needs against France's ambition to make a block of N.W. Africa under her sovereignty.'

The sagacity and the patriotism of the leaders of one of the proudest countries in Europe are a sufficient guarantee of the failure that awaits these Teutonic ambitions, however much money Germany may spend in trying to buy Spanish opinion by means of a press propaganda. On the other hand, at no point do the ambitions of the Entente Powers conflict with the interests of Spain.

England, France, and Italy already have all the naval bases and ports they desire in the Mediterranean, on the Atlantic, and in Northern Africa; the paths of commerce and colonisation are open to them, as they are open to Spain. But while the Allies have no motive for attacking the independence of Spain, and obviously meditate no such attack, they have a very strong motive for preserving Spain from the attack now being covertly prepared by Germany, and it is their clear interest to assist patriotic Spaniards in combating the insidious press propaganda which Germany is carrying on.

LUIS A. BOLIN.

GERMANY AND AFRICA

I. The New Map of Africa. By HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS. New York: The Century Company. 1917.

2. Africa and the Peace of Europe. By E. D. MOREL. National Labour Press. 1917.

3. The Basis of Ascendancy. By EDGAR GARDNER MURPHY. Longmans, Green. 1909.

THE

HE most famous contributor to this Review, in a passage which has been quoted many times, but perhaps never more appropriately than to-day, said that in order that a former King of Prussia might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel, red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America, and a whole world sprang to arms. Were Macaulay alive to-day, he would have to confess that the area of the war caused by Frederick's successor is yet more vast, its effects almost incomparably more far-reaching. Never before have so many men come from so many countries to play their part in armed conflict on the soil of Europe. They have come from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India, from British South Africa and French North Africa, from the British West Indies and the French East Indies, from the remotest districts of Asiatic Russia; more still are coming from the United States of America. Nor is it merely the accident of allegiance that brings so many men from such distant homes to risk their lives on the battlefields of Europe. For at the back of this great struggle in Europe lies the desire of the German people to dominate not Europe only but the whole world.

We are all of us by this time sufficiently familiar with the immediate ambitions of the pan-German authors of the waran expansion westwards through Belgium and Holland and Northern France to the English Channel, an expansion southeastwards through the Balkans and Asiatic Turkey to the Persian Gulf. But this is only part of the pan-German project. The African ambitions of Germany are from the territorial

point of view even more extensive than her immediate designs in Asia and Northern Europe, and occupy almost as important a place in the policy of the German Government. To realise the truth of this latter statement it is only necessary to recall the intrigues between the German Government and President Kruger, the narrow avoidance of war between Germany and France over the question of Morocco, and, finally, the cynical proposal made by the German Chancellor to the British Ambassador in Berlin in the critical days of July 1914, that England should look on placidly while Germany annexed the French Colonies in Africa.

The Mittelafrica movement in Germany had, in fact, reached national dimensions even before the Mitteleuropa movement took definite shape. It has had devoted to it an enormous literature, in which two pivotal points recur again and again. One is that African Colonies are stores of raw material for the industries of the Fatherland; the other, that such colonies are the necessary bases of German world-policy.' Considered from this latter standpoint German Colonies in Africa were to play a vital part in destroying the strategic unity of the British Empire, and to complete the 'freedom of the 'seas' as construed in Germany. This view is still immensely popular in Germany. A typical exponent of it is Herr Kolbe, who, writing in a recent number of 'Deutsche Politik,' anticipates the time when

'the whole coast of West Africa, from the mouth of the Cross River to the mouth of the Orange, will be in German hands. Let one recall what deeds were done by the "Emden" in the Indian Ocean and by the "Karlsruhe" in the Atlantic, without any naval base, without possibility of replenishing in port their supplies of munitions and food, and it will be realised what the fortification of half the West Coast of Africa would mean for Germany and for England.'

Herr Zimmermann, an influential writer on colonial questions and himself an ex-Colonial official, is equally frank:

'German Africa will make us a world-power. It will enable us to exert decisive influence upon the world-political decisions of our enemies and of other nations; and to exercise pressure on all developments of policy in Africa, Asia Minor, and Southern Europe.'

Not all writers with official experience are so forgetful of the unwisdom of spreading the net in the sight of the bird.

Yet even Dr. Solf, Secretary of State to the Colonial Office, writing in a publication intended to stimulate interest in colonial policy, plainly indicates that one of Germany's war aims must in his opinion be the linking-up of her scattered possessions in Africa:

'The history of our Colonies in the world-war has shown that the German Colonial Empire . . . was no proper "empire" at all, but just a number of possessions without geographical and political connection or established communications. . . . This shows the direction our aims must take.'

Dr. Solf's ambitions for the formation of a great German colonial Empire in Central Africa were expressed early in June in a speech to the German Colonial Association. Commenting upon that speech the Vossische Zeitung' wrote as follows:-'We want a solid colonial empire in Central Africa, 'to include the Cameroons, the Congo, Portuguese West 'Africa, German South-West and East Africa, and portions ' of Portuguese East Africa and Rhodesia. These territories comprise what we need. They can form a solid colonial 'empire, which will satisfy our wishes.'

It would be easy to multiply by dozens, indeed hundreds, extracts in this sense. The purport of all is the same. They cannot be said to be the vague threatenings of people smarting under a sense of defeat, for they were written when their authors believed, as they no doubt still believe, in a German victory.

Enough has been said to show that Africa has been and is one of the most important stakes in the great European War; it has also been itself a battlefield on the widest scale. Although Togoland was conquered from the Germans with but little fighting in the opening days of the war, many long months of strenuous fighting were needed before the Germans were ousted from the Cameroons and from South-West Africa; they have not yet, after nearly three years of war, been completely expelled from East Africa.

Even more significant from the point of view of Germany's African and world ambitions has been the fighting on the western and eastern frontiers of Egypt. If Germany, with the aid of the Turks and the Senussi, could have effected the conquest of Egypt, she would have been a long way on the road to that world dominion at which she aims. Her control

of the Suez Canal would have cut the main route between England and India; it would have rendered possible the extension of German rail-power into Africa to counterbalance British sea-power. A victorious Germany, ending the war in control of the Balkans, in control of Asiatic Turkey, and in possession of Egypt, would have been able to reverse Cecil Rhodes's conception of a Cape to Cairo railway, and to create an African branch of the Berlin-Bagdad railway, over which German troops could be dispatched from Cairo to the Cape.

These considerations are sufficient to show that the fate of Germany's African possessions involves issues of more than local importance. But before dealing with this crucial question, it is worth while to call attention to some phases of the African problem, or rather series of problems, that the war has revealed. One of the most gratifying outstanding facts, so far as concerns the native races of Africa, is the loyalty they have shown in British, French, and even in Belgian colonies, to their European overlords. Nor has that loyalty been merely passive. Figures upon this point are not available (indeed they have changed with every week of the war), nor would it in any case be proper to give them; but it is known, and indeed obvious to all, that Africans have given aid to the Allies to an extent which a few years ago it would have been deemed impossible to obtain and dangerous to accept. This aid has not been less real and valuable because only to an extent relatively slight has it taken the shape of fighting in the lines. It must be added that the Germans have utilised to apparently an even greater relative extent the fighting and carrying power of the African natives under their control. This fact has conjured up in some minds a picture of hordes of black troops trained and equipped in tropical Africa, marching hither and thither, and threatening the future not only of Africa but of the world. Some Europeans even go so far as to object altogether to the employment of native levies. It would be as reasonable to argue that natives of India should not be employed in the Indian army. Whatever may be the case in South Africa, where there is a large European population, over the greater part of the rest of Africa it is quite impossible to provide sufficient European troops even for the maintenance of internal order, apart altogether from the question of external defence. Nor would it be permanently possible to treat