y other nationality. Such
stipulation would, of course, cover all manner of trade
discrimination,--e.g., import, export and excise tariff, harbor and
registry dues, subsidy, patent right, copyright, trade mark, tax
exemption whether partial or exclusive, investment preferences at home
and abroad,--in short it would have to establish a thoroughgoing
neutralisation of trade relations in the widest acceptation of the term,
and to apply in perpetuity. The like applies, of course, to all that
fringe of subsidiary and outlying peoples on whom Imperial Germany
relies for much of its resources in any warlike enterprise. Such a move
also disposes of the colonial question in a parenthesis, so far as
regards any special bond of affiliation between the Empire, or the
Fatherland, and any colonial possessions that are now thought desirable
to be claimed. Under neutralisation, colonies would cease to be
"colonial possessions," being necessarily included under the general
abrogation of commercial discriminations, and also necessarily exempt
from special taxation or specially favorable tax rates.

Colonies there still would be, though it is not easy to imagine what
would be the meaning of a "German Colony" in such a case. Colonies would
be free communities, after the fashion of New Zealand or Australia, but
with the further sterilisation of the bond between colony and mother
country involved in the abolition of all appointive offices and all
responsibility to the crown or the imperial government. Now, there are
no German colonies in this simpler British sense of the term, which
implies nothing more than community of blood, institutions and language,
together with that sense of solidarity between the colony and the mother
country which this community of pedigree and institutions will
necessarily bring; but while there are today no German colonies, in the
sense of the term so given, there is no reason to presume that no such
German colonies would come into bearing under the conditions of this
prospective regime of neutrality installed by such a pacific league,
when backed by the league's guarantee that no colony from the Fatherland
will be exposed to the eventual risk of coming under the discretionary
tutelage of the German Imperial establishment and so falling into a
relation of step-childhood to the Imperial dynasty.

As is well known, and as has by way of superfluous commonplace been set
forth by a sometime Colonial Secretary of the E