These colonies (the Azores, Madeira, Cape Verd, Princes Island, St. Thomas, Guinea, Angola, Mozambique) shown on the accompanying map, are of great importance to Portugal. With their two millions of square kilometres, and their 8,300,000 inhabitants, they are the still important relics of the once magnificent colonial empire of Portugal; they are accordingly an essential base for Portuguese commerce, and especially for a future commercial revival of Portugal, which the government of Lisbon is naturally anxious to promote. [Illustration: PORTUGAL AND COLONIAL PANGERMANISM.] At the very commencement of hostilities in Europe, the Germans, discounting their victory in Europe, invaded Angola, and it is only lately that the Portuguese soldiers succeeded in driving them out. Thus in point of fact a state of war has long existed between Portugal and Germany, and it is Germany that took the offensive. Hence from the outset the Portuguese government has had many excellent reasons for wishing well to the cause of the Allies; and Portugal has effectively proved her good will by all the means in her power. By way of reprisals for the incessant German intrigues in Portugal itself, and for the acts of war committed on her colonial territory by the soldiers of William II., Portugal at last seized the numerous German vessels which had been interned in her ports since the outbreak of the European conflagration. Germany replied in March, 1915, by an official declaration of war, which in fact did nothing but legalize a state of things that had long existed in consequence of the German aggression on Angola. After this official rupture Portugal perfectly understood that, if she wished to save her very existence, she must range herself completely on the side of the Allies. On March 25th, 1916, the Portuguese Minister of War issued an order to the army, in which he said: “No one who has followed with patriotic anxiety the acts of Germany ever since the conference of Berlin in 1885, can doubt that her victory would involve the loss of our colonies, perhaps even of our nationality. Therefore we must all impress it clearly on our minds, that the battles now being fought in so many parts of the world touch us very closely; that this war is our war, a war for our liberty, for our independence, for the integrity of the territory of our native land, and that we should wage it wherever our forces can strike the heaviest blow at the power of Germany. The hatred of our barbarous foes, the Germans, should pervade every heart, and that it may strike root and penetrate into the army, it is necessary to explain to the soldiers the reasons of the war, to enumerate the injuries that have been done us by the Germans, and to set forth clearly the intentions and schemes which Germany cherishes in regard to small nations, like Belgium, Serbia, and Portugal.”