Despite the
return of Alsace-Lorraine to France one fails to see concrete evidence
of Germany's defeat in Europe. Her people are still cocky and defiant.
There is no mistake about her altered condition in Africa. Her flag
there has gone into the discard along with the wreck of militarism. The
immense territory that she acquired principally by browbeating is lost,
down to the last square mile.

Up to 1884 Germany did not own an inch of African soil. Within two years
she was mistress of more than a million square miles. Analyze her whole
performance on the continent and a definite cause of the World War is
discovered. It is part of an international conspiracy studded with
astonishing details.

Africa was a definite means to world conquest. Germany knew of her vast
undeveloped wealth. It is now no secret that her plan was to annex the
greater part of French, Belgian, Italian and Portuguese Africa in the
event that she won. The Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway would have hitched up
the late Teutonic Empire with the Near East and made it easy to link the
African domain with this intermediary through the Turkish dominions.
Here was an imposing program with many advantages. For one thing it
would have given Germany an untold store of raw materials and it would
also have put her into a position to dictate to Southern Asia and even
South America.

The methods that Germany adopted to acquire her African possessions were
peculiarly typical. Like the madness that plunged her into a struggle
with civilization they were her own undoing. Into a continent whose
middle name, so far as colonization goes, is intrigue she fitted
perfectly. Practically every German colony in Africa represented the
triumph of "butting in" or intimidation. The Kaiser That Was regarded
himself as the mentor, and sought to recast continents in the same grand
way that he lectured his minions.

The first German colony in Africa was German South-West, as it was
called for short, and grew out of a deal made between a Bremen merchant
and a native chief. On the strength of this Bismarck pinched out an area
almost as big as British East Africa. Before twelve months had passed
the German flag flew over what came to be known as German East Africa,
and also over Togoland and the The Cameroons on the West Coast.

Germany really had no right to invade any of this country but she was
developing into a strong military power and rather than have trouble,
the other nations acqu