GERMANY AND COLONIES

Southland Times, Issue 19986, 28 September 1926, Page 2

GERMANY AND COLONIES

CONGRESS AT HAMBURG. BEHIND THE SCENES. FATE OF THE WHOLE NATION AFFECTED. London, August 5. A question round which discussion raged, at times with heat, at the last - meeting of the League of Nations concerned German colonial aspirations. It was not officially on the programme, but behind the scenes it was greatly canvassed. Sir Austen Chamberlain, it will be recalled, declared that since there is no immediate prospect of any territory failing to become mandatory of any of the Powers, the question does not arise. If, and when, it does, and Germany is a member of the League, then Germany’s claim will be considered as well as those of any other Power. What we may call the Colonial party in Germany has been making a demonstration this week at Hamburg, which, if we are to believe the Times, mode more noise than its importance deserved. The congress, it says, was given an atmosphere and a pretentiousness quite unrelated to its importance and its real intent. Outside the Hamburg newspapers it received little attention, and, if the reports in the Berlin Press were to be a measure of the national interest in colonial matters, it would emerge very badly indeed. The congress was practically ignored by the three largest Berlin newspapers; it is true it had to compete with public interest in a sensational murder. In any case, international questions of such dimensions are not to be solved by appeals to sentiment and passion, and the fact remains that if Germany is to make progress overseas, cooperation with, and not opposition to, British interests is likely to prove the more direct path. This fact has not escaped the more serious section of colonial thinkers. All the same, the fact has to be registered that the congress was held. Dr Seitz said there that the congress should demonstrate to foreign nations that Germany would not cease fighting till a solution had been found which satisfied the desires of the German people. He recalled the greatness of the Hanse power, when it stretched from Nijni Novgorod to Lisbon, and when Hanse merchants controlled the whole trade of England from the steel yard at Queenhithe, and complained that now, with nations forming themselves in homogeneous bodies to obtain for their populations the necessary space, food, raw materials, employment, and markets, Germany, a nation of more than sixty million inhabitants, was excluded from the right by the mere decree of her enemies. As a sovereign nation, he observed, Germany could not allow herself to be passed over in this phase of change, and must widen the territorial basis of her trade. Dr Peterson, the Burgomaster of Hamburg, said that every German had known that the assertion of Germany’s “colonial guilt” would break down very soon. He drew attention to the colonial statistics relative to contagious illness for 1924 and for the present time and to the low productivity of the former German colonies at present, when compared with 1914. If the natives were asked whether they would like to have back their German masters, he added, or if that question were put to the colonial experts of foreign countries, the answer would not be doubtful. The Germans came not as conquerors to the colonies, nor as enemies to the natives, but as friends and teachers. The fate of the colonies affected the fate of the whole German nation. The question had nothing to do with party politics, but was one which had a life interest for Germany and her future.