“The German Empire becomes a world-empire.  Everywhere in the farthest parts of the earth live thousands of our fellow-countrymen.  German subjects, German knowledge, German industry cross the ocean.  The value of German goods on the seas amounts to thousands of millions of marks.  On you, gentlemen, devolves the serious duty of helping me to knit firmly this greater German Empire to the Empire at home.”

The expression “greater German Empire” immediately reminded the Englishman of his own “Greater Britain,” and he concluded that the Emperor was secretly thinking of rivalling him in the extent and value of his colonial possessions.  Possibly he was, and doubtless he ardently desired to see Germany owning large and fertile colonies; but it is quite as probable he was thinking of his economic Weltpolitik, and knew as well then as he does now that it must be left to time and the hour to show whether they fall to her or not.

In the same order of ideas may be placed, though it is anticipating somewhat, the Emperor’s utterances at Aix in 1902 and three years later at Bremen.  At Aix, after describing the failure of Charlemagne’s successors to reconcile the duties of a Holy Roman Emperor with those of a German King, he continued: 

“Now another Empire has arisen.  The German people has once more an Emperor of its own choice, with the sword on the field of battle has the crown been won, and the imperial flag flutters high in the breeze.  But the tasks of the new Empire are different:  confined within its borders it has to steel itself anew for the work it has to do, and which it could not achieve in the Middle Ages.  We have to live so that the Empire, still young, becomes from year to year stronger in itself, while confidence in it strengthens on all sides.  The powerful German army guarantees the peace of Europe.  In accord with the German character we confine ourselves externally in order to be unconfined internally.  Far stretches our speech over the ocean, far the flight of our science and exploration; no work in the domain of new discovery, no scientific idea but is first tested by us and then adopted by other nations.  This is the world-rule the German spirit strives for.”

At Bremen he said: 

“The world-empire I dream of is a new German Empire which shall enjoy on all hands the most absolute confidence as a quiet, peaceable, honest neighbour—­not founded by conquest with the sword, but on the mutual confidence of nations aiming at the same end.”

The Emperor’s world-policy was referred to more than once about this time by Chancellor Prince Buelow in the Reichstag.  “It is,” he said on one occasion, “Germany’s intention and duty to protect the great and ever-growing oversea interests which she has acquired through the development of conditions.”  “We recognize,” he continued,

“that we have no longer interests only round our own fireside or in the neighbourhood of the church clock, but everywhere where German industry and Germany’s commercial spirit have penetrated; and we must foster these interests within the bounds of possibility and good sense.”

“Our world-policy,” he said on another occasion in the same place,