REFERENCES TO THE ANGLO-GERMAN SECRET TREATY OF 1898 RELATIVE TO THE EVENTUAL DISMEMBERMENT OF THE PORTUGUESE COLONIES EVEN the Emperor William's telegram to Mr. Kruger provoked only a temporary storm, and did not hinder the conclusion of a secret treaty which, in 1898, in conditions but little known, disposed of the future of the Portuguese colonies.1 England should afford Germany certain opportunities for working off her surplus energy, her surplus production in Asia, but should avoid any arrangement permitting her to become a greater rival than she already is along the Atlantic trade routes. Thus, instead of confirming the Treaty of 1898 relative to the eventual dismemberment of the Portuguese colonies, she should seek for a fresh arrangement undoing that dangerous and incomprehensible pact.2 ANGLO-GERMAN AGREEMENT IN REGARD TO THE LONDON, December 30. (Special Cable to the New York Times.) The New York Times is in a position to state that Great Britain and Germany have concluded an important arrangement with regard to the African possessions of Portugal, that is, Angola and Portuguese East Africa. By this arrangement Angola will become a German protectorate. It is a vast tract of territory, 312,000 square miles in extent, with a native population of 2,000,000, lying north of German Southwest Africa. Its proximity to the German colony is, of course, the factor which made the German claims to it so strong. With reference to the Portuguese possessions on the other side of the continent, Mozambique in the north and Gazaland in the south, territory extending from the eleventh to the twenty-sixth parallels, the northern part adjacent to German East Africa will pass under German control, and the southern part, regarded as a natural seaboard for the Transvaal, will become British. The boundary will be either the Zambesi River or in its vicinity. Advices have been received in London from Lisbon to the effect that not only has an agreement been completed, but that the purchase money has already been paid by the two powers to Portugal. It is stated that this amounts to something over $100,000,000. The Portuguese Government refrains for political reasons from making public details of the deal. It is felt that any such announcement would endanger the existence of the present Government, which awaits a more favorable time to inform the public of the bargain. The position of Portugal toward the territories will be much the same under the agreement as that of Turkey with regard to Egypt - suzerainty more in name than anything else. 1 André Tardieu, France and the Alliances, p. 47. New York, 1908. ↑ William Morton Fullerton, Problems of Power, p. 264. New York, 1913. From the New York Times, December 31, 1913. There can be no doubt that the discussions which led up to the agreement had an excellent effect in clearing the air between England and Germany. They were, of course, rendered easier by the fact that some time before the Boer War a similar agreement was come to. It was then not carried out, as the war increased the commercial competition between the two countries, and the German naval policy combined to decrease the cordiality of their relations. PORTUGAL WON'T SELL YET: DIVISION OF HER EAST AFRICAN COLONIES WHEN SHE DOES1 BERLIN, December 31. The Foreign Office says of the report of an AngloGerman agreement to acquire Angola and Mozambique from Portugal, that should such an arrangement be reached, it would be contingent on Portugal deciding to dispose of her colonies and would concern only the AngloGerman rights of preemption. Portugal, however, it is said, does not dream of selling her colonies. LONDON, December 31. The Foreign Office says there is no truth in the report that Germany and England have agreed to the division of the Portuguese colonies in Africa. It is pointed out that Portugal has not expressed a desire to sell the colonies. Should the Portuguese possessions ever come into the market, the two countries may endeavor to obtain possession of them. INTERVIEW OF OCTOBER 28, 1908, WITH [THIS interview, which the Kaiser gave to a "representative Englishman," appeared in the London Telegraph, October 28, 1908, and is reprinted in the New York Times Current History of the European War, vol. 1, no. 2, p. 213. It was corroborated by the German Foreign Office, with the comment that it was "intended as a message to the English people." In consequence of the outcry in Germany, . . . and the representations of Chancellor von Bülow, the Kaiser had to declare that his principal imperial task was to "insure the stability of the policies of the Empire, under the guardianship of constitutional responsibility. . . ."] "You English are as mad, mad, mad as March hares. What has come over you that you are completely given over to suspicions that are quite unworthy of a great nation? What more can I do than I have done? I declared with all the emphasis at my command in my speech at the Guildhall that my heart was set upon peace and that it was one of my dearest wishes to live on the best terms with England. Have I ever been false to my word? Falsehood and prevarication are alien to my nature. My actions ought to speak for themselves, but you will not listen to them, but to those who misinterpret and distort them. "This is a personal insult which I resent; to be forever misjudged, to have my repeated offers of friendship weighed and scrutinized with jealous, mistrustful eyes taxes my patience severely. I have said time after time that I am a friend of England, and your press, or at least a considerable 1 New York Times, January 1, 1914. section of it, bids the people of England to refuse my proffered hand and insinuates that the other hand holds a dagger. How can I convince a nation against its will?" Complaining again of the difficulty imposed on him by English distrust, His Majesty said: "The prevailing sentiment of large sections of the middle and lower classes of my own people is not friendly to England. I am, therefore, so to speak, in the minority in my own land, but it is a minority of the best element, just as it is in England respecting Germany." The Englishman reminded the Kaiser that not only England, but the whole of Europe, viewed with disapproval the recent sending of the German Consul at Algiers to Fez and forestalling France and Spain by suggesting the recognition of Sultan Mulai Hafid. The Kaiser made an impatient gesture and exclaimed: "Yes, that is an excellent example of the way German actions are misrepresented." And with vivid directness he defended the aforesaid incident, as the German Government has already done. The interviewer reminded the Kaiser that an important and influential section of the German newspapers interpreted these acts very differently, and effusively approved of them because they indicated that Germany was bent upon shaping events in Morocco. "There are mischief-makers," replied the Emperor, "in both countries. I will not attempt to weigh their relative capacity for misrepresentation, but the facts are as I have stated. There has been nothing in Germany's recent action in regard to Morocco contrary to the explicit declaration of my love of peace made both at the Guildhall and in my latest speech at Strassburg." Reverting to his efforts to show his friendship for England, the Kaiser said they had not been confined to words. It was commonly believed that Germany was hostile to England throughout the Boer War. Undoubtedly the newspapers were hostile and public opinion was hostile. "But what," he asked, "of official Germany? What brought to a sudden stop, indeed, to an absolute collapse, the European tour of the Boer delegates, who were striving to obtain European intervention? "They were fêted in Holland. France gave them a rapturous welcome. They wished to come to Berlin, where the German people would have crowned them with flowers, but when they asked me to receive them I refused. The agitation immediately died away and the delegates returned empty handed. Was that the action of a secret enemy? 'Again, when the struggle was at its height, the German Government was invited by France and Russia to join them in calling upon England to end the war. The moment had come, they said, not only to save the Boer republics, but also to humiliate England to the dust. What was my reply? I said so far from Germany joining in any concerted European action to bring pressure against England and bring about her downfall Germany would always keep aloof from politics that could bring her into complications with a sea power like England. "Posterity will one day read the exact terms of a telegram, now in the archives of Windsor Castle, in which I informed the sovereign of England of the answer I returned to the powers which then sought to compass her fall. Englishmen who now insult me by doubting my word should know what my actions were in the hour of their adversity. "Nor was that all. During your black week in December, 1899, when disasters followed one another in rapid succession, I received a letter from Queen Victoria, my revered grandmother, written in sorrow and affliction and bearing manifest traces of the anxieties which were preying upon her mind and health. I at once returned a sympathetic reply. I did more. I bade one of my officers to procure as exact an account as he could obtain of the number of combatants on both sides and the actual positions of the opposing forces. "With the figures before me I worked out what I considered the best plan of campaign in the circumstances and submitted it to my General Staff for criticism. Then I dispatched it to England. That document likewise is among the State papers at Windsor awaiting the serenely impartial verdict of history. "Let me add as a curious coincidence that the plan which I formulated ran very much on the same lines as that actually adopted by General Roberts and carried by him into successful operation. Was that the act of one who wished England ill? Let Englishmen be just and say." Touching then upon the English conviction that Germany is increasing her navy for the purpose of attacking Great Britain, the Kaiser reiterated the explanation that Chancellor von Bülow and other Ministers have made familiar, dwelling upon Germany's worldwide commerce, her manifold interests in distant seas, and the necessity for being prepared to protect them. He said: "Patriotic Germans refuse to assign any bounds to their legitimate commercial ambitions. They expect their interests to go on growing. They must be able to champion them manfully in any quarter of the globe. Germany looks ahead. Her horizons stretch far away. She must be prepared for any eventualities in the Far East. Who can foresee what may take place in the Pacific in the days to come, days not so distant as some believe, but days, at any rate, for which all European powers with Far Eastern interest sought to steadily prepare? "Look at the accomplished rise of Japan. Think of a possible national awakening in China, and then judge of the vast problems of the Pacific. Only those powers which have great navies will be listened to with respect when the future of the Pacific comes to be solved, and if for that reason only Germany must have a powerful fleet. It may even be that England herself will be glad that Germany has a fleet when they speak together in the great debates of the future." The interviewer concludes: "The Emperor spoke with all that earnestness which marks his manner when speaking on deeply pondered subjects. I ask my fellow-countrymen who value the cause of peace, to weigh what I have written and revise, if necessary, their estimate of the Kaiser and his friendship for England by his Majesty's own words. If they had enjoyed the privilege of hearing them spoken they would no longer doubt either his Majesty's firm desire to live on the best of terms with England or his growing impatience at the persistent mistrust with which his offer of friendship is too often received." COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT AND REMOVAL OF BY SIR HARRY JOHNSTON ONE thing, at any rate, that the recent German colonization of England has done, has been to build up a remarkable degree of commerce between the British and the German Empires; and a fact which is too often overlooked by British politicians is the value of Anglo-German commerce at the present day. We do a bigger trade with Germany than with all the British Empire over the seas, and similarly German commerce flourishes in all that part of the British Empire governed from London more than it does in the colonial dominions of any other power. An Anglo-German war would be the most dreadful disaster which could possibly happen to either Germany or Britain. It would bankrupt both empires and only profit the United States and Russia. ... We have overlooked the fact that it is only because hitherto trade has been so splendidly free and fair to all the world throughout all the British possessions that the rest of the world has permitted without undue grumbling a population of some forty millions only in northwest Europe to arrogate to itself the control of the best parts of Africa, Asia, Australasia, and America. But a reversal of this policy would, in my opinion, eventually unite all the other great commercial powers of the world in league against us. Germany wants, will have, and must have some day - and is morally entitled to an outlet towards the Mediterranean and a port on that sea. That outlet can only be, if the balance of power is to remain undisturbed, Trieste. In making such a sacrifice for the benefit of her ally, Austria would require a territorial compensation farther east, and in the course of events must of necessity become a great Slav empire rather than an eastern Germany. These are matters which only concern Great Britain in so far that we might hinder their solution by any stupid, short-sighted interference in the affairs of the Nearest East. Far more important to us, in my humble opinion, than the fate and future history of the Balkan Peninsula, is a good understanding with Germany. It is Germany and Austria together who should be allowed by Britain, France, and Russia to determine the settlement of southeastern Europe north of the Greek frontier. Similarly, nothing should be done by us to block the way of Germany or Austria in any steps they may take which are right and fair and which do not lead to any policy of protection, for the regeneration of Turkey in Asia, providing that due regard is given to the peculiar circumstances of Syria, the necessity for a neutralized Arabia, and British interests in Egypt and the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, among the British interests of the greatest magnitude are the independence and neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg and the invulnerability of France within her present limits. Any unprovoked attack by Germany on France, and any further encroachment of German power westward in that direction would be a casus belli, even — I should imagine with the Labor and the Irish parties in Great Britain. - 1 Extract from the Report of Proceedings of the Anglo-German Understanding Conference, pp. 116-18. London, 1912. 1 |