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THE SCHEME DEFEATED

The leader of the Boers at that time, and the foremost advocate of that scheme, was Louis Botha, probably the ablest man the Boer race has ever produced. He was defeated in that war by Roberts and Kitchener, however, and he accepted the result loyally, and later became the Prime Minister of the British Union of South Africa. As soon as the present war was started, German agents approached him with plans for a revolution. He was to lead the revolution, throw off British government, and declare the union of the former British colonies with the German colonies, in a German South Africa extending from the Cape to the Congo.

But Botha said, No. He had accepted the results of the Boer war in good faith, and had sworn allegiance to the British crown, and he meant to keep his word. A few of his former comrades were seduced by the German tempters, and a small insurrection was started. Louis Botha thereupon took the field against them and suppressed them. He then organized the Boers into an army and set forth to conquer German Southwest Africa for the British crown; and did it! There have been few more striking incidents in history than that, in which the very men who were expected by the Germans to betray British South Africa to Germany, instead conquered German Southwest Africa for Great Britain.

OTHER AFRICAN COLONIES

Togoland was easily taken by the British early in the war. The Kamerun territory fell later, British, French, Belgians and Portuguese participating in the campaign. German East Africa was the last to fall in that continent. The German half of New Guinea, Kaiser Wilhelm's

Land and the Bismarck Archipelago, were promptly taken by Australia, near the shores of which they lie. Other islands scattered about the Pacific Ocean were seized by the British and by the Japanese.

One of the first to be taken was Kiao-Chao, the German colony in the Province of Shan-Tung, China, which had been seized by the Kaiser's personal orders in 1897, and which was intended to be made the basis of a German partitioning of the Chinese Empire. Japan laid siege to the place and after a blockade lasting from August 27 to November 6, 1914, the Japanese troops, aided by a small British contingent, captured the place.

In such fashion the German Colonial Empire was removed from the map of the world.

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MODERN SUBMARINES

Top, type of high speed ocean-going submarine; center, a submarine about to submerge; below, a mine-planting submarine.

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The keystone of Germany's naval defence, the canal joining the Baltic and the North Sea, was deepened just in time for the beginning of the war.

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CHAPTER XII

THE WAR AT SEA

Great Britain's Sea Power Quickly Manifested - Her Fleet in Control of the Ocean Disappearance of German Commerce from the High Seas - Many Vessels Interned in Neutral Ports - The German War Fleet Held Under Shelter at the Kiel Canal Hundreds of Vessels of Millions of Tons Seized or Destroyed - Many Naval Vessels Also the Victims of War - Daring Raids of German Cruisers - Admiral Tirpitz and the Policy of Frightfulness - The Submarine Boat Campaign — Rules of International Law Disregarded· Destruction of American Vessels- The Tragedy of the Lusitania - The Battle off Jutland Renewal of the Submarine Campaign Enormous Destruction of Commerce, Including American, in the Weeks Before Our Declaration of War.

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THREE HUNDRED merchant vessels of about twothirds of a million tons burden destroyed in seven weeks, six of them being American vessels. That was the record of the German U-boat campaign of frightfulness, immediately before our declaration of war.

That, however, was only a small part of the operations at sea during the great war, and a comparatively minor part; since great as were the losses to the commerce of the allies and of neutral nations, they were not sufficient to affect materially the carrying trade of the world, while they did not in the least degree affect the steel barrier of blockade which the allies maintained along the German coast.

BRITISH SEA POWER

At the very beginning of the war the sea power of Great Britain was triumphantly manifested. The German Emperor sneered at what he called that country's "con

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