in Cameroon and gave Germany the southern shores of the Muni estuary. In the east the additions to Cameroon included two tongues of land which gave the protectorate direct access to the Congo river and its great northern tributary the Ubangi.
The Mittel Afrika scheme foreshadowed in 1911 aimed at se- curing Germany's supremacy, primarily economic and ultimately political, in central equatorial Africa. The aim was to reserve the Belgian Congo, Angola and Mozambique N. of the Zambezi as a German sphere and thus to link up Cameroon with the South-West and East Africa protectorates. German industries had need of the raw material tropical Africa produces, and moreover southern Angola was a good field for European settle- ment. British statesmen were not unfavourable to German expansion in equatorial Africa so long as it was confined to the economic sphere. In 1898 the year of Fashoda Mr. A. J. Balfour and Count Hatzfeldt had concluded an agreement which divided Angola and Mozambique into zones in which Britain and Germany respectively were to give financial and economic assistance to the Portuguese. This agreement was capable of various interpretations and in the following year (1809) another agreement, known as the Treaty of Windsor, renewed the ancient Anglo-Portuguese alliance, the object being to reassure Portugal that the Balfour-Hatzfeldt agreement was not in derogation of her sovereign rights in Africa. Neither the agree- ment with Germany nor that with Portugal was published.
After the settlement of the Morocco crisis of 1911 Germany endeavoured to come to a further understanding with Great Britain. Negotiations in regard to the Portuguese colonies in Africa were reopened by Baron Marschall, then ambassador to Britain, and were energetically taken up by Prince Lich- nowsky, who came to London as ambassador in Nov. 1912. A new agreement was drawn up and its terms fixed. It affirmed the intention of the signatories to respect the sovereign rights of Portugal and went on to delimit the region in which each party was, as far as the other party was concerned, to have a free hand in respect to economic development. By Prince Lichnowsky, and by the German Foreign Office, the new agree- ment was looked upon as a stepping-stone to political rights in the regions concerned. By this agreement the whole of Angola up to long. 20 E. became a German sphere, together with the cocoa-producing islands of San Thome and Principe. On the E. coast the whole of Mozambique province N. of the river Likungo also became a German sphere. 1 Originally Belgian Congo was, according to Lichnowsky, to have been included in the agreement, but Germany refused the offer " out of alleged respect for Belgian sensibilities."
In Aug. 1913 the agreement was ready for signature. But Sir Edward Grey, then British Foreign Minister, made it a condition of signing that the 1898 and 1899 agreements as well as the new agreement should be made public, with the obvious object of again reassuring Portugal. The German Foreign Office objected to publication, as detrimental to negotiations for concessions then proceeding with Portugal, and, as Herr von Jagow (then Foreign Secretary) said, because the German press would regard the terms of the Treaty of Windsor and the Lichnowsky agreement as contradictory. Von Jagow said that publication of the agreement would be better delayed until the Bagdad railway treaty which was looked upon as a genuine triumph for Germany could also be published. In July 1914 German consent to the publication of the agreement was given but before the document could be signed the World War had begun.
During the period of these Anglo-German negotiations the French in Morocco, under Gen. Lyautey as resident general, had adopted both a bold and conciliatory policy and had won the respect of the majority of the Moors; the French also steadily developed their West African colonies and had brought under control the region between Lake Chad and the Nile basin.
1 The Likungo lies about 120 m. N. of the Zambezi. The Zambezi valley and all the territory S. to and including Delagoa Bay was reserved as the British sphere. Britain already had the right of preemption over Delagoa Bay.
In the German colonies there was likewise considerable develop- ment, notably in the building of railways. It was a period too of material development in the British colonies and of prosperity in Egypt and the Sudan, accompanied in Egypt by manifestations in favour of self-government. In South Africa the alliance of Dutch and British, which had brought about union, had been followed by a reaction among a section of the Dutch, but the majority of the people followed the Prime Minister, General Botha, and his colleagues in their loyal adherence to the British connexion. When the World War broke out it was found that the German authorities in South-West Africa had maintained for years clandestine relations with a number of Boer leaders and that they counted, at the least, on South Africa's neutrality in the war; Germany had also established relations with elements in North Africa inimical to France and Great Britain.
But the British command of the sea rendered it impossible when hostilities began for Germany to succour her colonies. And this led to proposals for neutrality in various parts of Africa. The first such proposal was made, on instructions from Berlin, by the acting-governor of Togoland to the French and British authorities on Aug. 4 and 5, reasons of humanity and the presumed need of the white races to exhibit solidarity in face of the negroes being alleged. This proposal, purely local in scope, was not entertained (see TOGOLAND). Later in the month Aug. 23 Germany made an offer of neutrality in the conventional basin of the Congo as defined in Article I. of the Act of the Berlin Conference of 1884-5. The Congo Free State, in accordance with the permission given by Article X. of the Act, had proclaimed its perpetual neutrality, and when the Free State became a Belgian colony the obligation of neutral- ity was retained. No other state exercising jurisdiction within the conventional basin of the Congo had, however, exercised the option given by Article X. of proclaiming its neutrality within that area, which included besides Belgian Congo about half of French Equatorial Africa, a third of Cameroon, all German East Africa, all British East Africa, all Uganda, all Nyasaland, Mozambique N. of the Zambezi, a small part of Northern Rhodesia and the northern part of Angola. Belgium had desired to preserve neutrality in the Congo. At the outbreak of the war M. Fuchs, governor-general of Belgian Congo, had been in- structed to observe a strictly defensive attitude, and on Aug. 7 M. Davignon, then Belgian Foreign Minister, asked the British and French Governments if they intended to proclaim the neutrality of their territories in the conventional basin of the Congo. The bombardment of Dar es Salaam by British warships on Aug. 8 was a sufficient demonstration of the British attitude; but at first the French Government seemed disposed to entertain the proposal; so the Belgian minister in Paris informed M. Davignon on Aug. 9. But the French commander in Equatorial Africa had opened hostilities on Aug. 6, and on Aug. 17 Comte de Lalaing, Belgian minister in London, informed M. Davignon that neither Great Britain nor France could adopt his suggestion.
Hostilities in the conventional basin of the Congo had thus been proceeding for over two weeks when Germany made her neutrality offer; on the day before it was made the Germans in East Africa had committed the first act of war in the Belgian Congo by bombarding Lukuga, a port on Tanganyika. The German demarche was made by Herr Zimmermann, Under- secretary in the Foreign Office, to Mr. Gerard, the American ambassador in Berlin, in a note which asked the aid of the United States to procure the neutralization of the conventional basin of the Congo. In a later note, dated Sept. 15 1914, Herr Zimmermann stated that Germany's object was " to prevent an aggravation of the war which could serve no purpose," which was not the view of Von Lettow Vorbeck, the German commander in East Africa, " while prejudicial to the community of culture of the white race." The Department of State at Washington confined itself to forwarding the German notes, without comment, to the governments concerned. Spanish aid was also sought by Germany. But France and Great Britain refused to entertain the proposals, while, the Belgian Congo
