episode in the
history of European imperialism since Pizarro's slaughter of the Incas;
if even that can be compared with it.

The causes of these ceaseless and ruinous wars were to be found partly
in the total disregard of native custom, and in the hide-bound pedantry
with which German-made law and the Prussian system of regimentation
were enforced upon the natives; but it was to be found still more in
the assumption that the native had no rights as against his white lord.
His land might be confiscated; his cattle driven away; even downright
slavery was not unknown, not merely in the form of forced labour, which
has been common in German colonies, but in the form of the actual sale
and purchase of negroes. Herr Dernburg, who became Colonial Secretary
in 1907, himself recorded that he met in East Africa a young farmer who
told him that he had just bought a hundred and fifty negroes; he also
described the settlers' pleasing practice of sitting beside the wells
with revolvers, in order to prevent the natives from watering their
cattle, and to force them to leave them behind; and he noted that
officials nearly always carried negro whips with them. These practices,
indeed, were condemned by the German Government itself, but only after
many years, and mainly because they were wasteful. Government
representatives have told the Reichstag, as Herr Schleitwein did in
1904, that they must pursue a 'healthy egoism,' and forswear
'humanitarianism and irrational sentimentality.' 'The Hereros must be
forced to work, and to work without compensation and for their food
only. ... The sentiments of Christianity and philanthropy with which
the missionaries work must be repudiated with all energy.' This is what
is called Realpolitik.

Is it too much to say that the appearance of the spirit thus expressed
was a new thing in the history of European imperialism? Is it not plain
that if this spirit should triumph, the ascendancy of Europe over the
non-European world must prove to be, not a blessing, but an unmitigated
curse? Yet the nation which had thus acquitted itself in the rich lands
which it had so easily acquired was not satisfied; it desired a wider
field for the exhibition of its Kultur, its conception of civilisation.

From the beginning it was evident that the colonial enthusiasts of
Germany had no intention of resting satisfied with the considerable
dominions they had won, but regarded them only as a beginning, as bases
for futu