THE GERMAN EMPIRE OF CENTRAL AFRICA
HI.—The Building up of German World-Power.
We Germans of the Empire do not realize clearly enough that the war is a struggle against Germanism all over the world, and that it has therefore given us something very great and unique as the first prize of victory. The clever historian, Albrecht Wirth, writes in the conclusion to his Short History of the World (published by Alfred Janssen, Hamburg) : —
The war has given us Germans a forward move which cannot be too highly prized ; for the first time in history all Germans in the world, including the American Germans, know themselves to be united in their desires and convictions. That has never happened before. Quot homines, tot sententice! We were scattered far and wide over the face of the earth, and our views and thoughts were widely sundered. Now, however, this disunion is gone for ever.
Thanks to the war and to the way in which England has conducted it more and more keenly as an economic war, there is now a German will in the world which revolts against the Anglo-Saxon will ; every German in the world outside the frontiers of the Empire is watching the mighty struggle in tense anxiety, and keeps asking himself whether the German Empire will succeed in substantiating its claim to a position that tells in the world, and hundreds of thousands of Germans in foreign countries are expecting for themselves a mighty uplift.
This fact of a general awakening of the German Idea in the world is not, unfortunately, sufficiently appreciated at home, and we do not realize clearly enough the great advantage which this awakening secures for us. And so we still think too much of incorporating some millions of foreign population within our frontiers, because we overlook the fact that ten million and more Germans abroad are ready to-day to link their fortunes permanently with ours. We must not, of course, imagine this readiness to mean that they are waiting for the chance of returning to Germany or to annexed terri-
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