With the destinies of Africa in the keeping of a virile race, accustomed to face great problems in no piecemeal fashion, but as a whole, vast transformations must ensue. Before their indomitable will and scientific thoroughness, the dusky savage will lay aside his ferocity, and toil joyously at the arts of peace. Under an indefatigable and intelligent administration, desert, jungle, forest, and swamp will yield their appropriate harvests. Timber, oil, cotton, rubber, tea, coffee, and every variety of raw material will gradually become available in limitless supplies. Jewels and precious metals will { 104} be dug out of the bowels of the earth. Flocks and herds will roam in safety over the rich uplands--no robber bands to drive them off; no wild beasts to tear them limb from limb; no murrain or envenomed fly to strike them down by tens of thousands. For as the armies of the Kaiser are invincible against all human foes, so also are his men of science invincible, in their ceaseless war against disease of man and beast. In the end they also will conquer in their own sphere, no less certainly than the soldier in his; for their courage is as high and their devotion faces death, or worse than death, with equanimity.
The Dark Continent, which in all its history has never known either peace or order, will then at last know both. Even the stiff-necked Africander, jealous of his antique shibboleths of freedom, will not refuse incorporation in an Empire to which the land of his forefathers will already have become bound in federal ties. And the dowry which Holland is expected to bring with her, will be not only the good will of the South African Dutch, but the rich islands of the East, where merchant-adventurers planted her flag, in days when the fleets of Rotterdam disputed, not unsuccessfully, with London herself the primacy of the seas.
Finally, there is the dream of the farthest East. This is of such simple grandeur that it may be stated in a few sentences. When the war between China and Japan came to an end in 1895 Germany, acting in concert with France and Russia, forced the victorious troops of the Mikado to forgo all the fruits of their conquest. When three years later Germany herself seized upon the reversion of Kiao-Chau, she { 105} saw a vision of an empire, greater than that which had been secured to her envied rival by the daring of Clive and the forethought of Warren Hastings. If England could hold and rule India, a mightier than England could surely hold and rule China, containing though it does a full quarter of the human race.