It is twenty years since Germany began to build up a colonial empire in Africa, and the net result is that, after spending some hundred million dollars, she has acquired over a hundred million square miles of territory, with a sparsely scattered German population of between five and six thousand souls. A third of the adult white population is represented by officials and soldiers. Militarism is rampant everywhere, with the result that the white settler shuns German colonies as he would the plague. The keen-witted Kaiser long ago saw that empire-building in the Dark Continent could produce nothing but expense during his lifetime. [Illustration: EXHIBITION OF BODIES OF CHINESE MALEFACTORS WHO HAVE BEEN STRANGLED] "To perdition with the Monroe Doctrine, and with African tribes blind to the excellence of German-made wares," the Kaiser might have said ten years ago: "I'll have sweet revenge upon all and sundry by capturing trade everywhere--I'll make Germany the workshop of the universe. Keep your territory, if you like; I'll get the trade! Bah, Monroe Doctrine! Bah, grinning Senegambians!" The resolute Trade-Lord then turned his face to the bountiful Orient, pregnant with resource beyond the dreams of avarice, teeming with hundreds of millions of people. The East had made England dominant in the world's affairs. Keeping his soldiers at home, the Kaiser hurled a legion of trade-getters into the Far East, planting commercial outposts in Ceylon, sending a flying column of bagmen and negotiators to India and the Straits Settlements, and distributing a numerical division of business agents throughout China. The Empire of the Celestials was made the focal point of a great propaganda, openly espoused by the Emperor. It was readily demonstrated that Great Britain had no permanent control of commerce in the East, not even in her own possessions. The Teuton, for a time content with trifling profit, underbid all rivals--and orders and contracts poured into Germany. Belgian products competed only in price; and American manufacturers seemed too busy in providing goods for home use to seriously try for business in Asia--they booked orders coming practically unsought, that was about all. The Chino-Japanese conflict of a dozen years ago, although disastrous to China's army, stimulated the absorbing power of the Chinese for goods of western manufacture, and Germany sold her wares right and left.