GERMAN EXODUS

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 41, 12 November 1919, Page 7

GERMAN EXODUS

OFF 10 SOUTH AMERICA

MIGRATION BY THE MILLION

In tho period '0/ Germany's great trade expansion before tho war reslrietiqns wore thrown around emigration by tho Imperial ■ German Government. In the twenty years from 1870 to 1890 nearly 2.M0.000 Germans had left tho country to find homes elsewhere, In the following twenty years there was a sharp dron to one-fourth of the number of the preciKiing two decades. The German Government was keeping its men at home to organiso them into a great military machine to conquer the world by a concentrated assault from German soil. Now the new German Government i.s encouraging emigration;'not by the thousands, but by the millions; and in tho opinion of some well-placed, observers in Washington the plans under way at Berlin represent the old German Imperialism in another guise (says the New York "Times").. In the scheme of world dominion drawn up by the Germans bofore the war much dependence was placed on assistance from German immigrants in various parts of tho world, especially on those in North ana' South America. Elaborate efforts on the German theory that a nation could be hold intact within a nation and '.•allied to the aid of the Fatherland were made to maintain and deepen the attachment of overseas groups of Germans to the country from which they or their ancestors had emigrated.

Nation Within Nation. ■ But when the test canie, and the choice was between. the Fatherland and the ao.6m.ed country j the ties to Germany broke, in tho main. In the United States by far greater number of citizens of German birth or parentago were loyal to tho United States. In South America., with large bodies of German colonists widely distributed, there was also disappointment, though the results there did not fall so far short of expectations. It has been learned in Washington that the German General Staff had a plan to enlist soldiers in •the. la-rae German settlement in Southern Brazil to aid the German colonial forces in South-West Africa against the British. The early sweeping of the seas by the British Fleet prevented the attempt to transport recruits from Brazil to Southern Africa, but it is o'oubtful if many , of the ■ Germnn agriculturists would have left their farms at the bidding of the Fatherland. However, though the nation-within-a-nation theory did. not stand up to the test in this war, the German Imperialists, according to indications from Berlin, do not consider it disproved; instead, that the handling of it was wrong. Formerly emigrants left Germany'as individuals or in comparatively small groups, with no systematised effort to keep vital connection with them from the time they settled in the new country. Colonising in Blocks. ■ Furthermore, with not many exceptions,' the. German immigrants scattered widely in the land of their new homes, and when; after, the connection with the Fatherland had been broken for a greater or less number of years, organised propaganda was started to reawaken aud nuicken it. to use in the dream of making Germany world dominant, the primary problem was difficult. The new attempt to establish German influence and power in places outside Germany undertakes to avoid what was considered a mistake at tho beginning of the previous emigrations. The plan is to colonise the Germans in great blocks, and to have ready at the outset a machinery that will hold the settlers in vital contact with tho i'atlierland. This problem of establishing new or enlarged German centres in whatever place'in the world au opening is seen has been recognised fiince defeat stared Germany .in tho face as a leading one in l the first necessity of .rebuilding German trade. Germany's colonies are gone: 1,027.820 square miles and a native population of 12,000,000 removed from their exploitation,