GERMANY & AFRICA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 136, 6 December 1938, Page 12

GERMANY & AFRICA

OLD AIMS RECALLED

ANXIETY FOR TERRITORY

PACTS WITH BRITAIN

Before the British public opinion crystallises on the German demand for the return of the African colonies which Germany lost in the war, proper consideration should be given to the historical background, writes J. B. | Firth in the "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post.'' J There is a disposition in some quarters to say: 'Let us give the Germans back their colonies and have done with ' it!" But should we have done' with it? There is no need to go further back than 1898, at which date, it is important to remember, this country w-as on very strained terms with France owing to the Fashoda incident. Germany seized the opportunity to demand a colonial price for her neutrality. What would we give her, she asked, in Africa? * Count Hatzfeldt, the German Ambassador to London, laid before Lord Salisbury proposals for an Anglo-Ger-man Agreement relating to the future of Portugal's chief African possessions, Angola on the west and Mozambique on the east. Portugal was then in a-very bad way financially, and her overseas colonies were sadly neglected. As she could not develop them without men and money, the Germans proposed that Germany and Great Britain should agree on their division into separate spheres of interest. The idea, of course, was that if Portugal could not meet her obligations on the loans, Germany and Great Britain should foreclose. It was also an essential part of" the bargain that all other Powers should be excluded, first, from sharing in the financial enterprise, and, secondly, from the prospective acquisition of territory. GERMANY'S PROPOSALS. Hatzfeldt began by, asking for Germany: • • (1) The whole of Angola from the Congo down to the German SouthWest border, and across to the Belgian Congo and the frontiers of Rhodesia. (2) The whole of Mozambique from the Zambesi up to German East Africa, including the Shire in British Nyasaland, and even Blantyre, its capital. In return he offered not to oppose | the British claim, if Portugal collapsed, to Delagoa Bay and Lourenco Marq—to Ues which Britain already held a pre-emptive right from Portugal. Lord. Salisbury thoroughly disliked the whole business, which, as he truly said, "looked like cutting up Portugal alive," especially as Portugal was our oldest ally and we were pledged to defend her and her colonies from attack. British policy, he contended, should be to maintain the status quo in respect of Portuguese possessions and j prolonging the life of Portugal, and the proposed transaction was bound to wear a sinister appearance, however camouflaged by the precedent loan. After protracted negotiations a treaty was concluded. Angola and Mozambique were divided up into British and German spheres cf interest, Germany getting the lion's share of, a bargain, which was finally struck by Mr." Balfour during Lord Salisbury's absence from the Foreign Office owing to ill-health. It was, however, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's influence which really prevailed in the Cabinet, his main concern being to buy off German interference with Delagoa Bay, in view of the trouble brewing with the Transvaal. A STRONGER POSITION. On his return to duty Lord Salisbury declared that he personally would never have signed the Convention. However, by then the Portuguese had taken alarm, and as they broke off their inquiries for a loan, the Treaty of 1898 never became operative. For all that, it put the Germans in a much stronger bargaining position when they next raised the question in 1912. Sir Edward Grey was then at the Foreign Office and Mr. Harcourt at the Colonial Office. The latter was a strong Germanophile; Grey was disposed to be very generous in order to come 'to terms with Germany. Indeed, he had assured Metternich that: "If the Belgian Congo was for sale it would be no object of ours, as some supposed, to prevent Germany from extending across Africa from East to West. Negotiations dragged on till the autumn of 1913, when a draft convention was ready for signature. This was far more favourable to Germany than the Convention of 1898, for Great Britain admitted the German preemptive claim to the whole seaboard of Angola, from the mouth of the Congo down to German South-West Africa, while the British share dwindled to an internal zone contiguous to the western border pf Rhodesia, instead of a central belt extending eastwards to Rhodesia from the sea. THE FRENCH PERTURBED. Some compensation, indeed, was given in Portuguese East Africa, where the British reversion was extended northwards from the Zambesi up to Quelimane and Lake Shirwa. Whatever the equities of the division as between Great Britain and Germany, the arrangement whereby Britain recognised the German claim to the northern part of Angola, and especially to the small Portuguese territory of Cabinda. on the left bank of the Congo, at its mouth, greatly disturbed the j French. They complained with much justice that in negotiating with Germany we had ignored their paramount interests in the Congo and had shown no regard for our obligations under the Entente. Moreover, in disinterssting ourselves in the future of the Portuguese islands of San Thome and Principe, which lie j in the Gulf of Guinea opposite the French territory of Gaboon, we placed them in the awkward position of having to challenge the German claim alone. All that the Germans had renounced was their claim to the Portuguese half of the Island of Timor, to j which Holland already enjoyed a pre- j emptive claim. This draft treaty of 1912-13, however, was never ratified because, while Grey insisted that its contents should be published, the Germans were just as resolved that it should be kept secret. The reason they assigned was that Germany had got so little from the bargain that the terms would create a bad impression in their country. j GERMANY'S BEHAVIOUR. jOn the other hand, British diplo- | macy had suffered so severely from the secrecy attending the treaty of 1898 and the subsequent so-called Treaty of Windsor that Grey v/as determined this should not happen again. It is also clear from the official papers, only published a few months ago, that he was heartily relieved to be rid of the subject. jln these documents' Sir F. Bertie, then British Ambassador at Paris, tells a story of the Kaiser asking Baron Stumm, a German ex-Ambassador, who quitted diplomacy for big business, whether, as a much-travelled man, he could account for the general want of

j sympathy shown by other nations loI wards Germany.

Stumm was reported to have told the Emperor that the German was like a certain traveller who arrived very late for a train. He had a first-class ticket, opened the door of a compartment which was full, insisted on nis right to a seat, forced his way in. notwithstanding the protests of the passengers, trod on their toes, talked very loud, and blew bad tobacco smoke into their faces.

That was not an unfair description of German behaviour during the Colonial discussions of 1893 and 1912, and Sir Francis Bertie expressed his own opinion with great candour to Sir Edward Grey "I do aot believe," ne> said, ''that we should conciliate Germany by facilitating her acquisition of territory not her property. She would attribute our good offices to fear of her and to a desire to keep her away from our own possessions." Very characteristically, when Harcourt .suggested the inclusion of San Thome and Principe in the Treaty of 1913 as a set-off to Timor, Metternich at once began tp throw out' hints as to the Cape Verde islands. But this was too much even for Mr. Harcourt, who suddenly remembered that the Cape Verde islands are not so far distant from French Senegal.

BOTHA NAVAL BASE

While the discussion was in progress reference was also made to certain other places in Africa as possible subjects of exchange. The Germans, for example, expressed a desire to acquire the Seal and Penguin islands which lie off the mainland of South-West Africa —"barren rocks" they slightingly called them. But when General Botha was sounded on the subject he took immediate alarm:

"General Botha has no hesitation in saying that it would be quite impossible for any Government of the Union to assent to such a proposal without causing the greatest dissatisfaction in this country. From the stragetical point of view ,Luderitz Bucht is a splendid harbour which could shelter the whole of the German fleet and be made absolutely safe from attack if Germany could fortify those islands. Such a strong naval base in the vicinity of the Union would be a source of immense danger to the Union." Mr. Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was invited to give the Admiralty view of the proposed concession to Germany of the whole coastline of Angola, and of the port of Loanda in particular. "With Loanda in German hands,'\he said, "an annual British trade of £100,000,000 sterling would be flanked as Vo 2500 miles of its length by a coastline distant only 400 to 500 miles and occupied by a great naval Power." When Germany lost her African possessions all these questions dropped out of sight. Since ihcn it has been no one's business to raise the problem of Portugal's colonial possessions. Portugal herself has risen in status and in prestige, and even-at the worst of times, Portuguese pride would not listen to any suggestion of parting with the relics of her great colonising days.

But if Germany got back her old colonies, how long would it be before, on one pretext or another, she would begin again to press for the repartition of large slices of the African continent? No secret was made during the war of Germany's ultimate aim—the establishment of a broad colonial empire running across Africa from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with strong naval bases on both oceans, astride two of the principal trade routes of the world.