GERMAN COLONIAL DREAMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1772, 5 January 1918, Page 2

GERMAN COLONIAL DREAMS.

GERMAN writers on the subject of the new colonial empire which Germany proposes for herself when she has won the war, are not modest. But they are far-sighted, and they make it perfectly plain that they are expecting another Avar soon after this. They assume that they will start this next war in possession of a German African empire, which will consist at least of the old German colonies, excepting perhaps South-West Africa, the whole of the Belgian Congo, the whole of French Equatorial Africa, and Angola. It will contain not only an adequate garrison with adequate supplies, but local munition factories. Germany will have naval bases at Dar-es-Sa-laam, the mouth of the Cameroon -esfuary, the mouth of the Congo, on the coast of Angola, and on the coast of South-west Africa. “The whole coast of West Africa, from the mouth of the Cross River to the mouth of the Orange River,’’ says a writer in Deutsche Politik, “would be in German possession. When one only remembers what immense achievements were performed by the Emden in the Indian Ocean and by the Karlsruhe in the Atlantic, without any naval base, without any possibility of replenishing' in port their supplies of munitions and food, it will be realised what the fortilication of half the West Coast of Africa would signify for Germany and for England! As soon as, in a new war, the Suez Canal is closed against England by the Turks, all traffic' between England and South Africa must go round the Cape of Good Hope. But then all the shipping must pass (he coast of German Central Africa! It would be impossible for England any longer to concentrate her whole ileet in the North Sea and to menace Germany. She would be compelled to station a considerable fleet in South Africa for the protection of her trade, and that would mean' a not inconsiderable weakening of her forces in European waters.”