Kinderlen-Waechter was serious.
"It has got to be done."
There were other snatches, all bearing on the same subject, and
gradually the situation began to clarify in my mind. It was not,
however, until I had noted the contents of certain documents before
destroying them that the tremendous importance of the big stakes they
were all playing for became apparent. What I shall now do is to
reveal the substance of these documents, coupling them with overheard
conversation, thus interpreting the full significance of the
conference.
Within the last twenty-five years Germany has so enormously advanced
in commerce that she urgently needs some further outlet on a northern
seacoast. This means Holland and Belgium. Hamburg and Bremen are the
only two practical harbors that Germany possesses for the distribution
of her enormous export. The congestion in both places is such that
steamers wait for weeks to load. One-quarter of Germany's exports
goes through Antwerp. Germany must have Antwerp. Practically the
whole of southern Germany's commerce, especially along the Rhine and
the highway of the Rhine, pours into a foreign country at present.
Germany must have Antwerp--in fact, the whole coast, Amsterdam and
Rotterdam included.
The empire wants harbors, not colonies. The colonizing idea is a
fallacy. Germany is, first and last, a manufacturing country. It
never was and never will be, for a long time to come, a successful
colonizer.
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