Simultaneously, of course, there has been a great change in the distribution of the population.  In the year 1850 65 per cent, and in 1870 47 per cent of the working population were engaged in agriculture.  By 1912 the proportion had sunk to 28.6 per cent.

It was inevitable also that Germany should share with the other Great Powers in the work of colonial government.  The adjustment of the relations between the advanced and backward races of mankind is the greatest political task of our age; it is a responsibility shared jointly between all the civilised States, and when in the ’eighties and ’nineties the vast regions of Africa were partitioned amongst them, Germany, late in the field, asserted her claims and received her share in the responsibility.

Rapid economic development and a colonial empire—­what was there in these to cause hostility between Germany and Great Britain?  The United States have passed through a similar development and have accepted a similar extension of responsibility far outside their own continent.  America is a great, a growing, and a self-respecting Power; yet Americans see no ground for that inevitable conflict of interests between their country and Great Britain which forms the theme of so many German books, from Prince Buelow’s candid self-revelations down to less responsible writers like Bernhardi.

The explanation lies in the nature of German thought and ambitions.  When Germans speak of “a place in the sun,” they are not thinking of the spread of German trade, the success of German adventure or enterprise, or of the achievements of Germans in distant lands.  They are thinking of the extension of the German State.  British influence beyond the seas has been built up during the last four centuries by the character and achievements of British pioneers.  Downing Street has seldom helped, often hindered, and generally only ratified the accomplished facts of British settlement and influence.  That is not the Prussian theory or the Prussian method.  It is for the State to win the territory, and then to set the people to work there, on lines laid down from above.  The individual Englishman, when he goes out to colonise, carries England with him, as a part of his personality.  Not so the German, at least on the Prussian theory.  “The rare case supervened,” says Prince Buelow,[1] of an instance typical of the building up of the British Empire, “that the establishment of State rule followed and did not precede the tasks of colonising and civilisation.”  The State itself, on this theory, has a civilising mission of expansion towards which it directs the activities of its citizens.

[Footnote 1:  Imperial Germany, 1st ed., p. 249.]

Under the influence of ideas such as these, Germany, since the accession of
William II., has built a Navy second to that of Great Britain alone.