Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/71

 life has become international, the policy of the German Empire has become international Industry, commerce, and the shipping trade have transformed the old industrial life of Germany into one of international industry, and this has also carried the Empire in political matters beyond the limits which Prince Bismarck set to German statecraft."[36]

From the German point of view, the call to German imperialism was clearly urgent, but the resources of German imperialism were seriously limited. The colonial ventures of the Empire had culminated in no outstanding successes and in some outstanding failures. Entering the lists late, the Germans had found the spoils of colonial rivalry almost completely appropriated by those other knights errant of white civilization, French, British, and Russian empire-builders. The few African and Asiatic territories which the Germans did succeed in acquiring were extensive in size, but unpromising in many other respects. With the exception of German East Africa the colonies were comparatively poor in the valuable raw materials so much desired by the factories of the mother country; they were unimportant as producers of foodstuffs. Attempts to induce Germans to settle in these overseas possessions were singularly unsuccessful. On the other hand, colonial enterprises had involved the empire in enormous expenditures aggregating over a billion marks; had precipitated a series of wars and military expeditions costing the nation thousands of lives and creating a host of international misunderstandings; had won for Germans widespread notoriety as poor colonizers, as tactless and autocratic officials, as ruthless overlords of the natives. It was no wonder that the German people seemed to be thoroughly discouraged and discontented with their colonial ventures.

However, even had the German colonies been richer