So far as the evidence at present goes, I do not think a case can be
made out for the view that German policy was aiming during these years
at securing the hegemony of Europe by annexing European territory. The
expansion Germany was seeking was that of trade and markets. And her
statesmen and people, like those of other countries, were under the
belief that, to secure this, it was necessary to acquire colonies. This
ambition, up to a point, she was able, in fact, to fulfil, not by force
but by agreement with the other Powers. The Berlin Act of 1885 was one
of the wisest and most far-seeing achievements of European policy. By it
the partition of a great part of the African continent between the Powers
was peaceably accomplished, and Germany emerged with possessions to the
extent of 377,000 square miles and an estimated population of 1,700,000.
By 1906 her colonial domain had been increased to over two and a half
million square miles, and its population to over twelve millions; and all
of this had been acquired without war with any civilized nation. In spite
of her late arrival on the scene as a colonial Power, Germany had thus
secured without war an empire overseas, not comparable, indeed, to that
of Great Britain or of France, but still considerable in extent and
(as Germans believed) in economic promise, and sufficient to give them
the opportunity they desired to show their capacity as pioneers of
civilization. How they have succeeded or failed in this we need not here
consider. But when Germans demand a "place in the sun," the considerable
place they have in fact acquired, with the acquiescence of the other
colonial Powers, should, in fairness to those Powers, be remembered.
But, notoriously, they were not satisfied, and the extent of their
dissatisfaction was shown by their determination to create a navy. This
new departure, dating from the close of the decade 1890-1900, marks the
beginning of that friction between Great Britain and Germany which was a
main cause of the war. It is therefore important to form some just idea
of the motives that inspired German policy to take this momentous step.
The reasons given by Prince Buelow, the founder of the policy, and often
repeated by German statesmen and publicists,[2] are, first, the need of a
strong navy, to protect German commerce; secondly, the need, as well as the
ambition, of Germany to play a part proportional to her real strength in
the determination of policy beyond