Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/113

Rh drainage or effluvium from the “dear old dirty Thames” affects them—something is wrong with that club anyway. Outside its walls the people are playing with politics and visionary dreams, driving, leading, or influencing into a seething pond of bewildering waters the members of that club, who are struggling and splashing to get out of it, with no idea how to do it or where to land.

The German people for long were feebly irritated and distressed at the very name of German colonies, at the very idea of being “a World Power”—it made them “nervous”; they hated trouble, were peaceable, and liked to sit down, drink beer, ruminate, and argue incessantly over England und die Englander. They had risen to a man when needed with a strong, true burst of real patriotism, fought for their country, and won. They wanted peace, and to get back into their own quiet old stodgy, peaceable ways. I remember long ago how somehow I got amongst some of their farseeing ones bent on founding new German lands, rebellious at seeing millions of Germans flocking to America and Australia to be for ever lost to their Fatherland. They wrote, spoke, urged, entreated, but no one listened.

It was all very interesting, but Bismarck would not have it. Once they wrote me: “Find us a London millionaire to come and invest his money in our pretty cocoanut plantations in one of our new African paradises, and we promise you a decoration, a pretty ribbon and order.” Of course it was more explicit than that; but whilst I was not quite sure if the decoration was for me or the millionaire, I could only say it was not good enough for either, and most certainly it would not be our money that developed any German land. Also did I find a millionaire and could do it I would