We see the strongest guarantee of peace for Europe in a policy of expansion. When have we exploited the embarrassments of other peoples? When Russia was at war with Japan, the Tsar was able to take his last regiment away from our frontier. We did not regard Morocco as an object of war, we looked on while East Africa was divided, while France was creating a great colonial empire of Tunis, Algiers and Morocco, while Italy occupied Tripolis, while Persia was divided between Britain and Russia into two spheres of interest—the world could always rely on the German Kaisers and the German people's love of peace. And what thanks have we had? A world of enemies.... When one awakens in this way from a beautiful dream one must not follow that dream again, must not in future believe that renunciation of a world policy will be a guarantee of permanent freedom. They grudged us the right to economic development. We thank the Chancellor for what he said yesterday concerning our security in the East and West.
German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1878-1929)
Gustav Ernst Stresemann (10 May 1878 – 3 October 1929) was a German politician and statesman who served as chancellor in 1923 for only 102 days and as foreign minister from 1923 to 1929 during the Weimar Republic. He was a co-laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Alternative Names:
Gustav Ernst Stresemann
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Stresemann, Gustav
From Wikidata (CC0)
From Antwerp to Baghdad there lies before us a large economic field in which German enterprise can develop. If we succeed in translating into reality the idea of a Central European customs agreement, which is in the air, and to which at one time Friedrich List in Germany and a man like Schäffle in Vienna devoted their energies, then the way to an understanding may be left open—and a large economic area opposed to Chamberlain's Greater Britain and the power of the United States, which would afford sufficient space for the co-existence and co-operation of the German and Austro-Hungarian national economies through the exchange of goods and through an advance towards Asia Minor, which the policy of Emperor William II has indicated and upon which German enterprise has already started through the grandiose project of the Baghdad Railway.
Despite all the obscuration of history and all the incomplete diplomatic documents... and despite all the recent systematic endeavours to represent Russia as the incendiary of the world war, those who have carefully followed the economic struggle between Britain and Germany for a long time will not in the least depart from the view that this war is in the first place an economic war between Germany and Britain and that—even though the external cause of the outbreak of war may have lain in St. Petersburg—the inward cause was Britain's jealousy of Germany's world economy.
The world is listening with bated breath to the struggle which to-day is rending the peoples of Europe to pieces. The knowledge that England is our chief enemy in this struggle is altogether good. 'On thine island, envious England, thou art the fundamental enemy.' The present world war may, in future, be described as the most gigantic economic struggle of all time. Economic in its origin, through British jealousy of the amazing development of German national and world economy, it has essentially also become a struggle waged with economic weapons and will be continued in the economic field even when the military weapons are silenced.