es, immensely
lucrative pre-emptions. There are whole worlds to exploit, and whoever
rules garners. When France extends her sway over North Africa and
develops these lands, the valuable concessions go to French
corporations. The actual capital used comes in last analysis from the
great capital fund of Western Europe, from French, English, Belgian,
Dutch and German capitalists, and whoever wishes to make four or five
per cent. may lend his money to the banks that lend to the development
companies that invest in the new country. But the big profit--the
cream--does not go to these petty ultimate investors but to the
political and high finance promoters, and these are French if the
enterprise is French. Moreover, trade accompanies and follows
investment, and if France secures control, the imported locomotives,
rails, cars and mining machinery come from France. In Morocco, France
keeps the inside track, as does England in Egypt and India, and Germany
in Togo and East Africa. Let who will pick up the scraps.[13]

{107}

This prevailing monopolistic character of colonial exploitation led
prior to the War of 1914 to great dissatisfaction among those powers,
which were least favoured colonially. In Germany liberal imperialists
like Paul Arndt and Friedrich Naumann bewailed the fact that Germany
was industrially handicapped because of the meagreness of her colonial
possessions. "Germans," complained Prof. Arndt, "receive no railway,
harbour, shipping, telegraph or similar concessions in English,
Russian, French, American and Portuguese colonies. Everywhere citizens
are preferred to foreigners, which is easily explicable and in fact
natural...."[14] As colony after colony is formed, the field for the
free competition of Germany with the world is narrowed, so that at last
only countries like Abyssinia, Siam, China and above all the southern
half of America remain independent and open. The French success in
gaining and closing colonies arouses German envy. Why is France's
colonial empire more than two and a half times as large as that of
Germany? asks Dr. Naumann. How is France ahead of us? "We have beaten
her in the field of battle, but she has recovered diplomatically. She
is weaker in a military sense but in a political sense stronger."[15]
Between envying France her colonial empire and determining at some
favourable opportunity to redress the inequality is but a short step.

To discontent with the present is a