Note 661 — Chapter XI · —The Anthropo-Geography Of Rivers

The only satisfactory solution is undivided political ownership. After France pushed eastward to the Rhine in 1648, she warred for three centuries to acquire its mouth. Napoleon laid claim to Belgium and Holland on the ground that their soil had been built up by the alluvium of French rivers. Germany's conquest of Schleswig-Holstein in 1864 was significant chiefly because it dislodged Denmark from the right bank of the lower Elbe, and secured undivided control of this important estuary. The Rhine, which traverses the Empire from north to south and constitutes its greatest single trade route, gives to Germany a more vital interest in Holland than ever France had. Her most important iron and coal mines and manufacturing industries are located on this waterway or its tributaries, the Ruhr, Mosel, Saar and Main. Hence the Rhine is the great artery of German trade and outlet for her enormous exports, which chiefly reach the sea through the ports of Belgium and Holland. These two countries therefore fatten on German commerce and reduce German profits. Hence the Empire, by the construction of the Emden-Dortmund canal, aims to divert its trade from Rotterdam and Antwerp to a German port, and possibly thereby put the screw on Holland to draw her into some kind of a commercial union with Germany.661 Heinrich von Treitschke, in his "Politik," deplores the fact that the most valuable part of the great German river has fallen into alien hands, and he declares it to be an imperative task of German policy to recover the mouth of that stream, "either by a commercial or political union." "We need the entrance of Holland into our customs union as we need our daily bread."662