CONTENTS
Chapter
"You may be assured that Germany will not cease to emphasise the colonial problem before her urgent and fully justified colonial demands are fulfilled." Field Marshal Goering. (German Colonial Year Book, 1939).
SHOULD WE SURRENDER COLONIES?
I
Mr. Chamberlain's Policy
Mr. Nevil Chamberlain desires peace, as we all do. He aims, he says, to bring peace to the world, and no man could have a nobler ambition, or one which would have the support of more general or more fervent prayers.
He sees, as we all do, that the threat to the world's peace comes from certain states whose peoples, essentially as peace-loving as our own, have been subdued to the control of ruling cliques having predatory policies, by whom they have been organised and equipped for war.
Reticence of the British Government
His policy of assuring peace is particularly directed to the placation of the present rulers of Germany which he rightly regards as the most formidable and the most actively predatory of these militant states. He calls it a policy for the appeasement of "Europe," and to this end he is prepared - with some important qualifications - to revert to the status quo ante bellum, and, in particular, he has been credited - or perhaps discredited should be considered as an alternative word - with the intention of negotiating for the return of some or all of the colonies lost to Germany through her defeat in the War which ended twenty years ago. It is at least true that his government has, at various times, avoided explicit statement that they would not be surrendered, which, if such a policy were not secretly being considered, had become urgently desirable, to avert the growth of false and dangerous hopes in the German mind.
It is true that, under formidable pressure, not only from the ranks of the opposition, but from many of its own supporters, the present Government gave, on December 7, 1938, a denial of such intention which was explicitly, categorically, and even emphatically phrased, and which, to anyone unfamiliar with the methods of political strategy, might seem to be sufficient and final.
A Doubtful Pledge
But a narrow examination of assurances which were the result of a prolonged Cabinet meeting, where they must have been very carefully worded, and consideration of the fact that they came from those who were repudiating, under pressure, that with which they had certainly been disposed to palter before, may lead to a less confident conclusion.
Mr. Malcolm McDonald's actual words were these:
"I do not believe that there is today any section of opinion in this country which is disposed to hand over to any other country the care of any of the territories or peoples for, whose government we are responsible either as a colonial or as a mandatory Power.
"That view has been expressed this afternoon in every part of the House, and that is the view which is shared by His Majesty's Government.
"We are not discussing this matter, we are not considering it. It is not now an issue of practical politics."
The treacherous ambiguity of this statement, apart from its general tenor, which does not improve on close examination, is, as Mr. L. S. Amery was quick to perceive, in the "now" of its final sentence, which implies, at least, that it either had been, or would become, an issue of practical politics, or perhaps both.
At the best construction, it is an admission that the present Cabinet had contemplated the possibility of such a surrender before the voice of popular indignation had warned them that they could not sustain it; at the worst, it may, with equal logic, be taken to mean that they have put the idea aside until the British public shall be in a more placable or indifferent mood.
And if this latter interpretation be wrongly held, the responsibility must be entirely at Mr. MacDonald's door, for his statement was followed by a direct question from Mr. Amery as to the meaning which that "now" might be construed to bear, which he declined to answer; and that silence may be considered to have been more significant than any words which he had previously selected to speak.
It has been argued by those who have sought to minimise the importance of the word he used and the subsequent silence which he maintained that an ordinary - political prudence will confine itself, in such pronouncements, to the present tense. It is an argument which rates the public intelligence as low as its memory is certainly short. Suppose the question had been whether it were proposed to present the Third Reich with an English county, would Mr. MacDonald have considered that "now" to be so necessary a word that he would not even discuss the possibility of its withdrawal? It is too clear that the possibilities of ultimate surrender had not left the minds of His Majesty's Government, and that, without previous consultation, he could not withdraw a word which he had been instructed to use.
Not to be "Given Away"
There have, it is true, been assurances by other members of the Government, equally emphatic in tone, that no part of the British Empire, nor any mandated territory - it is a distinction without a difference, as we shall come to see - will, under any circumstances, be "given away." But again the assurance becomes, on close examination, less conclusive than it was doubtless intended to sound. For might it not be argued with sufficient plausibility that some future surrender will be a matter of barter rather than gift? And bargains with the Third Reich - even if portions of the British Empire were suitable counters with which to play - have so far been so entirely one-sided that barter and gift have become synonymous words, so far as either can be properly applied to that which is rudely demanded, and violently taken away.
Certainly, there is no thought on the German side of giving anything in exchange which is of solid value either to us or them. At most, it might be a formula of unreliable words, from a source which has broken several of such pledges before, and has kept none. The Koelnische Zeitung (November 9, 1938) has suggested that these huge territories, with all their populations and wealth, should be handed over to German exploitation as a "generous gesture. . . thus providing the preliminary conditions for co-operation with a completely peaceful Germany."
"Stolen Property"
Another German newspaper, even more directly reflecting the opinions of Herr Hitler's Government, recently described these colonies as "stolen property." The adjective is, of course, absurd, and indeed comically so when coming from a nation which was built upon a deliberate policy of predatory wars, and calls the conqueror of Abyssinia its ally; but its significance would be hard to miss. What gratitude is to be expected for the return of stolen property? Indeed, what gratitude would be due?
And the return of these territories to a Germany which is to become "completely peaceful" in consequence - with the obvious inference that she will otherwise be liable to provoke war - is to be made in the name of justice, and not of fear. Although it is to be observed that it is only the results of one war, as affecting one country, that justice is concerned to adjust in this radical manner. It is not proposed to return New York to Holland, nor even the Cape of Good Hope; nor Louisiana to France; nor the Philippine Islands to Spain. It may even be contemplated that world-appeasement will be reached without restoring Abyssinia to the Abyssinians, although it was lost to them in a more recent war. Justice in these matters does not appear to be exactly blind, but rather to have a bad squint.
Still, Mr. Chamberlain's Government has been, and still is, disposed to entertain this policy. They may be right. They may see further than most. They may be inspired by a better faith. They may be offering us more than a moment of present ease, with a harder fate to be faced on a later day. But one thing is certain. We are on a downhill road, so that every step we take makes it more difficult to return; and it is one on which we have already gone far.
The destruction of Austria and Czechoslovakia
We have watched the destruction of Austria.
We have done more than watch, we have assisted at the destruction of Czechoslovakia, advising the victim to remain quiet as the knife entered her throat. We have even paltered with the sickening lie that the principles of self-determination controlled the event.
We cannot alter this now, if we would: and there are many of us to whom its consequences were not clear in advance, even if they are now.
It must, at least, be well to look this next question of the ex-German colonies in the face: to understand what it will involve, both to us and them.
On Feeding Tigers
There is one thing that is sure. If we surrender them, we shall have the pleasure of hearing Germany purr like a fed tiger. She will assure us that it is the last meal she will ever ask. So far as she is concerned, we may anticipate peace for a considerable period, providing we cease to interfere in matters which, she will tell us, with her usual courtesy, are no business of ours.
More than that, if we are complaisant regarding Hong Kong, and a few other distant trifles, of which most of us hardly know the names, there may be peace for us through the whole world, both next year and the year beyond. We are a rich empire. If the need arise, we can feed more tigers than one.
For those of us who love peace, it has the sound of a most pleasant dream. But to what manner of world shall we wake on the next day?
It is a question reasonably to be asked; and, if at all, it should be asked now.
Too Late for Regret
It is not merely that, if we surrender these colonies, it will afterwards be too late for regret. If we allow the issue to drift, as we are now doing, until the German people have become inflamed with expectation, it may be too late to decline without facing a war in which our allies would be fewer than might have been on an occasion which has now gone.
The was a day on which Austria might have been saved; but we let it pass.
The was a day shortly following the rape of Austria on which Czechoslovakia might have been saved. It is gone now.
We did nothing then; and when we began to bleat sympathy, it may have been too late for anything but war to have saved her from the invasion which she endured.
But let us not deceive ourselves as to what occurred. Herr Hitler, entering Krumau, boasted that he had come to a "reconquered" land, which he had won by merely baring a bloodless sword. He said nothing about equity or goodwill, for truth has an obtrusive quality; and our aversion from calling what had occurred by the right word is a shame he sees no reason to-share, and not much to pretend.
Methods of Butchering
But before the rape of Czechoslovakia he was disposed to describe what he intended to do by a smoother word; and before the colonies are surrendered to him he will be equally willing to talk about friendship, justice, and peace. If you can coax a pig through the slaughter-house door by scratching its back, is it not a natural thing to do? But after the door is locked on the inside, there will be a different scene.
A directly official statement issued (October 23, 1938) from the German Foreign Office in Berlin says that "a healthy sense of right" demands the return of colonies which were "wrongfully taken." If that contention be true, then their return is a matter of equity, which no other consideration should cause us to disregard.
But is it so? Is there a special dispensation for Germany, or is it a Nazi doctrine that all spoils of war should be periodically returned? Or perhaps she has come to see that they should never be taken at all?
A Change of Heart?
If so, she has had an extreme change of heart since she imposed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk on a conquered foe, and, in that case, her sincerity would have been admirably demonstrated by inviting Europe to consider how the severities of the treaty could be undone.
She would say that it is impossible now. Too much has altered since then. So it has. The injustices of one generation cannot be put right by the next. The past is dead. If inequities of any kind exist today, let the whole world unite to adjust them now, but they cannot be assessed by appeal to the conditions of other days. We must look at things as they are.
On these lines it is possible that Germany might advance an argument which has a more plausible sound. She might say: "Forget the past, if you will. But is it present justice that other nations should have great colonial empires, while I have none? Is it the way of peace to let such conditions endure?
An Argument to be Faced
This is an argument which has to be fairly faced, to whatever conclusion it may lead us; and in seeking its answer we may have to consider how both our colonies and those of Germany were acquired, what they have been to us, and most particularly what they now are.
We may also have to ask what, if any, disadvantages, military, political, or economic, Germany may suffer through having no such possessions.
But there is one thing to be first observed, if we have the courage to look at this question with honest impartial eyes. Such claims, such arguments, bad or good, may not be applicable to Germany alone. If present equity be the argument, then other European countries may urge that they have no colonial possessions approximating in extent or value to their own populations, or even to the relative number of the emigrants whom they send abroad.
A strict equity would give Poland a clearer claim than even Germany would be able to urge. Suppose Poland were to contend that, owing to her dismembered servitude during the nineteenth century, she had lost her opportunity of sharing in the scramble for colonial possessions which took place during that period, and that, now that her integrity is restored, she is entitled to expect that other nations, as an elementary equity, will adjust this difference? Should not France be expected to give her some part of her North African Empire, and England, being more richly endowed, perhaps Jamaica and New South Wales?
Should not Czechoslovakia, in contrast to the fate she has experienced, have been offered a portion of the Dutch East Indies, and the Belgian Congo been shared with Rumania, Sweden, Switzerland, and other comparatively uncolonied countries?
There might, even in a court of international equity, such as the world has not seen, be a negative answer, but it might be one which would apply to Germany equally. Let us consider first how our colonial empire came to be, and what it is today.
II
The British Empire Grew
The British Empire is, in some features, unlike any precedent organisation, racial, geographical, or political, within the limits of recorded history.
It is first observable that it was not made. It grew. It spread by an organic process; in which respect it is in vital contrast to the cardboard imitations which were deliberately cut out by other nations who have envied that which has been, and remains, antipathetic to their own genius.
Its nearest counterpart is the United States of America, which is not surprising, that great confederation having sprung from a most vigorous seed of the same tree.
It is a characteristic of our national temperament, which is commonly, and quite wrongly, attributed to hypocrisy by other nations who do not understand us - we cannot complain of that, often having difficulty in understanding ourselves - that we are rather ashamed than otherwise of an achievement, and a consequent world position, of which some would see occasion to boast.
We are particularly sensitive respecting the circumstances under which our ancestors entered upon and acquired these half-empty lands, and sometimes attribute to those bold-hearted pioneers degrees of moral turpitude which greatly exceed the facts.
The British Colonial Empire was not conquered by the military violences of a nation organised for aggression, as Germany certainly is today. Its acquisition was rather discouraged by successive Governments, lukewarm to its implications, and embarrassed by the problems it raised.
The Flag Followed Trade
Trade, the proverb says, follows the flag. So it may do. But it was rather the case with us that the flag followed trade. It was the enterprise of British merchants that gave us so many foot-holds in Asia; and the extension of rule in India resulted from war with French settlers and the changing alliances of its discordant factors, and gave the weak and mingled peoples of that huge peninsula a larger measure of freedom, higher standards of government, and a more settled peace than they had known from when Delhi looked up to a Turkish flag.
But was the English nation responsible or grateful for this? Warren Hastings was impeached on his return to England. So was Lord CIive.
Many colonies, including parts of South Africa, became ours as the by-products of European war.
Are Peace Treaties Lease Treaties Only?
If peace treaties can give no valid title to possession, the Cape should go back to Holland on the same day that South West Africa is returned to German. Or is there some mystic force in a demand that is made twenty years after the surrender has taken place? Is a colony taken from a defeated foe to be considered held on a twenty years' lease, becoming a permanent possession only if no demand be made at that time?
Other - and some of the most extensive and valuable - parts of our Overseas Empire were the fruits of hardy pioneering in empty lands, or of discoveries in un-charted seas.
Australia's Long-empty Land
Australia lay in a desirable, almost vacant virginity for centuries during which it might have fallen to Japanese immigration, had the seamen of that nation been bold and searching enough to enter its lonely seas.
A virile island race, which, though not indifferent to comfort, preferred to worship at the altars of nobler gods, and which had not been taught to contemn the value of its own sons, did not only seek to market its goods wherever those could be found who would barter or buy, but sent out cargoes of living men to populate these distant, desolate lands.
The history of British colonisation - which has paused during our generation, though all those who have faith in our race, and its ideals, or desire that it shall have the strength in future days on which not only its security but its peace must finally depend, will pray that it may resume - included many noble and generous episodes, and others that deserve blame, which they have not failed to receive in our own tongue.
Pioneering Records
There are rough pioneering records of those who did not stint their own blood, nor, under provocation, to shed that of others. They commonly endured a two-fold struggle against the savage nomads of half-vacant lands, and the indifference or hostility of Home Governments, which would not give them support.
They are imperfect records of human heroisms, failures or faults, which are eternally unchangeable now. What was wrong we should not aim to condone. But it might be difficult to find, in the whole long confused record of British Colonisation, an parallel to the cold-blooded plot by which the present Italian government prepared for the destruction of Abyssinia, years before the incident occurred which was made the cynical pretext for the quarrel it had resolved to pick.
It is futile to condemn or condone that which is past. Our ancestors have gone beyond any judgment of ours, and our responsibility is no more than to see that their sins or errors are not repeated - nor the fruits of the valour which was theirs, and the hardships they endured, thrown away by ignobler hands.
We have to consider what the British Empire is now; what we have done for these German colonies which we accepted as cadet members thereof; what valid claim, if any, Germany has upon them now; and what will happen, both to us and to them, if we cast them out from our own communities, to be retaken by her.
III
How German Colonies Originated
The German colonies were more recently and more deliberately acquired than those of other European nations, and in contrast to the virile, spontaneous spreading abroad of a people whose Governments acted in a spirit of indifference, or even timid restraint, the German Government was active for their acquisition, while its people were indifferent to or even ignorant of the exertion it made, not to guide or restrain a natural exodus of population, but to acquire territory which it had neither discovered nor colonised, by deliberate violence or bargain, for its own aggrandisement.
It came late on the scene because the German Empire is no more than a recent combination of a number of small separate states of Northern and Central Europe, which were (more or less) of the same language and the same blood; and even this amalgamation was not the spontaneous expression of any popular urge, but was the plotted policy of the Prussian kingdom, and achieved by drawing them into united military adventures; to which end, wars were forced deliberately upon three peaceful neighbours, and William, King of Prussia, became William, Emperor of Germany, in 1872, amidst a Europe which had already paid a most heavy price in blood and tears for this assertion of German power.
Forty years later they made, as we know to our bitter cost, a determined effort to secure wider supremacy in Europe, which we materially assisted to foil. Now a German Government more ruthless, more predatory, than any which went before, demands that it shall be put back in the position from which it struck previously, if not more than that. Ands its offer, in substance, is that, if we surrender all it desires of us, it will leave us alone, providing we remain quiet while it plunders in other fields.
During the first forty years of the existence of the German Empire - between 1872 and 1914, to be exact - it acquired, mainly by aggressive pressure on its neighbours, substantial overseas territories, in which it did a very moderate amount of colonisation, and was so far from improving upon the precedents of its European neighbours that its attitude to the native races it encountered was far less paternal than that of England had become at that period, and less fraternal than that of France.
Negotiations for Colonies
Its constant pressure upon the good nature and peace-seeking disposition of successive British Governments would have been even more productive, and would have intensified present problems proportionately, had it not failed, time after time, to recognise when the limit of concession had been reached, and lost all by excessive greed, or by making some proposal of secrecy, or of bad faith to a third party, such as the most complaisant British Foreign Secretary could not endure. But, even so, they remain, to all who study them, an almost incredible warning of the extent to which the English Foreign Office will surrender to persistent blackmailing pressure, or pleas for "good-natured" concessions, if the public be ignorant of, or indifferent to, the event.
The history of these negotiations is open to all who care to read it with impartial eyes.
South-West Africa
In the case of South-West Africa, it was admitted that England had a prior claim which could not be ignored, and - as will be seen when we come to a detailed consideration of that territory - it was only the hesitant reluctance of the Cape Government to assume responsibility, which, as far back as 1876, the native chiefs had petitioned to accept, that opened the way for the establishment of a German trading station upon the coast, and subsequently to a formal German annexation, in which the British Government acquiesced.
Subsequent German brutality led to the Herero war, which continued for two or three years, until that gallant native race, by battle, by brutal massacre, and by flight into other territories more mercifully administered, had lost eighty percent of its population.
If this be taken as an ex parte statement, let the Hereros - whose numbers have now doubled under a kindlier rule - speak for themselves. Ask them what their attitude would be to a German return.
The Negro View
It is easy for us to condemn our own treatment of the aboriginal races of Africa, and it may be a most salutary thing for us to do. But the native African is the best witness of this. He has suffered, and, with important qualifications, been dispossessed of a land that he loosely held. His opinion is something more than academic. He observes, he communicates with those of his own blood over vast territories differently administered. He experiences, and does not quickly forget.
He has seen much of British domination. (He has also seen such things as the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and the Basutoland administration, which would be outside Nazi imagination.) Of German rule he has seen less, but he might call it enough. Ask the natives of any part of British Africa whether they will be content to be transferred to a German control. Ask the Hereros, who have known both! And this control would not be that of the old German Empire, of the comparatively tolerant Bismarck regime. It would be that of the intolerable Nazi tyranny, intolerant of any freedom of faith or speech, even among those of its own blood. What would be its conception of native African rights? What its treatment of any who should not bend to its ruthless will?
Enlisting Africa
This thought brings another of an even more serious and more sombre kind. In all our wars, it has been a settled policy not to enlist or accept the services of the native African, unless for local operations against those of their own blood. There are fundamental reasons for this, and we have acted upon it very much to our own disadvantage on more than one occasion. When the Boers invaded Natal, the Zulus were resolved and eager to rise against them in the British cause, in which event the investment of Ladysmith would not have occurred, and there was the utmost difficulty in dissuading them from this course. In the Great War, the Basutos offered to raise regiments for active service, which were declined. (They then raised a sum of £50,000 - very large for them - towards its cost, as a voluntary demonstration of loyalty to the Empire. If natives in any German territory showed a similar spirit, its record is not easily to be found.)
Prospects of African War
But what will happen if the Nazis should act in a contrary spirit? If they should arm the natives of whatever territories they should occupy, and train them for war? Would it be possible to avoid taking the same course in whatever parts might remain British? And would not a new horror be added to the war which, sooner or later, would devastate the African continent? A war that would surely come, for anyone who can suppose that the Nazis, having once strongly established themselves there, would remain permanently at peace, must have a most sanguine mind. It would be more probable that the pretexts and occasions for future aggressive wars would be worked out in Berlin before the first regiment had sailed to make its goose-step in the "reconquered" lands.
This question of the acceptance of native Africans as comrades in arms might raise itself even earlier, if the South African Union should decline to acquiesce - as it would if it should prefer present danger to future ruin - in the British surrender of the territory which it now administers. Shall we say that the Hereros are not to take up arms for the freedom for which they fought so stubbornly once before? Shall we turn our guns upon them? It would become a question of the utmost gravity to decide whether it would be legitimate, or possible, to forbid them to take up arms against those who massacred them before.
IV
IT may have been taken as jest rather than serious argument when it was proposed that the Cape might be returned to the Dutch, as its earlier owners, who only lost it by naval defeat. But if we ask ourselves why that suggestion has an absurd sound, we shall find that it goes to the root of the argument for the return of the ex-German colonies, and shows that root to have a rotten core.
The Cape for Holland?
For the decisive reason which would prevent even the discussion of handing over the Cape of Good Hope to Holland is not that it belongs to Great Britain, but that it belongs to its own people; and if those people seriously desired to be governed from Amsterdam - or Berlin - it is certain that England would not fire single shot to obstruct the realisation of that curious ambition. But unless it should be desired by them, the whole power of the British Empire (forgetting that they have debated at times whether they are under a kindred obligation to us) would be exerted for the defence of their freedom.
Two Conceptions of Empire
That is the crucial difference between the Nazi conception of Empire and our own. We may not always have seen so clearly, though this conception is self-evolved. It has been learned from no other land. But our present is not our past. The Dominions and Colonies of the British Empire are free to work out their own destinies. Some are adult, and some still too young or feeble to stand alone. But the intention is the same for all.
And is it not an obligation of honour that the ex-German colonies shall be free to fulfil their own destinies in the same way? Give them to Germany tomorrow, and we know how much freedom there would be on the next day for all who would not crouch to the crack of the Nazi whip.
They have been accepted into a sister-hood of free nations, and, against their own wishes, and without fault on their sides, can they honourably be driven out?
The rape of Czechoslovakia was half Europe's shame. The shame of the surrender of the African colonies would lie at our single door.
V
Destruction of Czechoslovakia
Our subject is not the destruction of Czechoslovakia, but it is impossible to weigh it justly without understanding the equities of that unhappy event, on which an intensive German propaganda has obscured the issues to many generous minds.
It has been a common argument, even in English newspapers of customary sobriety and intelligence, that what was done was right, though it was not done in the right way. They have said (as would be true) that British people could not be expected to fight to oppose the self-determination of some millions of Germans oppressed by a foreign rule, under which they had been placed by obtuse or malignant provisions of the Trianon Treaty.
Bold and reiterated assertion of this half - or rather quarter-truth has secured its wide acceptance among those who are thoughtless or ill-informed, but how far is it divided from the realities of the position! How scanty is its cargo of historical fact!
When, in the history of the last thousand years, was any part of Bohemia German territory? When did even Austria have any dominion there except by such right as the sword will give? When, even under the heel of foreign conquest, were the natural boundaries of Bohemia broken apart? Why are the Tyrolese Alps admitted by Herr Hitler to be a heaven-set boundary, although there are hundreds of thousands of Germans on their southern side under Italian rule, while the ancient mountain frontiers of Bohemia have no similar sanctity?
What precedent of history is there, what basis of logic, for the theory that if men of a foreign race be invited to settle in a neighbouring country (as the ancestors of the Sudeten Germans were a Czech king) their descendants have the right not merely to return at will to their own land, but to expel or enslave their hosts, in all districts of their adopted land, where they may have become the more numerous? It is an argument by which some parts of Germany should have been surrendered to German Jews! And is there no part of London which should raise the Italian flag?
How, if Germany were pleading for justice before the world, could she repudiate the treaty which she had signed with Czechoslovakia, and the solemn under-takings she had given to respect her territory so few months before?
Why if she had confidence in her own claim, and desired no more than equity would concede, did she ignore Czechoslovakia's broadcast plea that she would submit her case to arbitration, which is surely much to concede when one state demands a part of its neighbour's land?
Why, if Hitler's heart bleeds for oppressed minorities of Germans who dwell in so many European states, does he not propose reciprocal treaties by which they would be granted the precise amenities which are enjoyed by minorities under his own rule? He might find that signatures to such documents would not be hard to obtain!
Why, we may even ask, should not Czechoslovakia have stripped the Sudeten Germans of their property and expelled them, with as much right as Hitler had to treat Jews in that manner, whose ancestors had been settled in Germany longer than Germans had made homes in the Czechs' land?
The answer to this and some previous questions is, of course, that Czechoslovakia was a weaker state than Germany; for which reasons also it was seemly for Hitler and his colleagues to speak of Dr. Benes in terms of vulgar abuse, but it would have been a different matter if he had spoken of them (with far greater provocation) in the same style.
If the wolf say that the lamb muddied the stream the accused creature must expect to perish for that offence, and if he point out that he drank lower down, he must be killed for the insolence of his reply.
Mr. Chamberlain's First Visit
To recognise such obvious facts as these is not necessarily to condemn the efforts which Mr. Chamberlain unsuccessfully made to save the victim of aggression, and successfully to avoid war. His first visit to Germany may be described as a noble effort to avert a supreme catastrophe. It was approved by all who love peace sufficiently to value the most slender chance by which it may be honourably preserved.
Even the concessions which he then agreed to press upon the Czech Government are not beyond defence, if they were the best terms he could get; and especially if he took that flight with the ugly consciousness in his heart that his government had betrayed their country by assuring it of military preparations which they had not made. We may give his purpose high praise, and economy of condemnation to what he did.
The Second Visit
And for the conduct of his Godesberg visit there must be more confident praise. On that occasion Hitler let his teeth show. Mr. Chamberlain could not hear the proposals which were then made without realising that it was no liberation of oppressed Germans at which they aimed, but the destruction by Germany of a peaceful neighbour, which was to be accomplished either by threats or bloodshed. His reply that he would communicate the proposed terms without engaging himself for their acceptance was of unassailable propriety.
It gained a few days' delay, during which the attitude of France, whose honour was pledged to Czechoslovakia in a way in which that of England was not, could be ascertained.
Of Munich
0f the visit to Munich, and what was agreed there, it is more difficult to speak, for the whole of what occurred may not yet be known. On paper, something was gained. Something even in fact - something of procedure at least - though much less.
It is when we come to what happened after that: to the fact that the Munich terms were not kept: that after the Czechs had been persuaded to abandon their fortifications, and become helpless, the International Council of Ambassadors which was to be their protection abandoned them to German inroads which had no racial pretext for their support, and which even exceeded the Godesberg demand, that we feel that history will have no more to do than to apportion shame.
Betrayal - By Whom?
To obtain the majority which a decision would require, either the British or French Ambassador, or both, must have yielded to German bullying, and settled frontiers in favour of that country without regard to any principles of racial, economic or geographical justice, or the instructions on which they were pledged to act.
There is no possible escape from this conclusion. The boundaries to which they agreed are enduring witness of that to which they gave consent, either on their own volition, or on such instructions from one or both of their governments as no man of honour would have consented to carry out.
When they had finished, there was no occasion for the plebiscites which had been agreed, for all the districts in question - including some in which the German population was not, and never had been, ten per cent. of the whole - were in possession of German troops.
It is a matter on which some public pronouncement should have been made, for, whatever England's position may have been previously, from the moment that the Czech army abandoned their country's defences on our advice, our honour was explicitly pledged, as one of those on whom they relied to fix the new boundaries, or to control the plebiscites which were to decide them.
We may not have failed. Our ambassador may have given a solitary vote for justice, and seen his French colleague support the German and Italian ambassadors in the iniquitous proposals which were, in some way, agreed. Or he may not. We have no right to conclude that. We have no right to conclude anything on a matter of such gravity without proof. But, where England's honour is so closely concerned, we had surely a right to know.
VI
The Way of Peace?
Czechoslovakia is gone, but Mr. Chamberlain's memorandum of peace with Germany remains. And he expressed at that time the anticipation that he would be meeting Herr Hitler again, to make further bargains of appeasement with him, though more recently his tone may have been less hopeful, less assured, the subsequent actions of Germany having given him reasons for that.
The way of peace is attractive to all, but it is legitimate to ask what the nature of these bargains is likely to be.
The scoffing parody of the rather childish verse which Mr. Chamberlain quoted when starting for Munich:
"If at first you don't concede, Fly, fly, fly again,"
may be unjust in its implications, but it has some sinister support in a remark; which Herr Hitler is said to have made at that time, to the effect that he wanted nothing from Britain beyond the ex-German colonies, and there need be no war about that.
It is a remark which may be taken in either of two ways; as may that of Herr Hitler in his speech of January 30,1939
"Germany has no territorial claims against England or France except colonies. But this question alone would not justify war."
They may mean that, while he ask politely and hope to get, a refusal will not break the friendship so newly born.
Or they may be taken as a singularly impudent suggestion of a contrary kind. And this latter interpretation is, unfortunately, more in agreement with Herr Hitler's customary methods of negotiation, and the press agitation for the return of ex-German colonies - particularly in Africa - which has been organised in Berlin, and which is also most actively at work in this country. We have seen enough of German methods in the initiation of previous coups not to recognise the signs of approaching crisis here.
And this interpretation is unfortunately supported by another passage in the same speech (January 30,1939), the plain meaning of which did not appear to be widely observed, but which was of the greater significance because the general tenor of the speech was considered to aim at the avoidance of any immediate provocation. He said:
"One thing or other will happen. Either property will be distributed on the basis of force, and force will revise distribution, or distribution will be based on right and reason, and then it will be impossible for a few Powers forever to possess all the colonies."
That is an explicit statement, with an inescapable deduction. Either "right and reason" will hand over some parts of the earth's surface outside Germany to Nazi exploitation, or it will be taken by force.
Only the date at which agitation will be superseded by violence is left un-said, and on that point there are two precedent agitations - those against Austria and Czechoslovakia - which are complete in their consequences, to be observed, and one - that of Italy for portions of the French Empire - where the same technique is commencing to operate.
These precedents give a particular importance to the intensive German propaganda which has already begun, not only in that country, but in some directions here also.
Campaign of Suggestion
The campaign of suggestion in some sections of the British Press, specifically that which aims to influence ill-informed minds, is particularly ominous in its implications. It is not necessary to suppose that our national Press is influenced by Germany to lead to the conclusion that for some reason other than a spontaneous desire to impart considered wisdom to its readers' minds, inspired certain journalists to perpetrate quite recently this gem of inconsequence:
"We cannot argue that the Germans, with whom we have made a naval treaty and the Munich Pact, are unsuitable to rule native races.
"Accordingly, we have no longer any moral justification for withholding colonies from them."
It is the sort of argument which might be hurriedly written by a man suddenly instructed to prepare the minds of his readers for the return of colonies to Germany, and utterly unable to think of any reasonable argument in its support. It is to be hoped that readers of this sort of matter will use their judgment before coming to any hasty conclusion.
But no one, who is not entirely biased, could have produced such preposterous arguments upon a subject to which he had given independent consideration.
Why should our "moral justification for withholding" ex-German colonies depend solely upon their fitness to rule native races? And how can the question of that fitness be affected, even remotely, by a naval treaty, or a Munich Pact?
Yet later, the same argument - if it can be dignified properly by such a name - is repeated and supplemented in a leading article in the same strain which would be amusing, if the subject were not so serious.
It commences with the accurate statement that Hitler demands the return of these colonies. It goes on to assert that in putting that demand forward Hitler makes it indisputably clear that he would not back the demand by military force.
That is how the declarations of Herr Hitler are frequently interpreted to the very numerous readers of the national Press, many of whom must lack leisure or inclination to examine this problem for themselves, but whose collective opinions may have an important influence upon a decision of the gravest consequences.
It concludes with this argument, which would be more pernicious were it less transparently what it is, that the issue is a moral one and either the Germans are entitled to the return of the colonies on the ground that they are now fit to govern the natives, or we must dispute that contention completely and destroy it utterly and unmistakably.
There is an almost complete disregard for facts in the assumption that the unfitness of the Germans to govern alien peoples is the sole question at issue; and most reasonable minds might agree that, however great that unfitness may be, it would be a particularly controversial - and offensive - reason to select, for refusal when others are available.
Propaganda of such a misleading kind may not have any convincing force to English readers, but it may have influences in Germany of the utmost gravity. For though whether or not Herr Hitler would deliberately provoke war on this issue may be in doubt, there is much less that he would bluff - perhaps too far to retreat - if he should be misled as to the fortitude of our own attitude on this issue.
VII
Burglary by Consent
And so it seems that Mr. Chamberlain's reward for assisting Herr Hitler to burgle his neighbour's house is to be a similar visit to his own; but that, he is assured, will be no occasion for summoning the police, as a friendly talk will agree in advance the items of the swag which are to be taken away; and, after its removal, he may be allowed to put a moderately good lock on the door, for such safeguarding of what remains as it may be possible to reach, or worth while to attempt. That is the position we have to face.
Mr. Chamberlain, with the high purpose of averting a war which would profoundly disturb European civilisation, has announced his aim to be "the appeasement of Europe" And Herr Hitler, and his loud-speaking colleagues, have announced theirs, which includes the return of all the colonies which they lost in the last war, and the gathering of all European people of German descent into a single state.
If all that can be smoothly arranged, it may be reasonable to suppose that Germany will not disturb peace so long as she may find ready obedience to any further conditions she may exact from neighbours of narrowed boundaries and diminished prestige. (Whether the remains of the British Empire would find peace in other directions is a different matter.) For, under suitable conditions, Herr Hitler believes in peace. We have his own word for that, and for what those conditions are:
Hitler's Pacifism
"The pacifist-humane idea," he says in Mein Kampf, "is quite a good one in cases where the man at the top has first thoroughly conquered and subdued the world to the extent of making himself the sole master of it. Thus, first the struggle, and then the Pacifism."
So, if we start down the road that Herr Hitler points, we cannot say that we have not been told where he expects it to end.
Candidates for Appeasement
The appeasement of Europe has commenced already. Austria has been appeased. With Mr. Chamberlain's concurrence, Hitler has appeased Czechoslovakia. With a short interval for the appeasement; of the ex-German colonies, the process, if it be so allowed, will doubtless continue in an equally efficient and satisfactory manner. This process, which Herr Hitler's own book describes so frankly, and to which he has so exactly adhered, will involve the appeasements, in different degrees of Switzerland, Poland, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Yugoslavia, Rumania, and Lithuania.
After that, strengthened by such good meals (during which his Italian friends will have been similarly occupied in appeasing France), he may feel equal to the appeasement of Alsace-Lorraine; and then of the Tyrol, to Mussolini's naive surprise.
But after the whole of Europe has been appeased, with this admirable German thoroughness, what will the strength of Germany be? What friendships will England have? Of what manner of peace will she be assured? It will not be the peace of the "strong man armed that keepeth his house." It will not even be the quiet peace of the grave.
Perhaps there may be an "incident" where the frontiers of British and German Africa meet. Such matters are not hard to arrange. And after that there will be the peace of shame; or desperate, far less equal war than we could be required to sustain today.
European Conference
But Mr. Chamberlain has a better plan. He will not leave it to Herr Hitler to play his hand in his own way. He will work for a European Conference; so it is said.
It may be called a good plan. But it is sanguine anticipation that Hitler will assent, unless it be very firmly pressed, and not then unless moved by other influences than those of friendship for his Munich guests.
It would be too like a partnership of butchers (not that it would be exact to describe Mr. Chamberlain in that way. His part has rather been that of the butcher's assistant: his occupation to rope the victim) calling a conference of horned cattle, and demanding contribution of beef.
Such a conference would be too likely to lead to a combination of countries unimaginative enough to resent the mutilation of their geographical and economic integrities, even in so worthy a cause. And, in combination, they would be of a most formidable power. But Hitler will prefer that they shiver separately, hoping that it may not be their turn to be carved up for the next dish.
The Way of Peace
Peace is the common prayer of a world on which science is inflicting troubles enough without the added burden of war. We are all agreed about that. The question is whether it be the way of peace to allow Germany to advance to a yet more insolent power. Whether the sole hope of a tolerable peace may not be to meet her now with a firm and united front. A poor hope, perhaps. But perhaps also the only one. With the possible consequence of awaking terrible war - or the alternative of a worse on a later day.
The allusions to Mr. Neville Chamberlain in this representation of the position are not inaccurate, but yet, without qualification or addition, might be unfair in their implications.
He is fighting for the peace of a threatened world, with a sincerity which even his enemies, whether at home or abroad, cannot deny.
To test the sincerity of the dictators, even at some generous risk, may have been no more than a gamble, yet it may have been well worth the attempt.
Against the bad faith which abused the terms of the Munich settlement, the intensification of Germany's military preparations, the monstrous persecutions of German Jews, he has opposed an attitude which has gradually hardened. It is evident that, if his courage and determination are not lessened, his confidence is reduced, as has been shown by his recent statement in the House of Commons that it will be useless to hold any Conference of Europe Powers unless they show previous evidence that it is in a Spirit of good will that they will come together.
And it is to be observed that the dictators of Europe are two, and that neither of them would be loyal to his present partner for half a minute if - it may be a slender if - he should think it to his country's interest to make an opposite alliance.
But let us see now just what are the ex-German colonies which have passed into British hands, and what their surrender would mean to their present inhabitants, and to us.
VIII
Tanganyika
Taking Africa first, and avoiding present discussion of such ex-German colonies as did not fall to British hands, it may be convenient to give precedence to consideration of the Tanganyika territory, not necessarily as more important than South-West Africa, but as being that which appears to be most directly threatened, and in the greater danger, because it has only the British Government to speak and decide on its behalf, and South-West Africa is under the direct protection of the Union Government, which has had the courage to say that it is not either to be given or bartered away.
Ideas from Italy
The German anticipation in regard to the realisation of its ambition in equatorial Africa is so confident that a school has already been established in Berlin for the training of young women in tropical cookery and medicine, and in study of native African tongues, with direct reference to this territory, although there is an alternative proposed in the Italian press. A recent article in the Popolo di Roma stated as a known fact (which we are not obliged to believe) that the British Foreign Office is preparing an alternative plan, which would cede to Germany certain portions of equatorial Africa of which the writer professed to have detailed information, to which would be added territories on the north shore of the Gulf of Guinea, and in Angola. The fact that these lands belong to Belgium and Portugal presented no difficulty. They are to have no more right of decision than had Austria or Czechoslovakia; but they are to be treated with more show of justice, at Britain's expense. They are to be compensated by gifts of "British territory elsewhere" - there is a sufficient vagueness about that to rouse unrest in almost any part of the British Empire where confidence in the courage of our Government may have been shaken by recent events - or heavy payments of British gold!. . .
Europeans in Africa
There is a vague idea among many people who are acquainted with the history of East Africa that it is inhabited by negro races which were happy and free until they were brutally subdued by inroads of white settlers from Western Europe. The truth, confused and contradictory in detail, as the history of, wide areas, many races, and long centuries, must always be, is largely of an opposite kind.
The excellent harbours, and particular products of Eastern Africa have invited settlement there in times of Greek, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantian, Persian, and Arab ascendencies. In the seventh century, when the tide of Mohammedanism swept over the Eastern world, it found, and overcame, settlements far down that coast which were inhabited by people of Persian and Arab blood, whose arbitrary authority spread far inland with the effect of a blighting curse. For their export trade was almost entirely in human life. The native African was as "free," and possessed the land as much, as might be said of the herds of North American bison while they were being destroyed by the rifles of human foes.
In Ancient Times
The coming of the Portuguese, from when, in 1498, Vasco da Gama sailed round the Cape, and entered Mombasa Bay, was fatal to the Mohammedan ascendency in these regions. Eleven years later a Portuguese fleet destroyed, at Diu, the combined Arab and Egyptian naval power, giving to their own country for more than a century a scarcely challenged supremacy both inland and upon Indian Seas.
Early in the seventeenth century, the Portuguese at Mombasa were massacred by Arabs, and towards its close a three-year siege of the same place by the Imaum of Muscat resulted in its capitulation, from which date the Portuguese position was more precariously held, and at more southerly ports, so that the Arab vice-royalty at Zanzibar became the governing authority over a wide inland area, and the atrocities committed under this regime during the eighteenth century, and, with some modifications, until the middle of the nineteenth, were of an appalling nature, both in their character and extent.
The Slave Trade
But, during the last century, British influence began to be increasingly felt, and, to the confusion of those who can find nothing but evil to say of their own race when it ventures into remote and unfriendly lands, it was like the coming of a humane dawn.
In 1822 British pressure upon the Sultan of Zanzibar secured a treaty under which he undertook to prohibit the sale of slaves to "Christians," i.e. to white men, or their export to Christian countries. This modified a trade which, at that time, we had no power to destroy (and with which Dean Inge might say we had no business to interfere).*
* I should be sorry to do injustice to this versatile character, so I give his actual words, taken from the Evening Standard, October 14, 1938: "We must reconcile ourselves to the fact that if peace is the first interest of Great Britain, as it certainly is, we cannot prevent things being done by other nations which we think iniquitous.
"We cannot police the world. To ride abroad redressing human wrongs may be all very well for Sir Lancelot; it only makes Don Quixote ridiculous. We are right to make our protests. But when we are snubbed for our pains it is no use to shake our fists and curse.
It might be difficult to find a passage by any comparable contemporary writer containing baser or more foolish words, but the reverend gentleman contradicts himself so frequently that it may be unfair to treat any single passage as indicative of a considered opinion.
This one would be less deliberately discreditable, both to its author and the newspaper that gave it publicity, had it not been followed (November 24, 1938) by another article in which Dean Inge instanced some alleged atrocities in Antigua and elsewhere more than two hundred years ago, and after exhibiting the random inexactitude which disgraces some present day British journalism by describing the seizures of Austrian and Czechoslovakian territories as "both perhaps justifiable in themselves, but executed in a very high-handed fashion," went on to argue that, as atrocities were perpetrated by men of English birth, we ought to exercise "a little more courtesy in criticising our neighbours."
If we share the guilt of these alleged Antiguan atrocities, so that we must speak with muted voices concerning German persecutions of Jews today, then by parity of grotesque reasoning, those persecutions are justifiable, for all Jews must share the guilt of the assassination of a German attaché.
And unless Dean Inge will admit some time limit (of more than two centuries) which will free us from this restriction, we are all committed to a "courteous" tolerance of evil-doing to the worlds end.
* * *
But meanwhile explorers, British and others, had penetrated far inland, discovering, among fertile uplands, the great lakes and mountain ranges amidst which the sources of the Nile were finally mapped. In doing this they observed that the negro population was in process of rapid extermination by the Arab slave-raiders, and, with wider knowledge, efforts intensified to put an end to that infamy.
The British Navy at Work
The British Navy became increasingly active, and the wholesale slave-trade was greatly diminished by its efforts, though, up to 1870, the slaves exported annually from Kilwa alone were computed at 32,000. It was three years later that British pressure secured the closing of slave-markets and the suppression of such traffic throughout these regions, since which date there has been no more than an illicit, relatively small, and dwindling trade.
Through the whole of this period, Germany had no foothold whatever on the East African coast, Her sole connection therewith - so far as the subsequent German Empire can be identified with such an event - was a small and abortive effort at colonisation during the seventeenth century by the Brandenburg East India Company, which was almost eradicated by Dutch hostility, and finally liquidated in 1717 by a payment of 7,200 ducats from the Dutch Government to the Brandenburg Co., for which sum the Company resigned all claims to, and any property it still had on, the East African islands or coast.
Germany enters Africa
It was not until 1884 - the same year that Germany asserted a protectorate over South-West Africa - that the good-tempered complacency of the British Foreign Office, badgered continually for colonial rights by the German Government, with which it was anxious to live at peace, assented to the hoisting of the German flag at M'buzini, and five years after the German Government declared a protectorate over the whole Tanganyika territory.
Policy of Appeasement Begins
Two years later, England entered into a very curious treaty, in which she gave Heligoland to Germany, and received less than nothing in return; its provisions merely ratified and defined the extent of the German occupation of land to which England had a far stronger right, and declared an English protectorate over the Zanzibar littoral, which already existed in fact, and which was not Germany's to give. The policy of appeasing Germany with gifts, for which we got little thanks, had already begun.
IX
Germany Asked for More
The African territories which Germany held between 1884 and 1914 - no more than thirty years in all - were of huge extent, and bore witness to the energy with which the Government of the German Empire, during the few years of its existence, had elbowed its way into the colonial field, but they were little compared to the areas of Africa which it had intrigued, or sulked, or bullied to get. Incidentally, these would have included the Seal and Penguin Islands, which it had represented as barren and worthless rocks, and which a complaisant British Government might have been soothed to grant, had not the Admiralty pointed out that they lay on a sea route which £100,000,000 of British commerce annually passed, and the Cape Government that they contained a harbour large enough to accommodate the whole German fleet, and that they were of no possible value to Germany except as a future menace to the security of the Dominion.
What Germany Would Have Taken
They were still smaller compared with the portion of Africa which Germany subsequently mapped out for herself as her fitting reward if she should have won the last war. It went completely across the continent, and would have given her huge recruiting reservoirs of men, and naval bases which would have enabled her to dominate both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, besides constituting a "half-way house" to the South American continent, which she is certainly ambitious to reach, and already actively intriguing to control - or, at least, to do so for the last twenty years, as the time would now have come when she would have been handing them back to their previous owners, with a goodwill gift of all the "installations" she had constructed during that period! That being, by her code, the routine procedure for territory "wrong-fully" taken from conquered foes.
It may not be a point of major importance, nor an argument needed where there are so many stronger ones in the same scale, but it is a fact that this, and other German colonies to which we shall come, were not surrendered by their mother country as the result of her European collapse. It had already passed into British possession, as the issue of local war, which the Tanganyika Germans had themselves commenced by invading Kenya in 1914.
Invasion of Kenya
Had they been told then that, if they could have captured and retained Kenya, as they had hoped to do, Germany would give it back to Great Britain twenty years later, on the ground that it had been "wrongfully taken," or that it would be a "generous gesture," they would have smiled excusably at this interpretation of the verdict of war - war which they themselves commenced in East Africa, as they did by crossing the Belgian frontier.
During the first year, the Tanganyika Germans more than held their own. They were a considerable military force, and they raised a native army of 12,000 men for their support, They were driven back from their first invasion of Kenya, but a counter-attack on Tanga, gallantly attempted with inadequate forces, was repulsed with nearly 800 casualties. During the next year, the Germans made more than one raid upon the Kenya railway, and though the Winifred destroyed their only gunboat on Lake Victoria, and British naval forces bombarded Dar-es-Salaam, and sunk the Konigsberg in the Rufigi River, that cruiser's guns were salvaged and became powerful batteries in the land engagements that followed.
Mojoro Captured
Early in 1918, General Smuts being in command of the British forces, the Lumi River was bridged, and the Germans manoeuvred out of a retreat of forest swamps which they had been fortifying since the war commenced; and from that time almost continuous and sometimes heavy fighting drove them out of successive positions until, on August 26, their head-quarters at Mojoro were captured, and Dar es Salaam surrendered eight days later.
Flight of the Germans
Desultory fighting against an enemy who took full advantage of country in which communications were hard to maintain continued until the end of the war, but, by that time, the remnant of the German forces had been pursued through Portuguese territory into Northern Rhodesia, where, at the armistice, they surrendered a mixed force of about 3,000 followers and 1,300 fighting men.
The armistice did no more than register a success which was already as much ours in East Africa as on the Franco-German front.
What Tanganyika Is
The Tanganyika Territory alone is of an area of about 360,000 square miles. It is a tropical country, with a climate varying widely with its rising altitudes, but not, on the whole, very suitable for European settlement. Malaria and other tropical diseases are endemic, rains are heavy, and heat, at some altitudes, is extreme. There are highlands in the south-west where the soil is fertile and the climate good. During the German occupation, it attracted few settlers.
It has now been under British administration for twenty years, and has made great progress, only retarded during the last twelve months by paralysing uncertainty as to whether it may be allowed to fall back into German hands. This doubt may not be complimentary to England, but can we say it is undeserved? It could have been relieved, and much dangerous expectation checked, by one definite word from its Governor, which he was only recently allowed to speak, and which is still only half believed.
A glance at the present condition of the territory, and a summary of what has been done during the period of English control, will explain how terrible, for those who have trusted us, that uncertainty is.
Freedom of Religion
Dean lnge suggests that to be quixotic is to be absurd. If so, the absurdity of British administration has been extreme. We have taken nothing for ourselves. We have allowed no preference for British goods. We have taxed ourselves to expend upon the territory £6,000,000, in ways which are not directly productive, and with no clear prospect that it will be returned. We have granted absolute religious freedom, which applies equally to Christians of every sect, to Hindoos, to Mohammedans, and to the peculiar deism of the Masai tribes. We have developed the cotton-growing potentialities of the territory, settling, for this purpose about 25,000 Indians on the land.
Freedom of Trade
The imports of manufactured cotton goods were valued in 1936 at £648,576; but this is no benefit to the cotton mills of Lancashire. Under our self-denying administration, this trade is almost entirely in Japanese hands.
Apart from Government goods, Tanganyika purchases more from German and Dutch sources (combined) than from this country, the total of British imports being less than 25 per cent. of the whole.
Its principal export, both in bulk and value, is sisal fibre, but cotton now reaches a value of from half a million to a million pounds annually, which, when the doubt of the future is removed, may be very largely increased.
Coffee is extensively grown in the highland areas.
Gold was first discovered under British administration in 1921. In 1936 production had risen to an export total of £489,196.
Coal is know to exist in large quantities and other mineral resources, now undeveloped, are likely to prove of great value.
Free Entry to German Settlers
Since January, 1925, free entry has been granted to German settlers, and, in the eleven years following, 3,068 Germans entered the territory under this permission. The British still outnumber the Germans, if immigrants from the South African Union be included in the former category; but, if this were not the case, it would be interesting to see whether the Germans would argue that the preponderance of these freely-admitted German immigrants would give their home country valid claim to sovereignty over the land.
The requirement of most governments is that immigrants shall either retain their own nationality, or loyally adopt that of the land they enter.
The new German theory appears to be that immigrants may both acquire rights in an adopted land, and retain their previous nationality and allegiance, until they become sufficiently numerous to enslave those who have so foolishly let them in.
Population
The population of Tanganyika at the end of 1936 was made up of:
Europeans 8,926
Asiatics (including about 10,000 Goans and Arabs) 32,255
Native Africans 5,105,705
A year earlier - the latest exact figures available - the European total had included 3956 British and South African Union settlers, and 2665 Germans. Since that date the Germans have probably increased relatively and absolutely, though still somewhat the smaller total; but it would be inexact to conclude that the whole of the German population is desirous of being ruled from Berlin, though with the example of what has befallen those Sudeten Germans who were loyal; to Czechoslovakia before them, they may be reluctant to speak their minds. The native population consists of eighty-five principal, and fifty-two smaller tribes. Among these, sixty are of the Bantu group, two are of Persian or Arabic origin, and most of the remainder are Masai, or other Nilotic tribes.
The majority of the Asiatics are British Indian subjects, who would naturally dislike being handed over to Nazi exploitation.
The Dread of Exploitation
It is in that thought of "exploitation" that the dread of people of every religion or race, including many Germans, in the territory lies.
Germany has everything already which can be hers, if nothing be taken away. Her nationals have entire trading freedom, entire religious freedom, entire freedom to settle upon the land in equality with other citizens. How can her position be improved, except at the sacrifice of economic advantages or personal freedoms which are at present enjoyed by all? What, it may further be asked, would any pledge she might give to respect present liberties or privileges be worth?
Even those of her own blood would be less secure. Among the twenty-three Christian Missions which are working in the country with complete equality now, there are those of several German Protestant sects which are not very popular with the Nazi Government. What would be their fate if they should dare to oppose the exploitation of the native population which would certainly follow German occupation?
And what would happen to the British settlers who might be slow in making the Nazi sign? Or to the Indian cotton growers, left to the mercy of that race arrogant rule?. . .
Incidentally, there are two small portions of Tanganyika which are no longer under British control. Following its British occupation, claims for parts lying contiguous to Belgian and Portuguese territories were made by those governments, and, in each instance, our Foreign Office good-temperedly admitted the claim, and ceded the desired territory, as she admitted also a claim by Italy to land South of the Juba river. Italy might well commence the New Deal by handing back what she acquired thus to her German friends, to which we scarcely could, and certainly should not, object.
The present law in the High Courts is English. There are Native Courts which administer local justice under the Native Courts Ordinance of 1929, over which the Government has a final control.
Order is kept by a police force of 60 European officers and about 1,600 native police. There is a garrison of 1,000 men of the King's African Rifles. Beyond that, the territory has no military protection at all. A contented population, which includes over five million Africans, is kept in order without difficulty by about 2,500 men who are mostly natives.
How, and under what conditions, and to what result, could this territory be placed under the Nazi heel?
X
South-West Africa
We now come to South-West Africa a widely different country from Tanganyika, in a more temperate zone, but with an aridity which, for many centuries, caused it to be only thinly populated.
It is still a poor country, and much of it can only become fertile if it can be successfully irrigated, which is, at present, no more than a doubtful hope.
The Diamond Beds
It has great mineral potentialities, but the most interesting of its ascertained resources are the diamond beds which lie along the seashore for hundreds of miles south and north of the mouth of the Orange River. These, since their discovery in 1908, have produced stones in years of favourable prices, to a value of some millions. Very much greater quantities could be obtained, but the mining has been restricted in recent years, according to the policy of the South African Diamond Board, and during the depressed years 1931-4 was almost entirely stopped. Prior to that, exports in twelve years had totalled about £26,000,000. And since 1934 there has been a substantial revival.
It is a comparatively trivial matter, when considered beside some of the major issues involved in such a surrender, but it is worth observing that the transfer of this territory to Germany would involve the possibility of ruinous over-production, which the Diamond Board, in recent years, has made great sacrifices to avoid.
Diamonds, with some unimportant qualifications, are useless stones. Their value depends almost absolutely upon their scarcity. The industry has been increasingly embarrassed during the last twenty years by the number and richness of the new fields which have been discovered, and prices, particularly during the lean years that followed the American financial crisis of 1929, have only been sustained by rigid curtailment of production. The diamond beds of South-West Africa are controlled by the Government, and are not allowed to break the market, which, in other hands, they might easily do with the smaller stones. . .
A Pastoral Country
Apart from mining of various kinds, as yet mainly undeveloped, South West Africa is almost entirely a pastoral country. Prior to 1884, when the Germans appeared on the scene, it was mainly occupied by more or less nomadic pastoral tribes, of which the more important were the Hereros in the east, and the Hottentots in the south.
The Ovambos in the north were also a numerous people, but the majority of them were in Portuguese territory, particularly until 1915, when a portion of the tribe migrated southward, having had difficulties with the Portuguese authorities, and preferring to come under British rule.
Petitions for British Control
A prolonged war between the Hereros and Hottentots, and other disturbances in Namaqualand, had caused the chiefs of the Hereros and other tribes to petition the Cape Government in 1878 to take over control, and appoint Resident Commissioners to keep peaceful order. The Cape Government despatched a Commission of Enquiry, which received formal orders of submission from numerous chiefs, but the report on the country was not very good, and the Cape Government shirked the responsibility and the possible cost involved. They did nothing; and unsettled conditions continued for the next eight years, while the German Government intrigued in London for permission to occupy the land.
In 1883 a Bremen trading company established a footing with some show of legality by giving a chief in Namaqualand a hundred guns, some powder and lead, and £200 in English money, for 150 miles of land, and, as a correspondence which followed between London and the Cape showed that the Cape Government could not make up its mind to accept responsibility, the Germans were allowed to annex the whole territory, with the exception of a British settlement already established at Walvis Bay, and the islands along the coast.
German Occupation
The history of German occupation that followed was one of continual wars. Chiefs who would have welcomed the overlordship of a British authority, which they knew, from the examples of Basutoland and Bechuanaland, would have brought justice and peace, resented a German invasion for which they had not asked, which was conducted in a hostile spirit and had less consideration for them. In 1893 there was war with the Hottentots. In 1896 with the Hereros. In 1897 with the Swartboois and the Afrikaners. In 1900 the Bastards, a pastoral tribe of about 5,000, descended from white hunters and Hottentot women, were goaded into rebellion. In 1903 there was rebellion among the Bondelszwartz tribe, and in the following year the Hereros commenced a bitter war which they continued for three years against the increasing military forces which the Germans poured into the country, until, of the 100,000 they had been, 80,000 men, women, and children, had died or fled into kindlier lands.
Destruction of the Hereros
During the next seven years there was no further resistance from the exhausted remnants of the natives of this pastoral land. But they had learnt what the Germans were. So, too, had all Africa's watchful millions, and it is a knowledge which may have a sombre sequel of blood if we be cowardly or criminal enough to offer Berlin a new lease of power, under the pitiless Nazi creed, beside which that which went before may seem no worse than the storm of a summer day.
When war broke out in 1914, it might have been thought that the Germans in South-West Africa, isolated from their Home Country by British command of the sea, would have been content to remain quiet, in the hope that the thunder of war would only rumble in distant skies. But their ideas were different. With the psychological obtuseness which is the marvel of Germany's enemies, and the despair of her friends, they supposed that the Cape Government would seize the opportunity to break away from the Empire, or, at the least, that the Boer majority of the population would be glad to do so, and would welcome some help from them.
Germans Invade the Cape Province
Before the close of the year, ignoring the fact that their coast settlements had fallen to the Union Defence Forces, operating from the sea, they invaded the Cape Province. Joined by a rebel Dutch contingent, they fought two or three un-successful actions, and, within three months, had been finally driven back to the South-West territory.
Having the choice between England and Germany to make, the bulk of the Cape Boers had not hesitated as to which they would prefer. Union Forces, under General Botha's skilful command, converged on the retreating Germans.
Plain Words from the Cape Government
From April to June, 1915, there was a systematic inexorable reduction of one settlement town after another, until, on July 9, the German command, out-manoeuvred and outfought, laid down its arms, and from that day the territory has been administered by the Union Government, which, in contrast to the hesitant attitude of the Foreign Office in London, has said, boldly and plainly, that it has no intention of surrendering territory which it won on the field of battle, and where, in the first instance, it should never have consented to the German landing.
South Africa has had an experience of German colonial methods; and she thinks one is enough.
XI
At the commencement of the war, in August, 1914, there were 12,292 Germans in the South-West Territory. At its close, about half of these, including all Germans who had held official positions, were repatriated to their own country. The remainder preferred, and were unfortunately permitted, to stay.
From that date the record of the territory has been one of growing population, and increasing prosperity, subject to the important qualification that the period of world depression, leading to the stagnation of the diamond export trade, caused a sharp dip, which is now recovered.
Growing Prosperity
The sea-borne imports for 1919 were £1,135,116; for 1936, £1,959,826. The exports for the same years rose from £1,678,554 to £3,084,168.
These figures speak for themselves. But meanwhile, a proportion of the German population which was allowed to remain has acted in a spirit of sustained disloyalty to their adopted land,
Attitude of German Settlers
That there have been no serious measures of repression is due to a most tolerant patience on the part of the Union Government, such as the English population would be most unlikely to experience from the Nazis, if the territory should be returned to them.
Martial law, under which the country was at first necessarily administered, was abolished at the end of 1920, by which time all troops had, in fact, already been withdrawn, and civil courts established.
A Constitution was granted in May, 1925, which is substantially unaltered to the present day.
A Legislative Assembly of eighteen members was constituted, of which the Governor nominated six, and twelve were elected. The German element of the population secured several seats in this Assembly, and actually used them, both in 1930 and 1931, to vote against this electoral body having extended powers. Their policy has been directed mainly to prevent the territory becoming a fifth Province of the Union, which the majority of its inhabitants desire.
In 1924, when the question was last raised, the German members withdrew from the Assembly, and subsequently resigned. The Union was then again petitioned to accept the territory formally within its fold, subject to the conditions of the Mandate from the League of Nations under which it had consented to act.
A new election was held later in the year, after the wearing of political uniforms and the open preaching of Nazi disloyalty had been banned, and the "German Workers' Party" declared an illegal organisation; and the motion asking for admission to the Union was passed by the two-thirds majority that the constitution required.
This request the Union refused. Full membership of its federation is, it decided after two years consideration, a privilege which the conduct of the territory as a whole has not yet earned. But administration under the mandate it will not shirk.
Seditious Activities
Unrest among German population, attempts to establish a "Hitler Youth" movement, and illegal recruiting activities, have continued, and have still been met with more patience than they deserve. An explosion of persistently disloyal elements would have been a wiser and salutary procedure.
And meanwhile what grievances have these German settlers, or Germany, had? The answer is, less than none.
Pages could be written about the liberality of spirit in which a most liberal mandate has been administered, and the patience forbearance with which it has been sought to induce these German settlers to become loyal citizens of the South Africa they have made their home. It has been fruitless, because it is not freedom, but the domination of Berlin, which they make their aim.
Free Trade with Germany
But it should be sufficient to give one illustration of a spirit of administration which Germany certainly will not emulate if she shall ever find herself in a position to close that territory to foreign trade.
Of goods landed at South-West African ports, 50 per cent. come from Germany, 25 per cent. from Great Britain, and 20 per cent. from the United States. (There is also an overland trade, of which no analysis exists.)
The fact is that we find here, as with Tanganyika, that Germany and Germans have, or can have, equality of every kind. They are free to dwell in liberty. They are free to trade. They are only not free to rebel, or to oppress the British, South African, or native races among who they live.
What more could they have, what changes could be made, which would not weigh down the scale unfairly against British, Boers, or native Africans who share the land with them, and certainly with no less than an equal right?
Even the principle of self-determination, however it be defined, will not help them, for the recalcitrant German settlers are far less numerous than the English and Boers.
The nature and effects of the mandate under which the South-West Territory is held from the League of Nations has had no more than a casual reference, because these mandates will be the subject of separate consideration. The German population have expressed their wish for the mandate to be continued, though it is difficult to see how it can be of profit to them.
Freedom in South Africa
But there is nothing on earth to prevent the whole of South Africa becoming part of the German Empire tomorrow, if it should desire to do so. It is certain that England would not fire a single shot to hold it against the will of its citizens. And that is why it is so entirely certain that such a position will not arise; and why the cause of liberty, or justice, or self-determination, or anything else worth serving would not be served by the surrender of any part of Africa, or of the British Empire elsewhere, to the tyrannous German power.
XII
The West African Colonies
To complete the survey of the ex-German African colonies, it is necessary to glance briefly at two territories upon the western side of Equatorial Africa.
They were both sandwiched between French and British settlements there, were both conquered by joint French and British forces during the course of the War in Europe, and were both divided between France and England at its conclusion - France receiving much the larger shares.
Togoland was surrendered to a Franco-British invading force immediately upon the outbreak of hostilities in August, 1914, and occupied from that date. Eight years later - in July, 1922 - a League of Nations mandate confirmed an existing fact by allotting two-thirds of it, almost 22,000 sq. miles, to France, and about 11,000 square miles to Britain.
It is a fertile tropical country, with a considerable negro population, partly suitable for plantations, but with a climate in which white men exist with difficulty, and where they cannot undertake manual labour.
Its native population has so much diversity that forty-six distinct languages are recognised as being spoken in the French territory.
British Togoland
The population of British Togoland (now under Gold Coast administration) is somewhat less varied. In 1935 it was estimated at 338,650, among whom only 43 were non-Africans. Its exports are chiefly coco, palm-oil, rubber, copra, kernels, cocoa and coffee, of which some are plantation grown, and others are brought in by the natives to barter for European goods. Under an unselfish British administration, state expenditure has so far exceeded income, but prosperity increases, and, with existing circumstances, it may be anticipated that its budgets will soon balance. There are now over a hundred native schools established by various missions throughout the territory, with Government support.
The Cameroons
The Cameroons were occupied by French and British troops in 1916. They were finally divided by allocating about 166,000 sq. miles to French, and 34,081 to British control; but it should be explained that the French portion included about 100,000 sq. miles which, until 1911, had been part of French Equatorial Africa, and had been ceded by France to Germany in that year, in the endeavour to satisfy Germany's clamorous demands for a "place in the sun," with which both the Quai d'Orsay and Downing Street were so largely occupied during the thirty years preceding the war. This territory was returned to French Equatorial Africa, and the division of the Cameroon Territory remaining was therefore in the agreed proportions of two to one.
The British Cameroon Territory is now attached to Nigeria for administrative purposes. It has a comparatively dense native population of from 800,000 to 1,000,000. There is fertile plantation land near the coast and the interior is heavily forested.
Its exports are similar to those of British Togoland, with the variation that bananas are a main crop.
Like Togoland, it is unsuited for European settlement, and here also Government expenditure has, so far, exceeded revenue while its prosperity has increased and its population multiplied.
XIII
Portuguese Colonies
In view of the suggestions which have been made in various quarters that the ambitions of Germany might be satisfied by the surrender to them of one or both of the two principal Portuguese colonies in Africa, it may be well at this point to take a brief glance at what they are, and to consider with what aspect of decency, if any, such a transfer could be proposed.
Portugal is a country with a great past, and a future which, if European anarchy be averted, may be brighter than its more recent history.
So far as exploration, conquest or colonisation can give good moral claim to lands which had been occupied rather than owned by great herds of beasts and less numerous of nomadic men, who were themselves hunted, if not for their actual flesh, yet to be sold into conditions of beastlike servitude, Portugal must be ranked first among European nations, where Germany has scarcely a place at all.
Not only down the western coast, but round the Cape, and as far north as Mombasa Bay, their primitive, high-sided, thirty-five ton vessels sailed perilously through uncharted seas. They were not idealists, but the Moslem power which they destroyed at Diu - one of the most decisive and momentous naval battles of the Christian era - was more ruthless than they.
As the centuries passed, their power decayed, primarily because the lower-built Dutch vessels answered the helm better than theirs, and their influence and possessions shrank. But they still held to wide territories in sub-tropical Africa - Mozambique on the eastern, and Angola on the western coast.
During the last century they have been fortunate in the fact that, apart from the short period during which Germany appeared on the scene, they have had in England a surrounding neighbour who did not abuse her strength.
How they would have fared had Germany been in a similar position may be judged from the circumstances of a treaty negotiation of 1898.
The Portuguese colonies were then comparatively undeveloped - as they still are, and as, but for European jealousies, they need not have been expended profitably upon them, and the stronger lure of Brazil has drawn colonisation away.
Portugal Asks a Loan
But in 1898 Portugal was anxious to develop the resources of these African possessions, and sought a loan. Relations between Paris and London were strained, owing to the Fashoda incident which did not even remotely affect the interests of Germany, but that country seized the occasion to blackmail the English Government, as its habit was. It claimed a right to participate in the proposed loan to Portugal, and explained its plans.
The negotiations that followed, in which Lord Salisbury, Sir Edward Grey, Joseph Chamberlain and Arthur Balfour each had his share of responsibility, appear monstrous when they are coolly reviewed, but this cannot be fairly done without full consideration of the difficulties of those times, which were as real and in some aspects as serious as, though they may have been different from, ours. But they are a lesson in the danger of relying the courage and discretion of professional politicians to protect either the interests or the honour of this country, when public opinion is indifferent or ill-informed.
Germany Proposes a Plan
The German Government proposed that they should be allowed to share in the loan, but that no other European Government should be permitted to do so. The failure of Portugal to make punctual repayments was to be anticipated, and was to be made occasion for seizing the colonies, which was to be the subject of a secret agreement, made in advance, by which the two creditors would settle how they were ultimately to share the spoils.
But perhaps sharing the spoils is a barely accurate description of that which was not merely proposed but actually became a signed bargain during Lord Salisbury's illness. England did little more than retain a reversionary right to Lorenço Marques and Delagoa Bay, which, by a straightforward treaty with Portugal, she already had.
A Bargain Made
The essential element of the bargain was that Germany should seize Portugal's colonies at a future date, and that England should not interfere for their protection: the unwritten consideration was that if France should make war at that time for the advancement of her interests in the Soudan, Germany would not take the opportunity of attacking us in a quarrel with which she had nothing to do.
Germany had, at that time, no alliance nor any friendship with France, neither had she any difference with England. Neither her honour nor her interests were at stake. The proposal was blackmail in its crudest form. It was no honour to British statesmen that it did not succeed. A whisper of what was happening reached Portugal, the offered loan was prudently declined, and the Portuguese colonies remained undeveloped.
Portugal Takes Alarm
It will be observed that German methods of negotiation were the same under the Empire that they are now; and it is unsurprising that the German Government, whose recognition of the sanctity of treaties, or other scraps of paper (except, of course, anything which Herr Hitler and Mr. Neville Chamberlain may combine to sign in the sight of an admiring world), has always depended upon whether they were advantageous to herself, had the impudence, at more recent dates, to invoke the terms of that abortive document as binding this country to admit her prior claims upon the territory of our ally.
So, through the bad faith of this cowardly intrigue, Portugal was denied a loan which was imperatively needed in her own interests, and in that of her colonies, which she would have trusted England to make, and which would have been profitable to us. And the years passed.
The administration of these colonies, while liberal by German standards, had been deficient in many respects by ours, partly from lack of means, and partly from lower conceptions of obligation to the aborigines of exploited lands, but following the Portuguese revolution there have been evidences of a more liberal as well as a more energetic spirit.
Mozambique
Portuguese East Africa - Mozambique - has, at present, stringent laws limiting foreign European settlement. These laws certainly restrict either British or German immigration, but while the present German conception of nationality and of conduct proper to those who settle in foreign lands remains as it now is, it would be hard to say that they are more drastic than the security of the colony requires.
The white population is about 25,000, and there are nearly as many non-European immigrants, including many British Indians.
The agricultural possibilities of the territory are very great, and recent development, particularly in the cultivation of cotton, has been rapid.
There is a native population of about four millions, but the "large number of European soldiers," which, as we shall see later, are considered to be a common-place of German colonisation, are not required either for external protection or internal order.
There is one ornamental squadron of cavalry. There are two batteries of machine-guns. There are ten companies of native infantry, with white officers. That is all.
Portugal, secure in her treaties with Britain, relies peacefully upon a surrounding neighbour who does not abuse her power. The Pax Britannica extends beyond its own Commonwealth; and it is a matter upon which our honour is vitally staked that that trust should not be betrayed.
Treaties of Arbitration
During the last hundred years England has contributed very largely to the worlds' peace, and particularly to that of the, African continent, by submitting all territorial disputes to arbitration, and has persisted in this practice in spite of the fact that its continual, if not absolutely invariable result has been adverse to her. In recent years there has been a tendency
to hand over any territory which another nation may claim, on whatever slender grounds, without even this barren formality; and France, Italy, Portugal and Belgium have all extended their colonial boundaries by this simple method.
It was by arbitration that England had lost Delagoa Bay to Portugal before the date of the abortive treaty negotiations already mentioned, Marshal McMahon, to whom the dispute had been referred, giving the usual decision in favour of the weaker Power. It would be pleasant, but difficult, to think that, if Germany should acquire the position in Africa that England now holds, she would be prepared to settle all differences in this peaceful manner.
XIV
Angola
Portuguese West Africa - Angola - has a relative temperate climate, and its upland interior is well watered, healthy, and suitable for European settlement. Like Mozambique, it has the misfortune to be adjacent to an ex-German colony, and to have been ear-marked in Berlin for seizure at an appropriate time.
In proportion to its potentialities, Angola may be the least developed of any part of Africa. This is mainly due to maladministration in previous centuries, and to lack of capital during recent years. Until about a century ago, its main "industry" was the export of slaves to Brazil, and this trade did not entirely cease until a much later date. Compulsory native labour within the colony was not completely abolished until 1921.
Owing to such long-continued abuses, the native population is only about three and a quarter millions, although the colony has an area of 785,000 sq. miles, most of which is fertile. Properly developed, it could sustain ten times its present population, and still be a sparsely occupied land.
The white population is only about 7,500, of which a third are Germans, and British and South Africans combined are about equal in number. Four-fifths of the white population is in Lobito, one of the finer ports of the West African coast.
The exports of Angola, consisting mainly of coffee, maize, sugar, cotton, and other such sub-tropical products, tend to increase in value, and its finances are mildly prosperous.
Very rich copper deposits have been located, but not yet worked.
Custom duties are heavy, especially, upon goods shipped in foreign bottoms, the Portuguese policy being to encourage its own mercantile navy by this system of indirect subsidy. But the British mandated policy of holding the door wide open to German competition in the neighbouring South-West Territory has enabled a fleet of German liners to be maintained on the coast, and a maritime treaty (July, 1936) between Portugal and Germany has modified the position in favour of the latter country, although Britain had, and still holds, the larger share of Angola's foreign trade.
The colony is now far better administered than was the case ten years ago, and requires nothing but present capital and a sense of future security to advance it to the position of one of the most prosperous, as it is already one of the healthiest, parts of South Africa.
Project of Jewish Immigration
It is particularly opportune at the present time, when the Jews in Germany, and in other barbarous countries, are being so severely persecuted, to observe that a project for large-scale Jewish immigration took shape in 1913, and was revived in 1934, though without immediate result.
It is doubtful whether there is a similar area, equally suitable for such a purpose, and equally unpopulated, on any part of the earth's surface, and it would be far more equitable to consider such an allocation than to surrender this fertile territory to their German persecutors.
XV
Such are the Portuguese colonies. They are already prosperous, and of enormous potentialities. Having been under the flag of a relatively small country they have naturally attracted German cupidity from the day when the newly-formed Empire looked round for anything lying loose on the world's surface on which it might lay its hands. Their protection was the Anglo-Portuguese treaties, apart from which they would scarcely have remained peaceably in the possession of their present owners.
Should Germany be able to acquire them now, by a direct and freely negotiated bargain, it is improbable that any other nation would interfere, however ominous for the future peace of Africa such a transaction might be held to be. It is therefore of importance to understand the probable attitude of the Portuguese Government to such a proposal.
That there may be no dangerous ambiguity on this point, President Carmona recently issued this statement:
Attitude of Portugal
"Sometimes, for purposes which to us are more than suspect, the Portuguese colonies are referred to as subjects of barter. We consider them to be outside any and every agreement of any kind.
"They are part of us, and together with the Mother Country constitute a single indivisible whole, which no will, whether of ourselves or of others, can mutilate."
The Portuguese Ambassador in London, Dr. Monteiro, at a dinner of the Royal African Society (February 1, 1939), said that this statement "reflects with the clarity of a mirror" the universal feeling of Portugal.
That being so, Germany could obtain these colonies if at all, only by an act of brigandage to which England must be a passive, or even an actively consenting party. It would be an action far baser even than the surrender of our own territories to the threat of violence, such as no British Government would be likely to contemplate, and which would be repudiated with indignation by the general conscience.
The possibility of it becoming a question of practical politics has appeared to be discounted by repeated more or less official declarations from Berlin that nothing different was sought from the return of the actual colonies lost. Nothing more was desired. Nothing different would be considered.
Instructions to the German Colon ial League
But with the commencement of 1939 there have been indications that Germany has gained sufficient self-confidence to open a wider mouth.
The German Colonial League, of which General Ritter von Epp is president, has been agitating on this subject for more than two years past, not only in Germany but in the ex-German colonies, and very actively in this country. It has adopted the tone of assuming that the lost colonies are de facto, and will soon be de jure, parts of the Third Reich. It is actually organising a "Colonial Exhibition" to be held in Dresden during June, 1939, by which time it appears to hope, and may believe, that the colonial empire of Germany will have gained more substance than it now has.
A Bold Demand
It is exceedingly unlikely that such a body would speak or act without the approval, or indeed without the explicit instructions, of the German Government. It is therefore of extreme significance that the officials of this League have received instructions to cease agitating for the specific return of the former colonies and to substitute a demand that all colonial possessions shall be redistributed in proportions scaled to the populations of the home countries.
They have been instructed to argue that this radical redistribution would be no more than an act of basic justice, on the assumption that all colonies are exploited for the material enrichment of the holding country, and that Germany is morally entitled to a share in strict proportion to her population in Europe.
The proposal to effect such an adjustment is so wildly impracticable, and any initial plausibility which it may have is dependent upon so many fallacies of logic and the ignoring of so many facts, that it would be absurd to treat it seriously in itself. Yet it may be a fact of the utmost gravity that such a contention should be set up.
XVI
German New Guinea
A proposal to return any part of New Guinea to Germany would raise different considerations from those which prohibit disturbance of the African territories.
They are considerations vital to the existence of the British Empire, and all which that existence means to the world, and they have a special threat to Australia which may make the minority in that island continent, who recently raised the question of whether Australia would inevitably be involved in a British war gave it a negative reply, wish they had said less.
Australia is the largest island in the world; the next largest is New Guinea, which lies to the north, separated by no more than the eighty miles of the Torres Strait.
Those straits are studded with small islands, between which are narrow channels through which passes the rich commerce of Australia and the Western world. The military occupation of those islands would control the straits. They are now in the possession of the Queensland Government. They are not yet seriously fortified, though this position is not likely to continue.
The Dutch were First
The Dutch were the first to secure a foothold on the mainland of New Guinea. They occupied its western end, which was all their concern. They did not want New Guinea itself, so much as to block the way to discovery of spice islands further east, which might compete with theirs. English enterprise swerved south-ward, seeking land in a more temperate zone. In the end we came to New Guinea from the opposite direction, and landed on its eastern coast. We had not passed the Dutch barrier. We had come in at the back door, Dutch and British alike found New Guinea an uninviting land. Most of it was - and still is - covered by dense forests clothing the sides of steep gorges, narrow and deep, often soaked with torrential rains, and oppressed by a steaming heat.
The Interior
The moist, dense, luxuriant forests contain few beasts, and these are of small size, but they have a wonder of tropic flowers, and great butterflies, and bright-plumaged birds. It is a land in which the flora of Malaya and that of Australia meet in a profusion which neither parent can equal. It is inhabited by numerous scattered tribes of very diverse races, but all primitive in habits and low in intellect. There are cannibals and head-hunters there today, as there were when Thomas Forrest landed from his ten-ton galley a century and a half ago. The forests are very difficult to penetrate from their luxuriance, their moist heat, the rivers that must be crossed, and their abrupt gorges which must be continually descended and climbed while cutting blindly through tropic growth. Much of the interior is still un-explored.
New Guinea is nearly 1,500 miles in length, and averages about 500 miles in breadth. When the Germans began to look round for lands where they could stake a claim, there was Dutch settlement at the one end and British protection vaguely extending over the other, with a wide space between, the owner-ship of which had not been defined.
Queensland Anxiety
Queensland had petitioned the Home Government more than once to proclaim a definite protectorate of this ill-defined territory, dreading the ultimate result if any part of it should be possessed by a foreign power other than Holland, which she felt no reason to fear. At that time it might have been done with an unchallenged right, the only necessity being to come to a friendly understanding as to where Holland's boundary met our own.
But our British Government would not move. During the latter part of the nineteenth century the principal anxiety of the Foreign Office appears to have been that they should not be considered greedy by other Powers. Foreign ambassadors in London who wished to make colonial claims found a market in which it was easy to deal.
Foreign Office Policy
The Victorian epoch is commonly represented as one in which England acted with an arrogant sense of power. An examination of Foreign Office correspondence, and of the treaties that were made, does not support this view. There was a firm stand made occasionally, as at Fashoda, but generally any nation could have anything for which it could make out even a flimsy claim, and, where Germany was concerned, she might get it merely by mentioning her desire in a surly way, and hinting that it would be sufficient to make her a better neighbour in Europe - until she should open her mouth again.
When Tennyson wrote:
"Pray God our greatness do not fail Through craven fear of being great"
he saw the timidity - or perhaps "mis-interpreted generosity" would be more exact - with which foreign negotiations were conducted, with accurate eyes.
In 1883 the nervousness of the Queensland Government caused it to proclaim a protectorate of the south-eastern shore of New Guinea off its own bat. But the British Government actually repudiated this claim to a vacant coast, possession of which was a vital necessity for Australian security; though it was persuaded in the following year, with more reluctance than it usually showed when giving something away, to proclaim a protectorate "from the 141st meridian eastward as far as East Cape, with the adjacent islands far as Kosman Island."
German Landing
Perhaps we should say that they had given something away, in the usual direction, before allowing themselves to make this declaration, for, almost immediately afterwards, Germany, although not having a foothold on the island or a valid claim of the remotest kind, announced on November 16, 1884, that the north-east part of the island was her own property, sent a landing-party to hoist the German flag, and established a trading station. It will be noticed that this is the same year in which the claims to Tanganyika and South-West Africa were made, with the support of the British Foreign Office. The year 1884 stands out as that in which these artificial "colonies" were created, and from which the present trouble began, the British Government showing as much anxiety to establish Germany as a neighbour to the overseas parts of the Empire as though she were seeking a heritage for her own babe.
When the Germans landed in 1884, there was not a single white man of any nationality in the part of New Guinea which they had claimed. It was not a case of the flag following trade or settlement, but it was to be one of very little trade following the flag.
It was simply a case of Germany wanting to say that large portions of the earth's surface belonged to her, which the British Foreign Office, instead of sitting on it with a decision which would have done much for the world's peace, preferred to nurse like a sick child. It was a case of purchasing future trouble with present ease which we may do well to ponder today.
Two Hundred Islands
Germany did not only annex the mainland; she claimed, in the same arbitrary manner, without pretexts of settlement or discovery, over two hundred islands, including the Solomon and Admiralty Groups, which became generally known as the Bismarck Archipelago.
The area of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, as the Germans called their new mainland possession, was about 70,000 sq. miles. Twenty-two years later - in 1906 - its white population of every nationality, including Germans, was one hundred and forty nine.
At the conclusion of the war this territory (together with the ex-German islands south of the equator, except German Samoa which is administered by New Zealand) passed into Australia's control. Its non-indigenous population in 1937 had risen to 5,897, including:
German . . . 469 . . . . . . . . . Chinese . . . 1,525
Dutch . . . . .155 . . . . . . . . . . Japanese . . . . 40
There was a known native population of about half a million, but much of the interior is still unexplored, and may contain tribes which the forests hide.
The country is known to be rich in undeveloped mineral wealth, but mechanical difficulties of transport, particularly of heavy machinery, retard its exploitation.
Discovery of Gold
Gold-mining beyond the frontiers of civilisation has been commenced during the Australian occupation, the precious metal having been located far in the inhospitable interior, and machinery which could hardly have been dragged through forest and gorge and swamp has been carried sectionally through the air, a fleet of planes now being in regular service between Australia and the mines.
The capital invested in this goldfield amounts to many millions. It is entirely British Empire and American money. The gold obtained has already reached an annual to of £2,000,000, and there is a probability that mining operations may extend until the prosperity of the Australian goldfields has been exceeded.
Western Samoa
Western Samoa, which is the name given to the ex-German Samoan Islands, is now governed by New Zealand, with the liberality and in the disinterested spirit which her mandate requires. The German occupation only dated from November, 1899, as the result (need it be said?) of an Anglo-German treaty by which Great Britain renounced her own claims in favour of a greedier Power.
No German who knows the facts will be ungrateful if the period of their occupation be passed over without remark.
The whole of the South Pacific Islands held by Australia and New Zealand are utterly unfortified, that being one of the conditions of the League of Nations mandates, which has been strictly observed. (Were we not all to be secure beneath the League of Nations' extended wing?)
Japan took the German Islands north of the equator, under the same conditions, and has fortified some of them, without protest from our peace-loving government, in no half-hearted manner.
XVII
Looking Ahead
It will be well to ask ourselves, before our politicians go further upon the perilous road of discussion with Germany, what the effect of surrendering Kaiser Wilhelm's Land and the South Pacific Islands would be upon our prestige and interests in the Far East, and upon those millions of British blood who are divided from us by two oceans, but for whom Britain is still the shield of their lasting peace.
We can put aside the idea that it would be regarded as an act of altruistic justice for nations of lower moralities to admire and to imitate as occasion comes.
Even if that were true - which it would not be - it would not be believed.
It would be accepted as a decisive sign that our empire will fall apart, and that the process has begun; which is what Japan, among others, would like to think - and perhaps does.
A Japanese Opinion
Mr. Shiratori, the new Japanese Ambassador to Italy, gave an interview to a representative of the Danzig organ of Naziism, the Neueste Nachrichten (October 27, 1938), in the course of which he said:
"Great Britain's predominance in the Far East has come to an end for ever. A new chapter of Japanese history begins."
It is a fact so evident that even Japanese discretion does not think it injudicious to boast of it in blunt words to those who are unfriendly to us!
Well, Japan may be wrong. While the lion lives, it is premature to divide his skin. But, if it be error, it is one which such surrender to Germany would so emphatically support that Japan would be very unlikely to unlearn it, if at all, without much shedding of British blood.
And suppose that we should lose a war in the Far East under the weakened conditions in which it would be fought? Suppose that German or Japanese armies - or both - should land from New Guinea or elsewhere in New Zealand or Australia, and should prove too numerous or too strongl