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lines of communication and supply at the rear. The result was that it had to fall back to Kut-el-Amara, where it was besieged for several months and at last was compelled by starvation to surrender, on April 28, 1916. The valor of the troops so impressed the Turks that they treated the prisoners with all possible consideration and courtesy, thus presenting a grateful contrast to the conduct of Germans toward those who were so luckless as to fall into their hands.

The second British expedition up the Tigris and Euphrates valley was better planned and was more successful; having also the advantage of the co-operation of the Russians at the north. It captured Kut-el-Amara on February 26, 1917, and on March 11th occupied Bagdad, eighty miles further on. A junction was then effected with the Russian forces moving down from Erzeroum. These operations, in conjunction with the British occupation of Southern Palestine, threatened to confine the Turkish sway in Asia to Asia Minor west of the Anti-Taurus Mountains.

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CHAPTER XI

COLONIAL CONQUESTS

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Origin and Extent of Germany's Colonial Empire - Her Ambition to Rival Great Britain Dreams of a German South Africa - Loss of Sea Power Fatal to Her Outlying Possessions Japan's Seizure of Kiao Chao - Australia and the German Islands Other Groups in the Pacific Togoland and the Kamerun Territory The Boer-British Conquest of German South Africa "the Most Unkindest Cut of All" - German East Africa the Last to Fall.

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THE GERMAN Colonial Empire vanished. one of the first definite results of the war, and one of the most significant. The development of a world-wide colonial empire, rivaling that of Great Britain, had long been the dream and the ambition of the Kaiser and his lieutenants. The colonial policy had been devised and founded by Bismarck himself, just thirty years before this war undid it all, and it had been consistently and earnestly promoted by all his successors. At the outbreak of the war the German Colonial Empire existed in Africa, in Asia, in the Indies, and in Polynesia. It had a total land area nearly five times as great as that of Germany itself, and a population one-fifth as great. Most of the German colonies were in Africa, and it was the dream of Germany to dominate that continent, north, central and south. Togoland and the Kamerun territory were among her earliest possessions, and she planned to extend the latter so as to include most if not all of the Congo State. It was thus a part of her scheme in attacking Belgium at the beginning of this war to acquire, through the conquest of that little kingdom, the Congo State which belonged to it. The following were

the various German possessions as enumerated in "The Statesman's Year Book," all of them being Crown Colonies, under the absolute rule of imperial governors:

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1 Exclusive of the Bay with an area of about 200 square miles, and the neutral zone with an area of about 2,500 square miles, and population of 1,200,000.

AFRICAN AMBITIONS

In North Africa she began intriguing for control of Morocco years ago, coveting its strategical position, com

manding one shore of the strait between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Her intrigues there led to the serious controversy with France which brought those countries near the verge of war and which was at last settled, very

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unsatisfactorily to Germany, at the Algeciras Conference of 1906. Indeed, it was probably his diplomatic defeat in that affair that determined the Kaiser to proceed with the world-war which he provoked eight years later.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN DRAMA

Most notable of all, however, was the empire-drama of South Africa. It was there, that the German Colonial Empire was founded, when in 1883-84 Prince Bismarck sent Frederick Luederitz to Angra Pequena to organize the colony of German Southwest Africa. It was a costly job, for it brought on the Hottentot war, which cost nearly $80,000,000 and the lives of several thousand Germans, while about 30,000 natives were exterminated. The next step was the acquisition of German East Africa, which extended inland to the boundary of the Congo and thus prevented any connection between British East Africa and British South Africa.

When trouble began to brew in South Africa between the Boers and British, the German opportunity seemed to have come. The Kaiser sent his famous message of sympathy and encouragement to Paul Kruger, on the Jameson Raid, and tried to make the Boers feel that Germany was their friend, and that they had an ally on the spot in German Southwest Africa. Again when the Boer-British War came on, neutrality was grossly violated by the Germans in Southwest Africa in aid of the Boers, who were permitted to cross the frontier at will when pursued by the British, and then to return to the war. There were secret negotiations between the Boers and the Germans for a compact between them, to the effect that if the Boers succeeded in expelling the British from South Africa, all the colonies there should be put under German protection and be allied with the German colonies at the west and northeast of them, making practically a great German empire occupying the whole of South Africa.

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