he northward.]

The question remains as to communications northward to the
Mediterranean. One can travel to-day from Alexandria by rail and river
to Khartoum, and thence by steamer up the Nile to Rejaf, near the Uganda
border. From Rejaf to Nimule, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles,
the Nile is impracticable for river transport, and therefore over that
distance a railway will have to be built. But from Nimule the river is
again navigable up to Lake Albert. The problem is to connect Lake Albert
with the Central and South African systems.

[Sidenote: Possible Belgian and British routes.]

[Sidenote: Tropical Africa a great problem in world politics.]

Three routes are possible, one wholly Belgian, one partly British and
partly Belgian, and one wholly British. That is on the assumption that
German East Africa remains British after this war. The Belgian project
is to construct the railway from the Congo bend at Stanleyville over the
gold-fields at Kilo to Mahagi on Lake Albert. The British project would
be to construct a line from the south of Elizabethville to Bismarckburg,
at the south of Lake Tanganyika, to proceed thence by steamer to Ujiji,
thence by the existing railway to Tabora, to construct a line from
Tabora to Mwanza on Lake Victoria Nyanza, and a line from Entebbe on
that lake to Butiabwa, on Lake Albert. The third or mixed
Belgian-British line would proceed by way of Butiabwa, Entebbe, Mwanza,
Tabora, and Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, but from there would make use of
the existing line to Kabalo on the Congo. It is probable that by one or
other of these three routes through communication from South Africa to
the Mediterranean may be established within the next ten years. With
this vital industrial aspect of tropical Africa there is wrapped up the
equally important political aspect, and these two problems are certain
to make of tropical Africa one of the great problems of future world
politics.

[Sidenote: Germans have no colonists to spare.]

Now, the Germans are not in search of colonies after the English model,
and those that they have in East and West Africa had no white population
to speak of before the war. Quite apart from the fact that tropical
Africa would be no suitable territory for white settlement, they have no
colonists to spare, since for the sake of their industrial and military
future in Germany they desire the largest concentration of population
possible in the fatherland. As Baron vo