In 1878, at the Congress of Berlin, Ger many's preponderance in the affairs of Europe became patent to the eyes of the beholder. This body of delegates, embracing the foremost statesmen from the principal countries of Eu rope, was commissioned to adjust the final out come of the Russo-Turkish War. Bismarck presided at it in Jove-like style, although he publicly vindicated to himself merely the hum bler title of "the honest broker.* The Con gress ended with Russia's being stripped of nearly all the fruits of her victory, notably of her much-coveted position as arbiter in and protector of the Balkan region with its Slavic populations. It left a bitter sting behind in Russia. The Russian Prime Minister, Prince Gortchakoff, a rival of Bismarck's in the arena of high statesmanship, turned his envenomed foe, and the Russian people as a whole attrib uted chiefly to Bismarck, and far less to the British wizard, Beaconsfield, their being juggled out of their spoils at the conclave. As a mat ter of fact,, Russian enmity thenceforward be came active and, at times, virulent and embar rassing to Germany. Russia began to turn her res away from the Spree and toward the Seine. The Franco-Russian entente virtually dated from that hour of impotent chagrin. Thus, from an occasion when the new and frowning empire, founded on war and with a primarily militaristic basis, had apparently ar rived at the apogee of power and influence, from its very zenith of glorification, dates, in truth, one of the hidden springs of the great war that exploded in 1914; from a symbol of tower-like strength it became a symbol of inner weakness.
Enormous sums of money and gigantic labor were devoted by the new Germany to the per fection of her system of internal canalization. Her chief rivers, the Rhine and Elbe, Weser and Oder were thus tapped and connected with each other, and cheap water transportation con tributed greatly to traffic and trade. From one point of view the most important of these canals, viz., the one joining the Baltic to the North Sea, commonly styled the Kiel Canal, doubled the availability and striking power of the new and steadily growing German navy. It was inaugurated on 19 June 1895 amid impres sive ceremonies by the young emperor. Its construction, all told, had cost some $80,000, 000. The organization of the judicial system, to correspond in scope and competence to the duties imposed upon the empire as such, was an important task which it took years to ac complish. An imperial court was established, with its site in Leipzig, a court whose functions in most respects are not dissimilar to those of the United States Supreme Court at Washing ton. More and more uniformity of jurisdic tion became the fact. Criminal and civil pro cedure were made of one kind throughout the country as a whole. Federal laws were enacted dealing with trade organization, banking, mer chant marine, patents, etc. The Imperial Civil Code, after labors lasting for many years, was adopted and went into effect in 1900. A whole group of laws, beginning in the '80's and continuing into the new century, was framed, the so-called Sozialgesetzgebung (social bene fit legislation), having for aim the material safeguarding of the hone and sinew of the na tion — the laboring element, the skilled •toilers, the shopkeepers and smaller dealers — and started by Bismarck himself, being originally a sop thrown to these hitherto oppressed and dis affected strata of the population from which the Socialists had chiefly recruited themselves. But this type of legislation was steadily ex tended, long after Bismarck's dismissal, and attained a couple of years before the outbreak of the great war a fairly comprehensive point, as it took care of its beneficiaries in cases of non-employment, of sickness, of invalidism, of old age, of death and devoting to these pur poses (although the enforced weekly contribu tions of the toilers themselves furnished the bulk of the funds) on the part of government and employers some 250.000,000 marks annu
ally. In all some 17,000,000 of the population of Germany profit from these laws. Again, as a parallel to the already existing statutes en abling cities and towns to regulate their own municipal affairs, undisturbed by the state and nation, a body of laws was enacted conferring similar prerogatives on the rural communities. the Landgemeindeordnung. These two sets of laws have powerfully aided decentralization and local independence. Bismarck, who all his life abhorred red tape, had also initiated the latter sort of legislation.
Meanwhile the movement looking toward the acquisition of a colonial empire abroad had set in. Bismarck all his life had not favored this much. He questioned, for one thing, the fitness of the German people as colonizers. He also dreaded complications for his foreign pol icy growing out of it. He knew that at best scarcely any territories in the temperate zone, and hence capable of settling many German emigrants, were available for appropriation. Nevertheless, the current of feeling in favor of colonies, greatly promoted by the emperor, ran so high in Germany for many years that at last he was forced to yield. From 1884 on, when ever opportunity offered, the German people have seized, purchased or otherwise acquired territories for colonial purposes, the official title for such lands being Schutzgebiete, i.e., protectorates. In this way, until the war de prived her of them, Germany gradually accu mulated territory (nearly altogether located in the torrid and tropical zones) in various quar ters of the globe many times larger than her own home territory. This comprised German Southwest Africa (mostly arid soil, but the only one of her colonies in which white men can live permanently and raise families), ad joining British South Africa, next Kameroon, Togo, German East Africa, German New Guinea, the Bismarck Ardhipelago, Samoa and some smaller groups of islands, all acquired be fore or in 1890. Then she obtained the Caro lines, as well as in China the small territory of Kiaochou. Opinions are rather divided as to the kind of use made by Germany of her colo nies. Certainly, the first 20 years undeniable blunders were made. The formidable uprising of a warlike tribe in German Southwest Africa, the Hereros, and its suppression with great bloodshed and cruelty, made much talk. But on the whole it appears to be the fact that little by little — during the altogether but 30 years that Germany had to gain practical experience — in several of her larger colonies she began to be fairly successful, both as to commercial results and as to administrative methods. The oft-tested "trade follows the flag' seems to have once more held true. And certainly it seems to be also true that in some of the more valuable and larger German colonies, notably in German East Africa and in German Southwest Africa, the natives during trying war times showed as much attachment to their German overlords as they could reasonably be expected to show in a cause of which they understood nothing. Some of the intrinsically most valuable colonial lands once held by Germany were ex changed for the tiny, but in naval strategy ex tremely vital, island of Heligoland, near the mouth of the Elbe River, by the successor of Bismarck, General Count Caprivi, a complete disbeliever in German colonial aggrandizement. These were the sultanate of Sansibar and the lands of Uganda and Witu in Africa, now be longing to Great Britain.