Last among the special causes that concentrated attention on Africa was the activity of King Leopold’s Association at Brussels in opening up the Congo district in the years 1879-1882.  Everything therefore tended to make the ownership of tropical Africa the most complex question of the early part of the eighties.

For various reasons Germany was a little later than France and England in entering the field.  The hostility of France on the west, and, after 1878, that of Russia on the east, made it inadvisable for the new Empire to give hostages to Fortune, in the shape of colonies, until by alliances it secured its position at home and possessed a fleet strong enough to defend distant possessions.  In some measure the German Government had to curb the eagerness of its “colonial party.”  The present writer was in Germany in the year 1879, when the colonial propaganda was being pushed forward, and noted the eagerness in some quarters, and the distrust in others, with which pamphlets like that of Herr Fabri, Bedarf Deutschland Colonien? were received.  Bismarck himself at first checked the “colonials,” until he felt sure of the European situation.  That, however, was cleared up to some extent by the inclusion of Italy in the compact which thus became the Triple Alliance (May 1882), and by the advent to office of the pacific Chancellor, de Giers, at St. Petersburg a little later.  There was therefore the less need officially to curb the colonising instinct of the Teutonic people.  The formation of the German Colonial Society at Frankfurt in December 1882, and the immense success attending its propaganda, spurred on the statesmen of Berlin to take action.  They looked longingly (as they still do) towards Brazil, in whose southern districts their people had settled in large numbers; but over all that land the Monroe Doctrine spread its sheltering wings.  A war with the United States would have been madness, and Germany therefore turned to Polynesia and Africa.  We may note here that in 1885 she endeavoured to secure the Caroline Islands from Spain, whose title to them seemed to have lapsed; but Spanish pride flared up at the insult, and after a short space Bismarck soothed ruffled feelings at Madrid by accepting the mediation of the Pope, who awarded them to Spain—­Germany, however, gaining the right to occupy an islet of the group as a coaling station.

Africa, however, absorbed nearly all the energy of the German colonial party.  The forward wing of that party early in the year 1884 inaugurated an anti-British campaign in the press, which probably had the support of the Government.  As has been stated in chapter XII., that was the time when the Three Emperors’ League showed signs of renewed vitality; and Bismarck, after signing the secret treaty of March 24, 1884 (later on ratified at Skiernevice), felt safe in pressing on colonial designs against England in Africa, especially as Russia was known to be planning equally threatening