The Phantasy of U-boat Bases.
Another reason which has been advanced for refusing to give back the German colonies to their rightful owners is the charge that the Germans would use them as bases for U-boats. The argument was coined for propaganda purposes and is wholly specious. Naval bases for battleships or submarines are either legal or illegal, according to the new laws to be formulated by common consent of the nations. If illegal, they must be forbidden to every nation, if legal, permitted to all. If the League of Nations, or if revised international law, determine that naval bases are not to be maintained in colonies, they will naturally not be maintained in German, any more than in English colonies. If submarine warfare be declared illegal, there will be no submarine bases, either English or German.
Colonial submarine bases without heavy and formidable fortifications and considerable bodies of troops to ensure them against attack by land and sea and air, would moreover be useless, and Germany, despite Sir Harry Johnston’s fantastic bugbear of a militarized German Africa, has always adhered strictly to the ideal of the non-militarization of her African subjects. Nor can submarine bases be constructed in secret. To deprive Germany of her African colonies under the pretext that she might erect such bases there, is to attempt to cloak projected