Bismarck was loth to weaken his military machine by the emigration of men; and the German ideal of colonisation was not, therefore, a policy of settlement but one of commercial exploitation; inasmuch as Germany's aim was to develop home industries in order to keep in employment at home the men who formed the material of her armour. Germans were required to remain Germans; and this object it was hoped to attain by settlements in German Colonies, where compact centres of German _kultur_ could be established to teach the art of order to the remaining peopled kingdoms. The German view being that the British oversea Empire was acquired "by treachery, violence and fomenting strife," one cannot imagine, especially with her Prussian traditions, a violent disturbance of the "good German conscience" in contemplating means of attaining an object. In the first Prussian Parliament Bismarck thundered out "Let all questions to the King's Ministers be answered by a roll of drums," and, in sneering at the ballot as "a mere dice-box," he declared: "It is not by speechifying and majorities that the great questions of the day will have to be decided, but by _blood and iron_." Prussia had fought for and won her predominance; her greatness was acquired by the sword; and the Bismarck cult has prevailed in that no other means of expansion and nationalisation than by conquest presents itself to the German mind. All negotiations with foreign nations, therefore, have been conducted to the accompaniment of the rattle of the sword in the scabbard. Speaking of Colonies in his recent bombastic book, General von Bernhardi said: "The great Elector laid the foundation of Prussia's power by successful and deliberately planned wars"; and in justifying the right to make war he says: "It may be that a growing people cannot win Colonies from uncivilised races, and yet the State wishes to retain the surplus population which the mother country can no longer feed. Then the only course left is to acquire the necessary territory by war." Germany now proposed to tread the same path as England, but she had arrived late in the day and the methods whereby she purposed making up for lost time were not the methods whereby England had established herself. Behind German colonisation lies no record of great accomplishments inspired by lofty ideals and high aspirations, carried into effect by noble self-sacrifice on the part of her sons; the history conjures up no pageant of romantic emprise nor vista of perilous undertakings in unexplored parts of the globe by the spirits of daring and adventure; it holds no pulse-stirring stories of the blazing of new trails; and scattered over its pages we do not find imprints of the steps of pioneers of true civilisation, nor are its leaves earmarked with splendid memories.