[Footnote E: Hanotaux, "Fashoda et le partage de l'Afrique."]

The same statesman criticized, with ill-concealed hatred, the German
policy: "It will be for history to decide what has been the leading
thought of Germany and her Government during the complicated disputes
under which the partition of Africa and the last phase of French
colonial policy were ended. We may assume that at first the adherents to
Bismarck's policy saw with satisfaction how France embarked on distant
and difficult undertakings, which would fully occupy the attention of
the country and its Government for long years to come. Nevertheless, it
is not certain that this calculation has proved right in the long-run,
since Germany ultimately trod the same road, and, somewhat late, indeed,
tried to make up for lost time. If that country deliberately abandoned
colonial enterprise to others, it cannot be surprised if these have
obtained the best shares."

This French criticism is not altogether unfair. It must be admitted with
mortification and envy that the nation vanquished in 1870, whose vital
powers seemed exhausted, which possessed no qualification for
colonization from want of men to colonize, as is best seen in Algeria,
has yet created the second largest colonial Empire in the world, and
prides herself on being a World Power, while the conqueror of Gravelotte
and Sedan in this respect lags far behind her, and only recently, in the
Morocco controversy, yielded to the unjustifiable pretensions of France
in a way which, according to universal popular sentiment, was unworthy
alike of the dignity and the interests of Germany.

The openly declared claims of England and France are the more worthy of
attention since an _entente_ prevails between the two countries. In the
face of these claims the German nation, from the standpoint of its