THE GERMAN EMPIRE OF CENTRAL AFRICA
treaties with their associates and with each other, laying down that raw materials destined for other than the contracting States should be subject to an export duty. If these conditions remained in force for from twelve to fifteen years, the rehabilitation of our former economic and trade policy would be impossible. Neither Flanders nor the Economic League of Mittel-PLurofa is any safeguard against this danger. We cannot support 70 million people in Germany, as before the war, if we have not at our disposal oversea territories where raw materials can be produced very cheaply.
And so now that the issue of the war is narrowed to a decision as to whether we are to have real, and not only imaginary , oversea dominion or are to sink to the rank of a third-rate Power , we must summon up all our resolution and energy to achieve the first alternative.
At an earlier stage of the war we could still cherish the hope that we should succeed in continuing—though with certain modifications—our former policy of using foreign territory for our interests ; it must be clear to us to-day that it is a question of standing on our own feet as a World-Power. We climbed by means of England’s policy of the Open Door ; now the Anglo-Saxons are going to correct that mistake. They will no longer suffer Germany beside them as a pretended World-Power. And now it is a question of fighting our way to a position as a World-Power or sinking to be a third-rate Power. The struggle to assert our standing as a World-Power is now the object of the war.
II.— The Way to Become a World-Power.
The Flanders politicians say: “World-power can only be won by the possession of the coast of Flanders ; that is the preliminary condition of every prosperous colonial and oversea policy, every policy independent of the decisions which England and North America may take.” That may carry conviction to a way of thought directed towards the Continent, but proves itself a wrong conclusion, if one considers more deeply. We
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