26 
LAND c\- WATER 
May 25, 1916 
neglected. Garrisons and plantations have been created, 
but not daughter states ; and garrisons and plantations 
are not destined to endure, for they are never deep 
enough in the soil. 
Further, the German colonies, being what they were, 
were a constant menace to their neighbours. If one man 
is digging trenches to drain his farm, and anotlior digs 
to make the foundations of a fort, there is nothing in 
common between the two and no possibility of harmoni- 
ous neighbourship. All Germany's activities have in late 
years been given a military purpose, and competition in 
the old fair sense was impossible. The State used its 
credit to build up great industries and establish shipping 
lines, and often money was spent lavishly from whicli 
there could be no purely economic return. All this was 
legitimate enough, but it naturally gave other colonising 
powers matter for thought. Just as in private business 
the British and French merchant felt that the German 
was not competing with him on fair terms, since he had 
his Government behind him, so in colonisation it was 
perceived that Germany did not run for the proper stakes 
or play the game by the recognised rules. 
The Military Purpose 
The truth is that the genuine colonising impulse which 
existed in Germany about 1880 had utterly disappeared 
during the past decade. The German colonies had become 
part of the Pan-Germanist propaganda, like the Baghdad 
Railway or the fortress of Tsing-Tau. Tiicy represented 
one side of the plan of expansion, as the control of Meso- 
potamia represented the otiicr. There was this ditfercnce 
between the two, that while the extension south-eastward 
of the Central European Powers might be possible by 
military strength-only, the maintenance of armed colonies 
demanded a navy. Again and again the enthusiasts of 
the Navy League used the colonial argument to support 
their pleas ; (Jermany in her effort after Weltmacht must 
have her oversea garrisons and an omnipotent navy was 
needed as a link between them. Given that navy, their 
strategic value would have been great. German East 
Africa was on the southern flank of the road to India as 
iMesopotamia was on the northern. With German in- 
fluence on both sides of the great waterway to the East, 
the most vital interests of Britain would have been 
menaced. The Drang nach Osten was largely and subtly 
conceived. 
Professor Haeckel looks forward to the restoration ot 
the German colonies in Africa and their vast aggrandise- 
ment. His dream can only come true if the Allies are 
beaten to the ground. If the AUies win there can be 
no question of handing back African territory. It is 
not only that our own African colonies would strenuously 
oppose it ; the thing is forbidden by Imperial strategy, 
by our knowledge of what (iermany aimed at, and of the 
purpose which she destined her colonics to serve. 
She has never shown the colonising spirit. As there is 
an honourable camaraderie among pioneers in wild 
countries, so there is a certain freemasonry among those 
Powers which have experimented in colonisation. Their 
object is to make a garden of the desert, to create a new 
laod which, while owing allegiance to the Motherland, 
shall yet be free to follow its own natural development 
and shall be administered for its own advantage. If a 
tropical colony, it owes duties to the soil and the former 
inhabitants ; if a white man's land, it seeks settlement 
and the advent of a new nation. But a colony which 
is used as an armed post and as a point of vantage in some 
great strategical game, is outside this comity. It is 
eternally a spy, an alien, and a potential disturber of the 
peace. During its life it will be regarded with just 
suspicion, and its end will be unlamented. 
The Man and the Machine 
By G. K. Chesterton 
IT is ob\-ious that war will probably punish the 
particular neglects of peace ; and England in this 
war has suffered sharply from the principal neglect 
in Englisli education. I mean the almost complete 
neglect of history, even of English history. But even 
our ignorance of the historic would have been less disas- 
trous if it had not been overweighted with two affectations' 
of cheap culture ; the prehistoric and what I may call the 
post-historic. 
Our philosophers in fact and fiction were almost entirely 
occupied with a remote past and a remote future. In 
other words, they were exclusively concentrated on 
what everybody has forgotten or on what nobody can 
foresee. For instance, the merest magazine-writer could ' 
tell- us that all men were once cannibals ; which is ex- 
tremely doubtful. Or he might very probably tell us 
that all men will eventually be vegetarians ; which is 
even more doubtful. But if you asked such a man so 
cogent and fundamental a question as whether the food 
of the English populace has been really cheaper in 
mediaeval or modern times, you would lind that he had 
not looked even for the materials of a decision. Yet it 
is hardly an exaggeration to say that this involves the 
whole question of whether the chief change in our history 
has been for the better or the worse. To neglect such real 
things, and live in remote things, is to breathe tlie air 
of falsehood and prepare the penalties of mere comfort. 
Our tales about the past were told at random, in the con- 
Jidence that dead men tell no tales. And in our tales 
about the future we wallowed in prophecies, which we 
knew,>ve should not live to see falsified. 
Among these fairy-tales, at once prehistoric and pro- 
phetic, is one which we are luckily losing in the deadly 
disillusionment of war. It may be called the legend of 
the Teutonic Race ; or the fairy-tale of the two golden- 
haired brothers. These two blonde and beautiful persons, 
the Englishman and the German, were twins m some 
prehistoric perambulator and were destined to embrace 
again at some far-off family party, having only been 
separated in the interval bv the one being occupied in 
annexing the whole of the earth and the other the whole 
of the sea. Other groups and institutions, such trifles 
as the Roman Empire, the French Revolution, the melting- 
pot of America and what can only be called the continent 
of Russia— these things did not exist at all, except as 
things to be annexed. It is legitimate, I think, to be 
proud of having really artistic dreams ; and it has not 
disadvantages, except that in order to dream we must 
sleep. And we awoke when the knife was at our throat. 
\yhen we sought for our brother we saw the face of a 
stranger, and looked into the eyes of a savage. 
The truth is that no two men, neither of them literally 
black or literally naked, could well be more different than 
the two types which have come to stand for England and 
for Germany. It is the islander against the inlander, the 
amateur against the specialist, the eulogist of a hberty 
falling into laxity against the eulogist of a discipline 
driven to terrorism, the heir of a ruined Roman province 
against the chief of a half-baked and hardly baptised 
tribe, the wanderer whose winnings have all been at 
the ends of the earth against the plodder who has laid 
field to field, and taken his provinces from his nearest 
neighbours. The perception of this contrast is no mere 
recoil due to the war ; it has long been apparent to those 
who preferred European history to Teuton mythology. 
Its solidity can be proved by the fact that the contrast 
holds in the weaknesses as in the merits of England. 
No two types are more different than the shame- 
faced snob and the entirely shameless slave. It is true 
that too many English citizens merely try to be gentle- 
men ; it cannot be said that even German aristocrats 
try to be anything of the kind. We should not now 
put forward George IV. as the flower of our national 
heroes. But the First Gentleman of Europe was, in 
this true and traditional sense, a gentleman ; that his 
very vices were obliged to be munificent. It may be that 
Frederick the Great was the first man of Europe, and 
that this is a greater thing ; but it remains true that 
his very virtues were obliged to be mercenary. 
It is tnie that the English cult of commerce and private 
