German colonial aims are really not colonial, but are entirely dominated by far-reaching conceptions of world politics. Not colonies, but military power and strategic positions for exercising world power in future, are her real aims. Her ultimate objective in Africa is the establishment of a great Central African Empire, comprising not only her colonies before the war, but also all the English, French, Belgian, and Portuguese possessions south of the Sahara and Lake Chad and north of the Zambezi River in South Africa. Toward this objective she was steadily marching even before the war broke out, and she claims the return of her lost African colonies at the end of the war as a starting-point from which to resume the interrupted march. Or, rather, as appears from Count Hertling's recent pronouncement, she claims a reallocation of the world's colonies, so that she may have a share commensurate with her world position. This Central African block, the maps of which are now in course of preparation and printing at the Colonial Office in Berlin, is intended in the first place to supply the economic requirements and raw materials of German industry; in the second and far more important place, to become the recruiting-ground for vast native armies, the great value of which has been demonstrated in the tropical campaigns of this war, and especially in East Africa; while the natural harbors on the Atlantic and Indian oceans will supply the naval and submarine bases from which both ocean routes will be dominated, and British and American sea-power will be brought to naught. The native armies will be useful in the next great war, to which the German General Staff is already devoting serious attention, as appears from the book of General von Freytag, the deputy chief of the German General Staff, recently published here under the title "Deductions of the World War." [Sidenote: A great army on the flank of Asia.] The untrained levies of the Union of South Africa would go down before these German-trained hordes of Africans, who would also be able to deal with North Africa and Egypt without the deflection of any white troops from Germany; and they would in addition mean a great army planted on the flank of Asia whose force could be felt throughout the middle East as far as Persia, and who knows how much farther? [Sidenote: African natives a part of Germany's plan of conquest.]