa (he was alluding to the Boer War) it must have intervened, and intervention implies the use of force."

On yet another occasion he explained that a prudent world-policy must go hand in hand with a sound protective policy for home industry, and that its basis must be a strong national home policy.

There is nothing in all this, even supposing Germany's interests at that time were purposely exaggerated, to which the foreigner could reasonably object. The foreigner felt perhaps slightly uncomfortable when the same statesman, departing for a moment from his usual objective standpoint, spoke of the German "traversing the world with a sword in one hand and a spade and trowel in the other"; but otherwise no act of Germany's world-policy need have inspired alarm, or need inspire alarm at the present time, in sensible foreign minds. The rapidity of its action probably helped to excite a feeling that it could not be altogether honest or above-board; but it should be remembered that the new Empire had much leeway to make up in the race with other nations, and that quick development was rendered necessary by her commercial treaties, by her protective system, by the unexpected growth of industry and trade, by the continuous increase of population, the development of the mercantile marine, and the growing consciousness of national strength.

And if there is nothing in Germany's development of her world-policy to which the foreigner can reasonably object, there is much in it at which he can reasonably rejoice. Competition is good for him, for it puts him on his mettle. A large and prosperous German population extends his markets and means more business and more profit. The minds of both Germans and the foreigner become broader, more mutually sympathetic and appreciative. The elder Pitt warned his fellow-countrymen against letting France become a maritime, a commercial, or a colonial power. She has become all three, and what injury has occurred therefrom to England or any other nation?

Germany's colonial development dates from about the year 1884, the period of the "scramble for Africa." The first step to acquiring German colonies for the Empire was taken in 1883, when a merchant of Bremen, Edouard Luderitz, made an agreement with the Hottentots by which the bay of Angra Pequena in South-West Africa, with an area of fifty thousand square kilometres, was ceded to him. Luderitz applied to Bismarck for imperial protection. Bismarck inquired of England whether she claimed rights of sovereignty over the bay. Lord Granville replied in the negative, but added that he did not consider the seizure of possession by another Power allowable. Indignant at what he called a "monstrous claim" on all the land in the world which was without a master, Bismarck telegraphed to the German Consul at the Cape to "declare officially to the British Government that Herr Luderitz and his acquisitions are under the protection of the Empire."

The Bremen pioneer was fated to gain no advantage from his enterprise, as he was drowned in the Orange River in 1886. His example as a colonist, however, was followed by three Hanseatic merchants, Woermann, Jansen, and Thormealen, of Hamburg, who acquired land in Togo, a small kingdom to the east of the British Gold Coast, and in the Cameroons, a large tract in the bend of the Gulf of Guinea, extending to Lake Chad, and applied for German imperial protection. Bismarck sent Consul-General Nachtigall with the gunboat Moewe in 1884 to hoist the German flag at various ports. Five days after this had been done the English gunboat Flirt arrived, but was thus too late to obtain Togoland and the Cameroons for England.

Dr. Carl Peters, the German Cecil Rhodes, now arrived at Zanzibar, and on obtaining concessions from the Sultan founded the German East Africa Company, with a charter from his Government. German hopes of great colonial expansion began to run high, but they were dashed by the Anglo-German agreement of June, 1890, delimiting the spheres of England, Germany, and the Sultan of Zanzibar, and stipulating that Germany should receive Heligoland from England in return for German recognition of English suzerainty in Zanzibar and the possession of Uganda, which had recently been taken for Germany by Dr. Peters. At that time Germans thought very little of Heligoland, but there was then no Anglo-German tension, and no apprehension of an English descent on the German coast.

The lease for ninety-nine years of Kiautschau, a small area of about four hundred square miles on the coast of China, was obtained from the Chinese in connexion with the murder of two German missionaries in 1897 in the Shantung Province, of which Kiautschau forms a part. Herr von Bülow, then only Foreign Secretary, referred to the transaction in the Reichstag in words that may be quoted, as they describe German foreign policy in the Far East. "Our cruiser fleet," he said,

"was sent to Kiautschau Bay to exact reparation for the murder of German Catholic missionaries on the one hand, and to obtain greater security for the future against a repetition of such occurrences. The Government,"

he continued,

"has nothing but benevolent and friendly designs regarding China, and has no wish either to offend or provoke her. We are ready in East Asia to recognize the interests of other Great Powers in the certain confidence that our own interests will be duly respected by them. In one word--we desire to put no one in the shade, but we too demand our place in the sun. In East Asia, as in the West Indies, we shall endeavour, in accordance with the traditions of German policy, without unnecessary rigour, but also without weakness, to guard our rights and our interests."

In mentioning the West Indies the Foreign Secretary was alluding to a quarrel Germany had at this time with the negro republic of Haiti, owing to the arrest and imprisonment of a German subject in that island. Kiautschau is administratively under the German Admiralty.

The Caroline, Marianne, and Palau Islands, including the Marschall Islands and the islands of the Bismarck archipelago, were bought from Spain this year for twenty-five million pesetas, or about one million sterling. The islands are valuable in German eyes, not only for their fertility and capacity for plantation development, but as affording good harbourage and coaling stations on the sea-road to China, Japan, and Central America. By the agreement with England and America, which in this year also put an end to the thorny question of Samoan administration, Germany acquired the Samoan islands of Upolu and Sawaii in the South Sea.

The ten years we are now concerned with were perhaps the most strenuous and picturesque of the Emperor's life hitherto. He was now his own Chancellor, though that post was nominally occupied by General von Caprivi and Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe successively. He was Chancellor, too, knowing that not a hundred miles off the old pilot of the ship of State was watching, keenly and not too benevolently, his every act and word. He was conscious that the eyes of the world were fixed on him, and that every other Government was waiting with interest and curiosity to learn what sort of rival in statecraft and diplomacy it would henceforward have to reckon with. Naturally many plans coursed through his restlessly active brain, but there were always, one may imagine, two compelling and ever-present thoughts at the back of them. One of these was a determination to promote the moral and material prosperity of his people so as to make them a model and thoroughly modern commonwealth; the other, the resolve that as Emperor he would not allow Germany to be overlooked, to be treated as a quantité négligeable, in the discussion or decision of international affairs.