In the ’nineties there seemed also to be hope in South Africa, where use might be made of the strained relations between Britain and the Boer Republics.  German South-West Africa formed a convenient base for operations in this region:  it was equipped with a costly system of strategic railways, far more elaborate than the commerce of the colony required.  There is no doubt that President Kruger was given reason to anticipate that he would receive German help:  in 1895 (before the Jameson Raid) Kruger publicly proclaimed that the time had come ’to form ties of the closest friendship between Germany and the Transvaal, ties such as are natural between fathers and children’; in 1896 (after the Jameson Raid) came the Emperor’s telegram congratulating President Kruger upon having repelled the invaders ’without recourse to the aid of friendly powers’; in 1897 a formal treaty of friendship and commerce was made between Germany and the Orange Free State, with which the Transvaal had just concluded a treaty of perpetual alliance.  And meanwhile German munitions of war were pouring into the Transvaal through Delagoa Bay.  But when the crisis came, Germany did nothing.  She could not, because the British fleet stood in the way.

South America, again, offered a very promising field.  There were many thousands of German settlers, especially in southern Brazil:  the Pan-German League assiduously laboured to organise these settlers, and to fan their patriotic zeal, by means of schools, books, and newspapers.  But the Monroe Doctrine stood in the way of South American annexations.  Perhaps Germany might have been ready to see how far she could go with the United States, the least military of great powers.  But there was good reason to suppose that the British fleet would have to be reckoned with; and a burglarious expedition to South America with that formidable watchdog at large and unmuzzled was an uninviting prospect.

In the Far East the prospects of immediate advance seemed more favourable, since the Chinese Empire appeared to be breaking up.  The seizure of Kiao-chau in 1897 was a hopeful beginning.  But the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902 formed a serious obstacle to any vigorous forward policy in this region.  Once more the British fleet loomed up as a barrier.

Yet another dream, often referred to by the pamphleteers though never brought to overt action by the government, was the dream that the rich empire of the Dutch in the Malay Archipelago should be acquired by Germany.  Holland herself, according to all the political ethnologists of the Pan-German League, ought to be part of the German Empire; and if so, her external dominions would follow the destiny of the ruling state.  But this was a prospect to be talked about, not to be worked for openly.  It would naturally follow from a successful European war.