thence by the existing railway to Tabora, to construct a line from
Tabora to Mwanza on Lake Victoria Nyanza, and a line from Entebbe on
that lake to Butiabwa, on Lake Albert. The third or mixed
Belgian-British line would proceed by way of Butiabwa, Entebbe, Mwanza,
Tabora, and Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, but from there would make use of
the existing line to Kabalo on the Congo. It is probable that by one or
other of these three routes through communication from South Africa to
the Mediterranean may be established within the next ten years. With
this vital industrial aspect of tropical Africa there is wrapped up the
equally important political aspect, and these two problems are certain
to make of tropical Africa one of the great problems of future world
politics.

[Sidenote: Germans have no colonists to spare.]

Now, the Germans are not in search of colonies after the English model,
and those that they have in East and West Africa had no white population
to speak of before the war. Quite apart from the fact that tropical
Africa would be no suitable territory for white settlement, they have no
colonists to spare, since for the sake of their industrial and military
future in Germany they desire the largest concentration of population
possible in the fatherland. As Baron von Rechenberg, formerly governor
of German East Africa, has expressed it:

"Just as we lack suitable land for settling, so we lack suitable German
settlers.... For a number of years immigration into Germany has been
much greater than emigration from Germany.... Even in times of peace
German agriculture had not a surplus, but a shortage, of labor, and it
cannot possibly accord with our interests to increase the shortage by
encouraging emigration.... Regrettable though it is, there can be no