long they succeeded in persuading some of these novices in diplomacy to set their marks to these documents, an act which converted them into subjects of the Kaiser, and speedily secured 60,000 square miles for the German tricolour.  It is said that the Government of Berlin either had no knowledge of, or disapproved of, these proceedings; and, when Earl Granville ventured on some representations respecting them, he received the reply, dated November 28, 1884, that the Imperial Government had no design of obtaining a protectorate over Zanzibar[428].  It is difficult to reconcile these statements with the undoubted fact that on February 17, 1885, the German Emperor gave his sanction to the proceedings of Dr. Peters by extending his suzerainty over the signatory chiefs[429].  This event caused soreness among British explorers and Indian traders who had been the first to open up the country to civilisation.  Nevertheless, the Gladstone Ministry took no effective steps to safeguard their interests.

[Footnote 427:  The Partition of Africa, by J. Scott Keltie (1893), pp. 157, 225.]

[Footnote 428:  Parl.  Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1886), p. 1.]

[Footnote 429:  Ibid. pp. 12-20.]

In defence of their academic treatment of this matter some considerations of a general nature may be urged.

The need of colonies felt by Germany was so natural, so imperious, that it could not be met by the high and dry legal argument as to the priority of Great Britain’s commercial interests.  Such an attitude would have involved war with Germany about East Africa and war with France about West Africa, at the very time when we were on the brink of hostilities with Russia about Merv, and were actually fighting the Mahdists behind Suakim.  The “weary Titan”—­to use Matthew Arnold’s picturesque phrase—­was then overburdened.  The motto, “Live and let live,” was for the time the most reasonable, provided that it was not interpreted in a weak and maudlin way on essential points.

Many critics, however, maintain that Mr. Gladstone’s and Lord Granville’s diplomatic dealings with Germany in the years 1884 and 1885 displayed most lamentable weakness, even when Dr. Peters and others were known to be working hard at the back of Zanzibar, with the results that have been noted.  In April 1885 the Cabinet ordered Sir John Kirk, British representative at Zanzibar, and founder of the hitherto unchallenged supremacy of his nation along that coast, forthwith to undo the work of a lifetime by “maintaining friendly relations” with the German authorities at that port.  This, of course, implied a tacit acknowledgment by Britain of what amounted to a German protectorate over the mainland possessions of the Sultan.  It is not often that a Government, in its zeal for “live and let live,” imposes so humiliating a task on a British representative.  The Sultan did not take the serene and philosophic view of the situation that was held at Downing Street, and the advent of a German squadron was necessary in order to procure his consent to these arrangements (August-December 1885.)[430]