[Sidenote:  Possible Belgian and British routes.]

[Sidenote:  Tropical Africa a great problem in world politics.]

Three routes are possible, one wholly Belgian, one partly British and partly Belgian, and one wholly British.  That is on the assumption that German East Africa remains British after this war.  The Belgian project is to construct the railway from the Congo bend at Stanleyville over the gold-fields at Kilo to Mahagi on Lake Albert.  The British project would be to construct a line from the south of Elizabethville to Bismarckburg, at the south of Lake Tanganyika, to proceed thence by steamer to Ujiji, thence by the existing railway to Tabora, to construct a line from Tabora to Mwanza on Lake Victoria Nyanza, and a line from Entebbe on that lake to Butiabwa, on Lake Albert.  The third or mixed Belgian-British line would proceed by way of Butiabwa, Entebbe, Mwanza, Tabora, and Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, but from there would make use of the existing line to Kabalo on the Congo.  It is probable that by one or other of these three routes through communication from South Africa to the Mediterranean may be established within the next ten years.  With this vital industrial aspect of tropical Africa there is wrapped up the equally important political aspect, and these two problems are certain to make of tropical Africa one of the great problems of future world politics.

[Sidenote:  Germans have no colonists to spare.]

Now, the Germans are not in search of colonies after the English model, and those that they have in East and West Africa had no white population to speak of before the war.  Quite apart from the fact that tropical Africa would be no suitable territory for white settlement, they have no colonists to spare, since for the sake of their industrial and military future in Germany they desire the largest concentration of population possible in the fatherland.  As Baron von Rechenberg, formerly governor of German East Africa, has expressed it: 

“Just as we lack suitable land for settling, so we lack suitable German settlers....  For a number of years immigration into Germany has been much greater than emigration from Germany....  Even in times of peace German agriculture had not a surplus, but a shortage, of labor, and it cannot possibly accord with our interests to increase the shortage by encouraging emigration....  Regrettable though it is, there can be no question at the conclusion of peace of acquiring territory for settlement.  There is no appropriate country, and there are no farmers to settle on it.”

[Sidenote:  Germany desires not colonies but strategic positions.]

[Sidenote:  Central Africa needed to supply raw materials.]

[Sidenote:  Germany could use natives in war.]