THE ECONOMICS OF THE CASE

She would soon find that she had a ruined Colony on her hands. If in South Africa the sturdy Dutch and English stock did not produce a George Washington with a better material and moral case for independence than George Washington ever had, then history has no meaning. If it costs England a billion and a quarter to conquer Dutch South Africa, what would it cost Germany to conquer Anglo-Dutch South Africa? Such a policy could not, of course, last six months, and Germany would end by doing what Great Britain has ended by doing—she would renounce all attempt to exact a tribute or commercial advantage other than that which is the result of free co-operation with the South African people. In other words, she would learn that the policy which Great Britain has adopted was not adopted by philanthropy, but in the hard school of bitter experience. Germany would see that the last word in colonial statesmanship is to exact nothing from your Colonies, and where the greatest colonial power of history has been unable to follow any other policy, a poor intruder in the art of colonial administration would not be likely to prove more successful, and she, too, would find that the only way to treat Colonies is to treat them as independent or foreign territories, and the only way to own