Chapter III

At the same time the vital necessity of relieving Germany by an annual Auswanderung is now fully recognized. The necessity becomes daily more urgent. In Germany the birth-rate per mille has advanced to 38; in Great Britain it stands at 35, giving a yearly increase in population for the two countries of 600,000 and 400,000 respectively. Hence every walk of life is congested in the Empire, and in the lower strata of society the struggle for existence has become almost internecine. The artizans have no accumulated resources to fall back upon as in England, and the pressure of the agricultural class upon the soil, for all its thrift and economy, is fearfully severe. The struggle tells chiefly, of course, upon life in its weaker stages, and the returns of infant mortality indicate how desperate it has become, how shrunken is the margin between production and consumption, and what the terrible remedy is which Nature is constrained to supply. In populous tracts in the heart of the Empire the rate of infant mortality reaches 40, and even 45, per mille. In corresponding English districts it does not rise above 20.

For the last twenty-five years individual thinkers have proclaimed the importance of organizing German colonies to carry off this surplus population regularly, of preventing its absorption into foreign peoples, and of utilizing it for the common weal. For years their exhortations remained like the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The country was engaged in consolidating its national existence; a superficial glance revealed the fact that the more desirable spaces of the earth’s surface were filled up, and the official classes looked upon the proposal askance. Proud of the great work its industry and intelligence had already achieved, the Beamtenstand was confident of its ability to solve the newer problems by re-adjusting the relations of labor and capital, and by modifying the social organization.

The task has proved more formidable than was anticipated, and the attitude of the Socialists has disabused the bureaucracy of its confidence. In opposition even to the enticing schemes of the Iron Chancellor they show themselves determined to insist on their own inadmissible scheme of social re-construction. Nor do they manifest more favor towards the colonial panacea; some of their leaders, indeed, have denounced it in the bitterest terms, both as impracticable and as an _ignis fatuus_ likely to lead the nation astray from the true path of salvation. On the other hand, the commercial classes are warm in its support, and German conservatism generally hopes for the effect which a Greater Germany may possibly exercise in diverting the imagination of the working classes from internal Utopias.

But the difficulties in the way of establishing transmarine agricultural colonies, and this is the central aim of German aspirations, are very great. Germany has to make up the lee-way of two centuries, to recover the start which England obtained while she was torn and exhausted by recurring war. The suitable zones of the world are apparently already occupied, and neither the acquisition of islands in the Pacific, nor placing barren coasts or fever-swamps in Africa under the Imperial ægis, will serve her purpose. Popular aspirations, indeed, point to a South African Empire, incorporating the Transvaal and Cape Colony at our expense, and influential papers do not hesitate to air these aspirations. But neither these suggestions nor the more practicable demand for a Germany in South America have yet received the _imprimatur_ of responsible politicians.