THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, MARCH 11, 1907. GERMANY AND HER COLONIES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8377, 11 March 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, MARCH 11, 1907. GERMANY AND HER COLONIES.

The approaching visit to the Transvaal of Herr Dernburg, the Director of the Colonial Department of the German Foreign Office, is of special interest in view of his pronounced opinions on the value of colonies. Next to the Kaiser, he is the highpriest of German Imperialism, and now that his opponents, the Socialist party, have been so reduced in numbers in the Reichstag, one may expect a great display of activity in the development of German colonies, so far as development depends upon the expenditure of liberal Imperial grants in aid. Herr Dernburg's views on the importance of colonies to a country are practically those held by all British Imperialists. As the extension of Germany's colonial policy may bring them into competition with Great Britain, Hen- Dernburg's views on the matter have an interest for us all. They were set forth with considerable detail in an address he recently ' gave to a representative gathering of merchants in Berlin. Its effect is described as being summed up in the concluding sentence:— "German colonial policy signifies nothing more,, nor less than the question of the future for national labour, the question of bread for many millions of industrial workers, and the question of the employment of domestic capital in trade, industry and navigation." In elaborating these points he had a good deal to say about the effects of English colonisation. In the middle of the eighteenth century, he said, English was spoken by nine million people and German by twenty millions; to-day the Englishspeaking peoples number 120 millions, and the German-speaking peoples 70 millions. This he declared to be due to the fact that foreign immigrants were assimilated in the English colonies. Such a circumstance, however, argues a capacity for colonisation that no artificial development can command. Reviewing the trade of the world as it

affected Germany, Herr Dernburg pointed out that the United States was practically self-contained, so far as food was concerned, that American enterprise was displacing German trade and weakening German influence in the South American States, China and Japan, while the creation of the trusts, which regulated the prices of raw materials such as cotton, copper, coffee, oil, and so forth, had a marked effect on German manufactures. Already, it was claimed, the value of the products of German colonies imported into Germany, amount to over fifty million sterling, while great stress was laid upon the market for home manufactures afforded by these colonies. At present it must be admitted German colonies are a somewhat expensive luxury, but costly as they are the Kaiser is determined to have them and to develop them.