Such misunderstandings are not devoid of danger in times of peace; they may become pregnant with fate when, as in our day, the leading nations of the earth stand at the threshhold of a great change in their history.  I am anxious, therefore, to defend against objections raised with more or less intentional misunderstanding the thoughts which I expressed in my recently published essay, “A Central European Union of States as the Next Goal of German Foreign Policy.”

Let us for once put aside the word “Imperialism.”  Surely we are all agreed as one that it is an absolute essential of life for the German Empire to carry on world-politics, (Weltpolitik.) We have been engaged in that since the eighties of the nineteenth century.  The first colonial possessions which the German Empire obtained were the fruits of a striving for world-politics that had not yet at that time come to full and clear consciousness.

But, conscious of our goal, we did not attempt the paths of world-politics until the end of the last century.  At the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the German Empire, on Jan. 18, 1896, our Kaiser uttered the words:  “The German Empire has become a world empire, (Aus dem deutschen Reich ist ein Weltreich geworden.)” And the German Empire’s groping for its way in world-politics found its expression in the first naval proposal of Tirpitz in the year 1898.

At that time the Imperial Chancellor Prince Hohenlohe expressly designated the policy of the German Empire as “world politics.”  Thereby a goal was sketched for the development of the German Empire.  We have not lost sight of it since then, keeping unconfused despite many an illusion and many a failure.  And today we all live in the firm faith that the world war, which we are determined to bring to a victorious conclusion by the exertion of all our forces as a people, will bring us the safe guarantee for the attainment of our goal in world politics.

On that score, then, there is absolutely no difference of opinion.  But there does appear to be considerable difference of opinion as to the conception of world politics.  Under that name one may mean a policy directed toward world domination (Weltherrschaft.) For that kind of world politics the word “Imperialism,” borrowed from the period of Roman world domination of the second century of the Christian era, fits precisely.

Imperialism aims, directly or indirectly, through peaceful or forceful annexation or economic exploitation, to make the whole inhabited earth subject to its sway.  Imperialistic is the policy of Great Britain, which has subjected one-fifth of the inhabited area of the earth to its sway and knows no bounds to the expansion of English rule.  Imperialistic, too, is the policy of Russia, which for centuries has been extending its huge tentacles toward the Atlantic and toward the Mediterranean, the Pacific, and the Indian Oceans, never sated.

Such world domination has never endured permanently; it can endure least of all in our days, in which an array of mighty armed powers stand prepared to guard their independence.  World domination sooner or later leads inevitably to an alliance of the States whose independence is threatened; and thereby it leads to the overthrow of the disturber of the peace.  That, as we all confidently hope, will be the fate of England as well as of Russia in the present war....