INTRODUCTION
sions— the Cameroons, East Africa and the northern half of South-West Africa, and be amalgamated into a single whole by the addition of the Belgian Congo, together with strips of territory from the British, French, and Portuguese possessions and from, British South Africa. The precise delimitation of German Mittel-Afrika had better be left undiscussed on grounds of political sagacity. Careful memoranda have keen drawn up on the subject, which must for the present remain confidential. Only let so much be said : German Mittel-Afrika, as a field for the life of peoples, as an economic factor, and as a basis of political power, will be found to satisfy all requirements. The thought guiding its delimitation has been to provide a good prospect of success for the necessary negotiations with regard to give-and-take arrangements, and to draw the new frontiers in such a way as to give the least possible occasion for friction later on. The scheme includes a maximum and a minimum demand between which, according to the ultimate issue of the war, and according to the skill of our negotiators, the final delimitation will in all probability be drawn.—(pp. 50-51.)
3.— Hans Delbrück.
In the front rank of those who preach Mittel-Afrika is Dr. Hans Delbrück, one of Germany’s leading historians and publicists, author of a standard work on the Art of War from ancient times, and the successor of Treitschke, in the editorial chair of the great monthly periodical, the Preussische Jahrbücher. In his book Bismarcks Erbe, published in 1915,, he wrote : —
The most sure of all modes of colonization is that by agricultural settlers ( Bauernkolonie ). . . . But colonies of this kind we cannot think of establishing, for the simple reason that we have no surplus population of workers on the land (Bauern). Our whole oversea emigration has sunk since the middle of the nineties to between twenty and thirty thousand souls a year, whilst at the same time we employ in Germany near on a million foreign labourers and workmen, Russians, Poles, Ruthenians, Slovaks, Italians, Scandinavians. Germany is not a country from which there is a flow of population from within outwards, but a country
XIV