The like applies, of course, to all that fringe of subsidiary and outlying peoples on whom Imperial Germany relies for much of its resources in any warlike enterprise.

Such a move also disposes of the colonial question in a parenthesis, so far as regards any special bond of affiliation between the Empire, or the Fatherland, and any colonial possessions that are now thought desirable to be claimed.

Under neutralisation, colonies would cease to be "colonial possessions," being necessarily included under the general abrogation of commercial discriminations, and also necessarily exempt from special taxation or specially favorable tax rates.
Colonies there still would be, though it is not easy to imagine what would be the meaning of a "German Colony" in such a case.

Colonies would be free communities, after the fashion of New Zealand or Australia, but with the further sterilisation of the bond between colony and mother country involved in the abolition of all appointive offices and all responsibility to the crown or the imperial government.

Now, there are no German colonies in this simpler British sense of the term, which implies nothing more than community of blood, institutions and language, together with that sense of solidarity between the colony and the mother country which this community of pedigree and institutions will necessarily bring; but while there are today no German colonies, in the sense of the term so given, there is no reason to presume that no such German colonies would come into bearing under the conditions of this prospective regime of neutrality installed by such a pacific league, when backed by the league's guarantee that no colony from the Fatherland will be exposed to the eventual risk of coming under the discretionary tutelage of the German Imperial establishment and so falling into a relation of step-childhood to the Imperial dynasty.
As is well known, and as has by way of superfluous commonplace been set forth by a sometime Colonial Secretary of the Empire, the decisive reason for there being no German colonies in existence is the consistently impossible colonial policy of the German government, looking to the usufruct of the colonies by the government, and the fear of further arbitrary control and nepotic discrimination at the pleasure of the self-seeking dynastic establishment.