As Baron von Rechenberg, formerly governor
of German East Africa, has expressed it:
"Just as we lack suitable land for settling, so we lack suitable German
settlers.... For a number of years immigration into Germany has been
much greater than emigration from Germany.... Even in times of peace
German agriculture had not a surplus, but a shortage, of labor, and it
cannot possibly accord with our interests to increase the shortage by
encouraging emigration.... Regrettable though it is, there can be no
question at the conclusion of peace of acquiring territory for
settlement. There is no appropriate country, and there are no farmers to
settle on it."
[Sidenote: Germany desires not colonies but strategic positions.]
[Sidenote: Central Africa needed to supply raw materials.]
[Sidenote: Germany could use natives in war.]
German colonial aims are really not colonial, but are entirely dominated
by far-reaching conceptions of world politics. Not colonies, but
military power and strategic positions for exercising world power in
future, are her real aims. Her ultimate objective in Africa is the
establishment of a great Central African Empire, comprising not only her
colonies before the war, but also all the English, French, Belgian, and
Portuguese possessions south of the Sahara and Lake Chad and north of
the Zambezi River in South Africa. Toward this objective she was
steadily marching even before the war broke out, and she claims the
return of her lost African colonies at the end of the war as a
starting-point from which to resume the interrupted march.
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