It is instructive to recall the methods by which Germany acquired her African possessions, if only for the partial answer it provides to the question as to what the Allies intend to do with them. It is absolutely certain that however the Allies agree to dispose of the four colonies in question, they will never be restored to Germany, notwithstanding the fact that Herr Dernburg has committed the Emperor to the pledge that he will never consent to make peace except on terms which include their surrender. Germany got into Africa as a burglar effects an entrance into a well-stored building, but it is not because her gains were ill-gotten that she will be deprived of them. Having experimented in the civilisation of natives for three decades, she has revealed an utter inability to colonise for the benefit of mankind, but the hopeless failure of the German system of imposing her rule upon subject races, is not the reason why she will henceforth be debarred from participation in the work of civilising the world. The colonial possessions of Germany, as well as of England, France and Belgium, form part of the stakes for which all Europe is in arms, and they will become the spoils of the conquerors. As the Imperial Chancellor has announced, the future of the Cameroons will be decided not in West Africa, but in another theatre of war. Germany’s explanation of her desire to acquire colonies was based upon her need for extra territory capable of supporting her growing population. For this purpose she acquired East Africa, and immediately set about the task of raising, equipping and drilling a large force of black troops. She seized the French Cameroons, and at once increased the handful of natives which the French had found sufficient for the maintenance of order in the colony, to an army of 1,550 black and 185 white troops, and she had planned the formation of additional corps of mounted infantry, and the rearming of all the troops with modern rifles. As soon as wireless telegraphy became a practical means of communication, a wireless station was installed in Togoland which rendered the little colony of inestimable potential value from a military point of view, while in South-West Africa, the extent and completeness of her defensive and offensive preparations, is abundant proof that the real value to Germany of this territory lay in the proximity of the region to the Boer States, disaffected to Great Britain. “The land was not taken for _bona fide_ colonisation,” wrote the Rev. William Greswell over thirty years ago, “only as a _point d’appui_.” Germany pushed forward her military preparations in East, West and South Africa, as she did in Prussia, because she had convinced herself of England’s ultimate inability to hold India, Egypt and her colonial dominions. Her professors assured the Kaiser and his junker parasites, that the English had lost both “the qualities of creative genius in religion and the valour in arms of a military caste”, that we