THE TERROR ON EUROPE'S THRESHOLD.

Evening Star, Issue 14319, 18 March 1910, Page 2

THE TERROR ON EUROPE'S THRESHOLD.

\ •—- [By Alexander Powell, F.R.G ; S., in •Nash's Magazine.'] —Two Million Babies a Year.— Tho third and last most potent reason for Germany's attitude towards England, the real reason whv the nations aro bankrupting themselves with their* fleets of Dreadnoughts and their avalanches of armies, tho underlying cause of all the uncertainty and uneasiness and unrest, are the babies, the German babies—tha chubby, lusty, crowing Hans and Grotchens—who iro coming into tho world so fast that Sermany is at her wits' end to know what to do with them all. Already there are more than sictv million and tjie babies, tha utile, fat, chuuby babies, are pouring in at tho rate, ox two millions a j-ear. And the wofst of it is that neither they, ror their hard-working fathers, nor their ttrlfty, industrious mothers, can get out. On every side the Fatherland is hemmed -in by "countries as populous as itself. Thousands upon tens ot thousands, of course, have emigrated, and aro mining in South Africa, or sheep-raising in Au3- i tralia, or beer-brewing in tho States; and in the course of time their children are muned John or Jonathan, and Sadie or hose, and they forget the niother-tonguo and give their allegiance to another flag. I And what is moro important, it is a stranger's land that is made fertile by their labor. Now, all this is a bad thing for Germany. .It is'losing its life-blood, its vital sap, and no one knows it better than the Kaiser. Could there bo a more pressing explanation of the necessity for expansion? Here is tho reason for Germany's determination to obtain, by hook or by crook, peaceably if sho can. lorcibly if sho must, a colonial empire of her own, wherein the little Hans and Gretchens of to-day may find homes, and lucrative, , empire-building occupations to-morrow. —They Left Germany tho Core. — _ |

Open the atlas and see of what Germany's colonial possessions consist. So insignificant and worthless aro they that they would bo laughable were they not, by their very lack of size and value, so deadly a menace to international peace. England, Franco, and Russia between iliem have not left much on tho map that is worth tho having. Long sinco they ate the apple, and all that is left for Germany is the worm-eaten core. In xlfrica she has four colonies—German East Africa, German South-west Africa, the Cameroon*, and Togoland. Millions upon millions of marks has sho spent upon these worthless stretches of forest, jungle, and arid plains, md thousands upon thousands of soldiers in spiked helmets have fallen thero from fevers or native spears. In Polynesia she holds a strip of New Guinea, which sho has named Kaiser Wilhelm Land, chiefly Temarkablo for the ferocity of its headhunters and the virulence of its fevers; and the German flag likewise floats over tho groups of tho Carolines, the .Marshnlls, and the Ladrones. In North China eho bullied the Celestials into ceding her tho port of Kaio-clww. And there you have tho colonial empiro of Germany in a nutshell. Her colonies are tho leavings of other nations; sho has been forced into She humiliating position of takinc what the other countries do not want. She has made desperate efforts, repeated efforts, to obtain a footing elsewhere in the world, but always sho has been driven off unceremoniously. By abstaining from intervention in Crete tho Kaiser obtained from Abdul Hamid, of unpavory memory, a wonderful concession for a railway from the Bosphorus to tho Persian Gulf, a joncession that might well have given tJermany a now empiro in Western .Asia; but a remarkable coup of British diplomacy took the fruits of it away from her when they seemed Within her grasp—and that is another of the reasons why she hates England. Germany claimed;to have " interests" in Morocco—Heaven only knows what they could have been—and tho Kaiser went there in person, wearing a theatrical uniform made for tho occasion, to look after his "interests," and to pay a call on Muley Aziz, his friend and brother; but though he blustered and threatened war, England and France stood shoulder to shoulder in that affair—and there you havo still another reason why Germany hates England. South America lay,; temptingly to hand, rich and tantalisingiy roomy, and as the most approved method of stealing territory nowadays is to seize a Customs-house or two * (this method has tho sanction of all the leading authorities), tho Kaiser, still having in mind tticso fast-growing Hans and Gretchens, sent a fleet over to Caribbean waters on the pretext of collecting a bill. But it so happens that the Americans have long looked on South America as their own particular pie," in which Mr Monroe long ago said quite plainly no one sis© should havo a finger. So the telegraph flashed a curt message from the White House overland to Tampa, and there the submarine cable ;took it up and dash-dotted it under the' ocean to tho American battle fleet, at gun-practice off Santiago do Cuba; and a few hours later, with bunkers full and ammunition Hoists well gieased, tho grey warships wero tearing southward toward Venezuela and the German Fleet. —How Roosevelt Outblnffed the Kaiser.— And a still curter message flashed from the White- House under 4,000' miles of ocean to a red-and-whito palace in Potsdam, and when it was received the Kaiser gnawed hie nails and 6wung his left arm, as ho ha 3 a habit of doing when he is very angry—-and recalled his fleet. / Ho is the greatest nluffer in Europe, ia this same Kaiser Wilhelm; but the spectacled, belligerent gentleman then in tho Whito House had forgotten moro about that particular game than tho Kaiser ever knew. —All Depends on England's Navy.—

Lot us look at tho situation now through tho British monocle. Tho foreign policy of England is summed up in tho old motto "What wo have.we'll hold," and tho afterthought i 3 "If we can." And there comes tho rub. For in case of war Britain's oversea possessions would bo far moro of a hindrance :han a help. Already India is seething with sedition, and the cry of "Egypt for the Egyptians" is daily growing louder in tho land of tho Valley of tho Nile. With the Mediterranean—which a British Prime Minister once called a British lake—denuded of British warships, which havo been concentrated in tho North Sea, Malta, Cypres, and Egypt will lie at tho mercy of (that fleet of Dreadnoughts ivhich the Austrians are .rushing to completion. And to mako matters ivorso, England appears to be scared almost into convulsions. Every thinking Englishman is convinced that Germany meditates a sudden attack on England, and when that attack comes, as it surely will, Britain's only hopo of salvation lies in her fleet. That is why tho British shipyards and arsenals are ringing, day and night, with the clank and clang of tools j wliy every increase in the German Naval Budget is mot by a corresponding increase by tho Admiralty; why tho British taxpayer fumes and grumbles, tut still pays his enormous income tax. Americans do not even faintly realise tho cost of this desperato struggle for naval supremacy. It is staggering. Look afc it any way you will, there can be but one ood to a raco which is impoverishing both nations, and that end is War. If England wins, she will havo secured herself for half a century to come. If Germany triumphs, her victory will give her the position which England holds now; it will mako her rnistrcea of Europe, it will place her in a position where she can make free trade in England one of the ternis of peace, it will give her a free hand in the Balkans, in Mesopotamia, and in Persia, will give her the pick of England's colonies oversea, and an indemnity with which, to build a navy that will overawe the world.

If England's battleship bulwarks hold, then all is well, but if her fleets arc outnanceuvrcd or meet with disneter in battle, then tho game i« lost. The world has noved since Xapoleon's day; tho invasion »f England by a Continental Power is not as formidable as it eccmed in other centuries. A famous British tceneral once said : " There are seventeen different ways by which' a German army' r might get into England, but no singlo way by which they could Rot out again." To which tho German General Staff may add: "But we

' don't want to get out again." Tho fear of i —A German Invasion—is no delusion bred from fear, no jingo rallying-cry. It is tho deep-seated belief of all that ir> clear-headed and sane in Britain. Lord Kosebery has preached it from Land's End to John o' Groats, and Sir Edward Grey, a3 sano and shrewd and cautious a statesman as Downing Street has known these many years, lias gone out of his way lo back him up. - (To bo continued.) •The author of this article is an American observer who has jii6t returned from a* trip through Austria, tho Balkans, 'the Caucasus, Russia, Germany, and Italy.