„Audiatur et altera pars"
When President Wilson in his celebrated speech of January the eighth 1918 issued to the world his Programme of Peace, which he said could be the only conditions of a just and durable peace, and which the Entente and Germany have accepted as a basis of the coming negotiations, he said in Point 5 :
„A free and open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claim of the government whose title is to be determined."
Since this emphatic declaration was made, several British and Colonial statesmen have made speeches urging the great danger to the peace of the world and particularly to the safety of the British Empire, if the Germans received back their Colonies as, it was pointed out, the Germans would certainly organize powerfull colonial armies and would utilize their coasts as a base for their submarines.
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Meanwhile as the German people in accepting the conditions of the Armistice have acknowledged their military aud seapower broken, it must be admitted, that the chief reasons for such arguments have passed away, and that the programme of President Wilson for a World's Peace would render the resumption of their military and naval activities at home or abroad utterly impossible. But so far nothing has been suggested concerning the possible return of her Colonies to Germany and it may be inferred, that in the future these suspicions may still cling to German colonial enterprise and render their efforts at successful colonisation practically useless.