CORRESPONDENCE.

GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES.

[To THR EDITOR OF THE " SPRCTATOR.1 Si,—In my first two letters (Spectator, December 20th and February 21st) a good deal has been said, though perhaps not so much as to prevent my returning to the subject in a final letter, on the relations of Germany with Britain. In the present letter I propose to deal with a subject which even to Englishmen is hardly less important,—the relations of Germany with the United States. As before, I begin with a list of my chief authorities :— Calwer.—"Die Meistbeginistigung der Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika," 1902.

Dix.—"Dentschland auf den Hoehstrassen des Weltwirtschafts- verkehrs," 1901 punks," Deutschlands Siedlung aber See," 1902. Halle.—"See und Volkswirtschaft," 1902.

Germania Triumphans : " Rtickblick auf die weltgeschichtlichen Ereignisse der Jahre 1900-15" (with a map of the world as redistributed according to Pan-Germanic notions in 1915), 1895.

"Nauticus."—Year-book of German maritime interests. .Pohle.--"Deutschland am Scheidewege," 1902.

•

Pollock, Sir Frederick.—" The Monroe Doctrine" in the Nine- teenth Century for October, 1902.

. Waltershausen, Sartorius von.—" Deutschland und die Handels-

politik der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika," 1898.

The keynote of this letter will be that the relations between Germany and the United States have become less easy than they had been. Although these letters are intended to deal not so much with questions of the day as with the main currents of opinion and aspiration that underlie them, I do not therefore apologise for starting with a question of recent and urgent practical importance,—the transfer, namely, of the Danish islands in the West Indies from their present owner to Germany or to the United States. The Spectator of February 21st was responsible for .the statement that "this feeling [American hostility to Ger- many] had been recently reawakened by the widespread belief that Germany used her influence [at Copenhagen] to prevent the Danes selling their West Indian colonies to the United States." Naturally, I can adduce no direct German evidence for or against the existence of an intrigue which every German in the secret would be careful to keep out of German print.

But the following quotations from two German writers of authority show that the importance, and even the urgency, of the question are fully present to the German mind :—" It would give a powerful impulse to our trade and shipping if we had a port of our own in the West Indies, with trade-emporium and coaling-station. Such an acquisition is not impossible, as the Danish islands of Sainte Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John have, in a - sense, been in the market" (Waltershausen). The same -writer goes on to say that the islands are a burden to Denmark, costing her £30,000 a year more than they bring in, and that in 1866 and 1867 they were offered for sale to the United States. A Treaty was arranged, but the Senate refused to ratify it. "Should German diplomacy at Copenhagen prove able to over- come the anti-German resistance of the Danes, now [1898] is the time for us to acquire the islands. The United States are in- volved with Spain, and have no money to spare." (The amazing childishness of this last remark makes one think that Sir Frederick Pollock is right in his scepticism as to "the alleged superior education of German publicists.") "Moreover, the States have an interest in securing Germany's benevolent neutrality" (ibid.)

My other authority, writing four years later, is less sanguine. a In St. Thomas, Denmark is mistress of an important traffic- centre, in which the greatest steamship company in the world, the Hamburg-America line, has its own docks, and which forms a first-rate base for great part of the trade with Central America, the West Indies, and the Northern States of South America. Denmark herself gets little satisfaction from her West Indian possessions. But that which is valueless to a country like Denmark may be of very considerable value to a world-Power, particularly if the island gives a footing in a region which gains essentially in importance from the future Isthmian Canal. Previous negotiations have fallen through, mainly because the United States reckoned on getting the Danish inheritance some fine day without paying for it. For the moment the Americans have enough on their hands with Cuba and Puerto Rico, but it would be excessively disagreeable to them if the Danish colonies were to fall into the hands of another Power" (Dix). The Senate may be expected to abandon its objections to purchase, if only for the sake of rounding-off the West Indian possessions of the States, as the Danish islands are separated by only a couple of hours' steaming from Puerto Rico. Till the middle of the nineteenth century the islands were rich and prosperous, but the awful storm of 1867, followed by earthquakes, cholera, and yellow fever, proved too much for them, and at present St. Thomas is kept going chiefly by the Hamburg line. Still, "the constantly recurring rumours about negotiations for purchase between Germany and Denmark have not only been expressly contradicted by our Govern- ment, but it is also in itself quite unlikely that a deal of that kind should now take place between them. We might have obtained the acquiescence of the States in such an arrangement in return for our abandonment to them of Tutuila in the final settlement of the Samoan question. Unfortunately, however, that opportunity was allowed to pass, and we must accordingly reconcile ourselves to the prospect that there is left for Germany hardly a single possible footing in front of the entrance of the future Central American Canal" (ibid.) The other quarter in which the relations of the United States and Germany may become ticklish is Brazil. After lamenting that the German emigrants to the United States are "politically wholly lost" to Germany, a well-known publicist goes on: "We could easily have created a domain of our own in Brazil, if the emigration thither had not been for a long time hindered [under the Von der Heydt Rescript] by our Government" (Dix). He admits a difficulty in the pre- dominance of the Latin element in South America, but points out that in at least one Brazilian province the German settlers are massed together and form the majority, so that "the prospect of

colonisation remains still open to us." The new Emigra- tion Law is specially designed to favour emigration to Brazil. It has called two colonisation societies into exist- ence, one of which, the Hanseatic, has obtained the con- cession for the transport of four thousand emigrants a year, besides acquiring 1,600,000 acres in the Brazilian province of Santa Catharina. The German-Brazilian Union, with its headquarters in Berlin and branches in Germany and South Brazil, devotes itself to the maintenance of the German con- nection. " It is a matter of course that German subjects in Brazil can claim the protection of the Mother-country for their rights and property, if endangered by the frequent political disturbances of the Republic ; but political relations atop at that point, and the suspicions of the Brazilian Government, which at times puts all sorts of hindrances in the way of the Germans, are devoid of foundation" (ibid.) It may be added that the Hanseatic Society has undertaken the preliminary survey for a railway from the coast inwards in the province of Santa Catharine (ibid.), and that the larger German schools in Brazil are subsidised by the German Empire (Funke). The whole effort is at present directed to nothing more than the prevention of the Brazilianisation of the Germans in Brazil. It is all quite natural; but it is also quite natural that the Brazilian Govern- ment, which has to look on at this systematic effort to prevent a large portion of its subjects from feeling themselves to be first and foremost Brazilians, should entertain "suspicions."

It will have been seen that some of these German writers ignore the Monroe doctrine. Others misunderstand it. The prevalent view is that the doctrine has a back as well as a front, a reverse as well as an obverse, and that the reverse consists in a sort of self-denying ordinance on the part of the United States, binding them not to interfere in other continents. "The inter- ference of the States with other continents which has actually taken place should make an end of the doctrine, but the Americans will not see it" (" Nauticus"). "One side of the Monroe doctrine was, no intervention outside America, and that went with the seizure of the Philippines" (ibid.) "The old Monroe doctrine, the reverse of which was non-interference outside America, is now abandoned and replaced by the formula, 'America for the Americans,'—i.e., all North, Central, and South America for the United States" (Sering in "Handels und Machtpolitik "). But Monroe's Message is plain enough. "Our policy in regard to Europe," it says, "is not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its Powers." What was meant is indicated by the state- ment that that policy "was adopted at an early stage of the wars which have so long desolated that quarter of the globe." The only conceivable pledge to which the Monroe Message commits the States is a pledge not to interfere in European wars or internal politics. That does not cover the case of Cuba or the Philippines, and even if it did, the Americans do not think so, which is all that matters. If the obverse of the Monroe doctrine is attacked—i.e., if any European Power tries to establish political sovereignty over any self-governing portion of the American Continent—the Monroe doctrine will come into play, and the 'play will be serious.

Apart from such local and temporary causes of offence as arise in e,onnectim. with Germany's real or fancied encroachments upon the Monroe doctrine, there are the large and permanent causes connected with emigration and with trade. Germany seeks to divert her emigrants from the United States, on the one hand. The United States, on the other, naturally hold that the choice of his future home should be left to the individual emigrant, and that if he prefers the United States, nothing should be done to hinder him. Francis Lieber, one of the few German-Americans who have risen to great influence in their adoptive country, and whose sympathies may be inferred from his assertion that "a German becomes much better-looking in America, more manly and intellectual "—a statement, by the way, which Trtibner, the German publisher in London, to whom it was made, capped with the reply that "a German artist in London had made the same remark with regard to the Germans in England "—wrote in 1872: "To possess a portion of the earth, to call a few acres his own, is a glorious feeling to one who for years has cultivated fields that belonged to others. You should see the Swedes in Minnesota, or the Germans in Missouri or Kansas, where they point to their 150 or 200 acres of land. The right to emigrate belongs to the earliest rights of the individual" On the other hand, we have a German writer of authority declaring that "if a new period of emigration into the Anglo-Saxon area sets in, it will seal our fate as the inferior in the world- partitions of the future" (Halle). "In the great conflict, of the future the German people, whose loss of millions of Germans to Anglo-Saxondom in the n'n .eenth century has moved the world's centre of gravity in a sense unfavourable to them, will need all inner powers of shoulders, fists, and heads, the people's power and the production-power' the fighting-power, the mind- power, and the master-power, in order to guard their rights among the peoples by land and sea" (ibid.) What " shoulders " and "fists" in favourable circumstances may mean may perhaps be gathered from the following summarised extract from a German forecast of the redistribution of the world in 1916. After a great war betwen the United States and a European combination, led by Germany, in which the States were in- variably ')eaten by ind and sea, and as a result of which the European Powers divided Central and South America between them, the Germans had to tackle the problem of emi- gration. "The attitude of the Germans living in the States during the great war was througheut an anti-German one. This

led to the passing of an Imperial Act absolutely forbidding emi- gration to the States" (" Gerraania Triumphans ").

Trade, as conducted between Germany and the United States, may not unfairly be described as a source of permanent embitter- ment. "The high protectionism of the United States causes great exasperation in Germany, and the tendency, therefore, is to sacri- fice the commercial treaties with neighbouring countries in order to have the power of putting heavy duties on American goods" (Calwer). The German export to America is coupled with low

wages and bad conditions generally for the German operative The textile export to the United States is bought by the misery of the German workers. In 1897 Germany sent the United States textiles to the amount of £5,150,000. But these goods (one-fifth of Germany's total textile export) had to be sold at much lower prices than the other four-fifths, the American duty being well over 60 per cent. Estimating the present German textile export to the States at £5,240,000, that means that the German textiles sold there must be 60 per cent. cheaper than if they were sold to England, — in other words, £2,620,000 must come off. That is, every textile operative in Germany is threatened by the American Tariff with the loss of a tenth of his yearly income" (ibid.) There is no reason, argues another German economist, to be very solicitous about export industries "which to the outward eye export goods, but in reality, owing to the conditions under which those goods are produced, export work-power, health, strength, and the lifeblood of the people" (Pohle).

Can anything be done ? Not pretended " sanitary " measures against American meat and cattle, which only annoy American farmers and provoke such reprisals as the differential treat- ment of German sugar in the Wilson Tariff (Waltershausen). Not a tariff war of Germany against the States—for that Germany is not strong enough ; but a European "combine," consisting firstly of the Powers of the Triple Alliance, and then of any smaller Powers, such as Holland, that can be induced to join it, would exercise a pressure that even the States could not resist (ibid.) The exports from the United States to Germany for the last ten years are nearly twice the exports from Germany to the United States,—X339,000,000 to £181,500,000. Therefore the greater hazard is on the side of the 'United States (Calwer). Remember that 75 per cent, of the United States export is for Europe. The States, by the admission of an American Customs official, are losing in importance as a market for Europe's exports, while Europe gains importance yearly as a market for American exports. Conclusion :—If Germany, better still, if a European combination, can brace its courage to a tariff-war, the United States will not fight (Calwer and Waltershausen).

[If this is the spirit in which the Germans propose to enter upon a struggle, commercial or military, with the United

States, heaven help them ED. Spectator.T