THE GERMAN EMPIRE OF CENTRAL AFRICA
attempt must be made to create an agricultural population in our chief colony. We shall be able to draw the necessary men of tried worth from South America and Australia, if we purge our new colonial policy of all petty officialdom, and if the system of small holdings is modelled on that of Southern Brazil, where the settlers are given on arrival measured plots of land, simple houses and agricultural implements.
If we mention now the great mineral wealth in Central Africa, especially in the Belgian Congo ; if we bear in mind the great possibilities of communication which the innumerable streams in the Congo basin afford ; if we think of the influx of traders, workmen, hotel-keepers, bank-officials ; if we picture the 6,000 officials and officers whom the great area will need, the clergy, schoolmasters, lawyers, doctors, engineers, railway, post and telegraph officials, then we see what an overwhelming abundance of possibilities of livelihood Mittel-Afrika will afford. It will be easy for even a hundred thousand white men to make a living there in a few years.
VI.— Mittel-Afrika AS A FACTOR IN THE ECONOMIC Struggle.
We have shown that it is possible to accommodate at least
50.000 white men in Mittel-Afrika in quite a short time;
40.000 of these are to be men with some capital. If we take an average of only 25,000 marks per head, that gives us an influx of capital of a thousand million marks in round figures. In addition men with big schemes will be attracted and firms from foreign countries; the state-coffers will be filled up afresh. A strong economic life will immediately develop in Mittel-Afrika. And we are justified in expecting that an influx of private and state capital to the extent of 1,250,000,000 or 1,500,000,000 marks will immediately bring in its train at least an equal amount of commercial capital from home and from neutral countries.
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