GERMAN EXODUS.

Northern Advocate, 17 November 1919, Page 6

GERMAN EXODUS.

OFF TO SOUTH AMERICA

MIGRATION BY THE MILLION,

In the period of Germany's great trade expansion before the war restrictions were thrown around emigration by the Imperial German Government. In the twenty years from 1870 to 1890 nearly 2,500,000 Germans had left the country to find homes elsewhere. In the following twenty years there was a sharp drop to one fourth of the number of the preceding two decades. The German Government was keeping its men at home to organise them into a great military machine to conquer the world by a concentrated assault from German soil. Now the new German Government is encouraging emigration, not by the thousands, but by the millions; and in the opinion of some well-plac-ed observers in Washington the plans under way at Berlin repiesent the old German Imperialism in another guise (says the New York "Times"). In the scheme of world-dominion drawn j up by the Germans before the war much dependence was j)laced on as sistance from 'German immigrants in various parts of the world, especially on those in North and South America. Elaborate efforts on the German theory that a nation could be held in tact within a nation and rallied to the aid of the Fatherland were made to maintain and deepen the attachment of overseas groups of Germans to the country from which (heir ancestors had emigrated. NATION WITHIN NATION. But when the test came, and the choice was between the Fatherland and the adopted country, the ties to Germany broke, in the main. In theUnited States by far greater number of citizens of German birth or parentage were loyal to the United States. In South America, with large bodies of German colonists widely distributed, there was also disappointment, though the results there did not fall so far short of expectations. It has been learned in Washington that the German General Staff had a plan to enlist soldiers in the large German settlement in iSouthern Brazil to aid the German colonial forces in SouthWest Africa against the British. The early sweeping of the seas by the Bri tish fleet prevented the attempt to transport recruits from Brazil to Southern Africa, but it is doubtful if many of the German agriculturists would have left their farms at the bidding of the Fatherland. However, though the nation-witbin-a-nation theory did not stand up to the test in this war, the German Imperialists, according to indications from Berlin, do not consider "it disproved; instead, that the handling of it was wrong. Formerly emigrants left Germany as individuals or in comparatively small groups, with no systematised effort to keep vital con nection with them from the time they settled in the new country. .COLONISING IN BLOCKS. Furthermore, with not many exceptions, the German immigrants scattered widely in the land of their new homes, and when, after the connection with the Fatherland had been broken for a greater or less number of years, organised propaganda was started to reawaken and quicken it to use in the dream of making Germany world dominant, the primary problem was difficult. The new attempt to establish German influence and power in places outside Germany undertakes to avoid what was considered a mistake at the beginning of the previous emigrations. The plan is to colonise the Germans in great blocks, and to have ready at the out set a machinery that will hold the settlers in vital contact with the Fatherland.

This problem of establishing new or enlarged German centres in whatever place in the world an opening is seen has been rcognised since d<?----n-ac stared Germany in the L.cc as a leading one in the first necessity of rebuilding German trade. Germany's colonies are gone: 1,027,820 square miles and a na'tijve population of 12,000,000 removed from their exploitation. PROPOSAL TO MEXICO. A German commission was sent to Buenos Aires to study "the possibility of accommodating 5,000,000 immigrants." This was the number mentioned in an inquiry addressed to the Mexican Government. The proposals were made on behalf of a German colonisation corporation and not, of course, for the German Government, though the plans for settlement proposed are known to be in line with the Government policy towards emigration. What the attitude of Argentina, ambitious for the development of its rich resources, will be is not known, and before de cision there would doubtless be a careful investigation of the German Government's connection with the scheme. The course the Mexican Government will finally take has not been announced, but Mexico's Secretary of the Interior has taken a position in opposition, stating that the Mexican Congress would be asked to pass a Bill to prevent the threatened influx of Germans. A rebuff at the start, however, will not prevent the Germans from pushing their plans to the utmost.