From the beginning it was evident that the colonial enthusiasts of Germany had no intention of resting satisfied with the considerable dominions they had won, but regarded them only as a beginning, as bases for future conquests.  The colonies were not ends in themselves, but means for the acquisition of further power; and it was this, even more than the ruthlessness with which the subject peoples were treated, which made the growth of the German dominions a terrible portent.  For since the whole world was now portioned out, new territories could only be acquired at the cost of Germany’s neighbours.  This was, indeed, at first the programme only of extremists; the mass of the German people, like Bismarck, took little interest in colonies.  But the extremists proved that they could win over the government to their view; the German people, most docile of nations, could be gradually indoctrinated with it.  And because this was so, because the ugly spirit of domination and of unbridled aggressiveness was in these years gradually mastering the ruling forces of a very powerful state, and leading them towards the catastrophe which was to prove the culmination of European imperialism, it is necessary to dwell, at what may seem disproportionate length, upon the development of German policy during the later years of our period.

Filled with pride in her own achievements, believing herself to be, beyond all rivalry, the greatest nation in the world, already the leader, and destined to be the controller, of civilisation, Germany could not bring herself to accept a second place in the imperial sphere.  She had entered late into the field, by no fault of her own, and found all the most desirable regions of the earth already occupied.  Now that ‘world-power’ had become the test of greatness among states, she could be content with nothing short of the first rank among world-states; if this rank could not be achieved, she seemed to be sentenced to the same sort of fate as had befallen Holland or Denmark:  she might be ever so prosperous, as these little states were, but she would be dwarfed by the vast powers which surrounded her.  But the German world-state was not to be the result of a gradual and natural growth, like the Russian, the British or the American world-states.  The possibility of gradual growth was excluded by the fact that the whole world had been partitioned.  Greatness in the non-European world must be, and might be, carved out in a single generation, as supremacy in Europe had been already attained, by the strong will, efficient organisation, and military might of the German government.