INTRODUCTION
European Crisis, No. 85) assuredly embraced the acquisition of France’s reversionary rights to the Belgian Congo. Moreover, it seems probable that the invasion of Belgium and the destruction of her towns by the methods of the Huns was part of a plan for securing at the end of a successful war the surrender of Belgium’s Congo possessions as the price of peace. The wholesale destruction of Belgium’s economic resources, it was doubtless calculated, would render it impossible for her in any case to prosecute her great Central African enterprise .—(The Last of the Huns, pp. 150, 151.)
In the ultimatum, it is true, sent to the Belgian Government on August 2, 1914, the German Government “pledges itself to guarantee in the fullest extent at the conclusion of peace the existing territories (Besitzstand) and independence of the kingdom.” This phrase does not seem to bind Germany in respect to the Belgian territory in Africa. The French translation given in the Belgian Grey Book: “ Le Gouvernement allemand de son coté s’engage, au moment de la paix, à garantir le royaume et ses possessions dans toute leur étendue ,” is now, I believe, regarded by the Belgian Government as incorrect.
12.—British Opposition to Mittel-Afrika.
Dr. Solf knows that the scheme for a German African Empire is now likely to encounter opposition from the British Commonwealth, and the opposition arouses his anger. It seems to him so manifestly unreasonable. Indeed if one could accept his postulate, that the extent of colonial territory possessed by any European Power ought in all cases to be proportionate to the size of the Power, it would be mathematically demonstrable that Germany had too little and Belgium and Great Britain too much. But the question becomes less simple, if we have to consider, not only the size
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