INTRODUCTION
On this condition alone should we be prepared to renounce all conquests in the West, and especially to give back undiminished the pawn which we hold in our hand —Belgium. . . .—(pp. 144-147.)
5.—Paul Rohrbach.
Dr. Paul Rohrbaçh, another man who occupies a foremost place among Germany’s influential publicists, is, like Delbrück and Oncken, a strong advocate of Mittel-Afrika. Like them, too, he is a stout opponent of the Pan-German scheme for annexations in Flanders. Already before the war he was known as the writer of books on the expansion of Germany overseas. In one of these, Der deutsche Gedanke in der W eit , he indicated that although the existing German colonies were poor in extent, compared with the oversea dependencies of Great Britain and France, “the real epoch of colonial policy on the grand scale in Africa was for Germany still to come ” (dass die eigentliche Epoche grosser afrikanischer Kolonialpolitik uns noch bevorstehf). Dr. Rohrbach now stands principally for the Berlin-to-Bagdad Idea and for a policy of uncompromising hostility to Russia. But he is anxious to insist that although he advocates, as the thing of most immediate urgency, - Germany’s obtaining control of the Near East, he does not regard this as the final satisfaction of Germany’s claims, but as the necessary basis for more magnificent expansion later on : —
There are already almost 200 millions of men who speak English, and more than 400 millions more are under the influence of Anglo-Saxon supremacy and culture. Unless we, too, expand as a strong oversea people, the world will end by becoming Anglo-Saxon. We need territories in which to plant offshoots of our stock overseas and procure the raw materials of other climates upon German soil. In this sense our policy in the Near East is only the preliminary step ( Vorstufe ) in German world-policy, and nothing is more mistaken than to represent our plan with regard to
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