New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-10-07

/ Nor had German colonial rule, desplte
| the construction of some railroads and
few model towns. been the success that the
German had expected. The inability OF
! the German to deal with subject race
had produced one of the bloodiest of all
wars between the white and the black in
Africa. In German Southwest the strug-
/ gle with the Herrera had ended only with
/ the practical determination Of the native,
and the colony had been left without labor
when the terrible contest was over.
Yet it is just to say that before the out
freak of the war there had been a growing
appreciation in Germany that tho African
adventure had been badly conducted, and
that unless new methods were employed
there could be no German success compa-
rable with that of France with Its millions
of blacks in West Africa, or with that of
Britain all over the world. Tales of atroc-
tiles in their colonies had stirred the slug
gish German pulse, and men of the COM
mercial rather than the military class were
beginning to appear in colonial Offices.
Nations Alarmed
In the making of the colonial empire in
Africa Germany had already reused the
fear of the Belgians, who saw their terri
tory between the Atlantic and Lake Tan
ganyika the object of German design.
Was it not Bernhard who had suggested,
long before the war, that merely by TAX
ing the Congo Free State Belgium had
forfeited her right to have her territory
in Europe respected? Portugal had taken
alarm when the Germans had prevailed
upon the British to agree to partition of
Portuguese colonies when Portugal con-
sented to sell them. Yet as the Germans
later charged, Portuguese anxieties were
stilled by renewal of British promise to
defend these colonies until Portugal
wished to part with them.
France, after the Agadir affair, had
seen her Congo territory mutilated. Across
that stretch of French territory which had
hitherto extended without interruption
from Algiers to the mouth Of the Congo
I. the Germans had thrust two coils, and
French Congo seemed on the map and to
the French mind already enveloped in the
folds of the German boa constructor and
doomed to ultimate disappearance. AL
ready the Congo was for the French a
second Quebec
As for Britain, until the outbreak Of
the war she regarded the German efforts
in Africa with something between disdain
and benevolence. Even a German colony
extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific
and including the Belgian and French
Congos did not stir the Britons pulse, nor
: did the covert German menace to South
Africa for single moment revealed 10
the whole world when the Kaiser sent his
historic message to President Kruger, dis
turb the equanimity of a Liberal Minis
try little concerned with imperial smbi-
tions and convinced that Britain had al
ready reached the point of saturation
so far as overseas annexations were con-
cerned. In Central Africa, as in Asia
Minor the British government and public
of 1914 were reconciled to German de-
velopment, provided it did not threaten
the safety Of France or precipitate any
European conflict.
And it was this German dream of Afri-
can empire, of German Congo become
almost as real as the German Rhine of a
German Tanganyika, of trans-Afrcan
empire, which was extinguished for the
period of the war in the first months Of
the conflict and at the very hour when
German victories in Europe filled the bull
ietins of the world. Thus the Hohenzol-
Terms in their turn Jared as had the House
of Bourbon when at last sea power was
aroused.
The conquest of German Africa is inter-
esting, in the larger view, solely because Of
the South African episode. Hardly a
decade had passed since British armies
had at last extinguished Boer resistance
in the two Afrikander republics. Only
eight years had elapsed since home rule
had been granted to the conquered Beers
and the Union of South Africa had be-
come fact. In all German calculations
there had been the expectation that to
German appeal South Africa-Boer South
Africa-would rise again and the out
break of the European War would be the
signal for the end Of British rule south Of
the equator.
! That this did not happen was due to
the genius of the British race in dealing
with its colonies. South Africa had been
swiftly reconciled after having been raw
aged by long, bitter war. Forty-four
years after French defeat, forty-three
years after the Treaty Of Frankfort the
mass of the people of Alsace continued to
resent German rule and remained loyal to
France. But in less than a fifth of this
time the conquered Beers had been recon-
ciled to the new condition