[To TILE EDITOR 01 THE " SPECTATOR.")
Stn,—Your leading article under this heading in your issue of December 9th calls for widespread attention. If your surmise be correct, the danger is, indeed, great. All the more, then, does it behove us to consider whether we cannot still succeed in turning the edge of German hostility by a transfer of colonial territory. You rightly point out that the cession of Walfisch Bay and Papua would be resented by South Africa and Australia respectively. But no such objection applies to our West African possessions. These abut immediately on German West African colonies. Here are large undeveloped regions which would form a field for German enterprise, would not so much create new German colonies as aggrandize existing ones, and would be more accessible from the Father- land than other regions (Congo, Angola, Mozambique, &a.), which have from time to time been suggested as potential theatres of German expansion. It might be objected that this country would not consent to hand over territory to Germany for nothing. The cession need not be for nothing. Germany gave a million pounds to Spain for the Caroline and Ladrone Islands. She would probably give far more for a further sub- stantial augmentation of her Cameroon colony, the colony for the augmentation of which she has just concluded her recent tussle with France. But Germany herself can offer a territorial quid pro quo. Germany can now have little use for her Melanesian possessions, which, with the growing power of Japan, are more and more difficult to defend. Australia would welcome with joy a British acquisition of north-eastern New Guinea and the adjacent islands, which are now in the hands of Germany. Here there would seem to be a basis for terri- torial readjustment acceptable to both Powers. Germany would acquire a more compact and impressive, as well as an actually larger, dominion than she has at present. And the larger and more imposing the German colonial empire is, the less likelihood there also is of eventual war between the two
Previous page
