My opinion is that only a great railway--one that unites the Sudan with the Atlantic, and that extends from Lake Chad to the west coast of Africa--will be in a position both to develop fully the economic interests of the Cameroons and to assure to Germany a means of access to the richest territory that Central Africa possesses. Had the line been completed as far as Lake Chad, it would have been a powerful competitor of British railways via the Nile or the Red Sea for the traffic of the Sudan, with its vast commercial possibilities; and, had it been found the better route, it might have established German commercial supremacy in this part of Central Africa, with the inevitable political developments to follow. "The German Tsâdsee-Eisenbahn," the director of the syndicate further wrote, "will, especially when it has been completed, be for the whole of Central Africa a _Kulturwerk_ of the first importance." The Germanisation of Lake Chad, combined with an eventual acquiring by Germany of French interests in the Sahara and North Africa, would further have permitted the continuation of the Tsâdsee-Eisenbahn from that lake to Algeria along the route already projected in France for a Trans-African line linking up the Mediterranean alike with the Congo and with the Rhodesian and other British railways in South Africa, via Lake Chad--a line which, it is said, would offer no great technical difficulty in construction.[70] THE CAMEROONS AND THE CONGO Another ambitious scheme was for the building of a Mittellandbahn which, crossing the Njong, would eventually link up the chief port of the Cameroons with a navigable tributary of the Congo. Here, again, the line as actually constructed has not been carried a greater distance than about 300 km. (186 miles). At one time, in fact, the original project seemed to have been abandoned; but quite recently it has been brought forward again under conditions which have a distinct bearing on what has already been said concerning Germany and Central Africa. From the views expressed by Emil Zimmermann in his "Neu-Kamerun,"[71] one gathers that in 1913 Germany was regarding with some degree of concern alike the outlook for her Tanganyikabahn, on which over £7,000,000 had been spent, and the prospective set-back to her aspirations in regard to the Belgian Congo; and Herr Zimmermann, in giving an account of the additions made to her Cameroons possessions at the expense of France, under the agreement of November 4, 1911, following on the Agadir crisis, makes certain overtures to Belgium, and follows them up with a distinct threat, should she refrain from responding to them.