the Germans now found that, against an inferior foe operating in a more
restricted area, they were unable to do as well as the British army had
done. The story of the war is told elsewhere (see GERMAN SOUTH-WEST
AFRICA); it lasted well into 1908 and the Germans were indebted to the
Cape Mounted Police for material help in bringing it to an end. As it
progressed the Germans adopted many of the methods employed by the
British in their colonial wars, and they learned to appreciate more
accurately the immensity of the task which Lord Kitchener accomplished
in overcoming the guerrilla warfare in the Boer republics.
Enlarged industrial policy.
It was obviously little use acquiring colonies and creating manufactures
if German foreign trade was to be in the hands of other nations. As
early as 1881 the government had published a proposal for a subvention
to German shipping; it was criticized with peculiar energy by Bamberger
and the Free Traders; a Bill introduced in 1884 was abandoned, but in
1885 Bismarck succeeded in carrying a vote by which, for fifteen years,
four million marks could annually be devoted to helping a line of mail
steamers to the Pacific and Australia and a branch line in the
Mediterranean. An agreement was made with the Norddeutsche Lloyd, one
clause of which was that all the new steamers were to be built in
Germany; in 1890 a further vote was passed for a line to Delagoa Bay and
Zanzibar. This far from exhausts the external activity of the nation and
the government: the establishment of studentships for the study of
oriental languages enabled Germans to make their way in the Turkish and
Persian empires, and to open up a fresh market for German goods; by the
great excavations at Pergamum and Olympia Germany entered with great
distinction on a field in which the way had been shown by France and
Great Britain. The progress of technical studies and industrial
enterprise enabled Germany to take a leading place in railway and
shipbuilding, in the manufacture of military weapons, in chemical
experiments, and in electrical work.
Social reforms.
Christian socialism.
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